Conventions of La Marsa

The Conventions of La Marsa (Arabic: اتفاقية المرسى‎‎) supplementing the Treaty of Bardo were signed by the Bey of Tunis Ali III ibn al-Husayn and the French Resident General Paul Cambon on 8 June 1883. They provided for France to repay Tunisia's international debt so it could abolish the International Debt Commission and thereby remove any obstacles to a French protectorate in Tunisia. It was in the Conventions of La Marsa that the term 'protectorate' was first employed to describe the relationship between France and the Regency of Tunis. As the first protectorate to be established, Tunisia provided a working model for later French interventions in Morocco and Syria.

When they first occupied Tunisia in 1881, the French had compelled the Bey, Muhammad III as-Sadiq, to sign the Treaty of Bardo. To avoid provoking a reaction from other European powers with an interest in the country, the terms of this treaty were very limited. They allowed French military occupation of certain places, thereby undermining a Tunisian sovereignty which was not legally clear, since the Regency of Tunis acknowledged, at least notionally, the authority of the Ottoman Empire. Most importantly, through the Treaty of Bardo, the French government guaranteed the fulfillment of existing treaty obligations between the Regency and various European powers under the capitulations. The French Republic and the Bey of Tunis also agreed to establish a new financial regime, ensuring that the public debt was serviced and the rights of international creditors protected. These provisions effectively removed any grounds other powers might have for objecting to the French intervention, and therefore served France's short-term interests. In the longer term however, France wished not to preserve but to remove the interests of other powers from the country, so that they could control it exclusively. The major obstacle to this was the International Debt Commission which had been set up in 1869, so a new treaty was required to provide the means of abolishing it.

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