Tunisian national movement

The Tunisian national movement was the sociopolitical movement, born at the beginning of the 20th century, which led the fight against the French protectorate of Tunisia and gained Tunisian independence in 1956.

Inspired by the ideology of the Young Turks and Tunisian political reforms in the latter half of the 19th century, the group of traditionalists—lawyers, doctors and journalists—gradually gave way to a well-structured political organisation of the new French-educated elite. The organisation could mobilise supporters to confront the authorities of the protectorate in order to advance the demands that it made of the French government. The movement's strategy alternated between negotiations and armed confrontations over the years. Support from the powerful trade unions and the feminist movement, along with an intellectual and musical cultural revival, contributed to a strong assertion of national identity which was reinforced by the educational and political systems after independence.

The movement was composed of many diverse groups, but from the 1930s was united by mounting social forces: a lower-middle class engaged in the capitalist economy, new Westernised elites, and an organised working class sensitive to social demands.

Background information: French protectorate of Tunisia

In 1881 a French protectorate was established in Tunisia. Over the following decades, a number of factors led to the beginnings of a national Tunisian movement. The economic development of the French protectorate required the formation of a Tunisian middle class; this group felt divorced from political and public life in the country. Some of the Tunisian elite, now with greater contact with Europe, began trying to reconcile Islam with modern European ideas. From Istanbul, Tunisian exiles including Ismaïl Sfayhi and Salah Chérif led a program of anti-colonialist propaganda. Tunisia was the first state in the Arab world influenced by modern nationalism: the movement against the French occupation started from the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1907 the Young Tunisians party was formed by Béchir Sfar, Abdeljelil Zaouche and the lawyer Ali Bach Hamba. These intellectuals, mostly of Turco-Tunisians origin, who had been to Sadiki College and in some cases had received a higher education in France, were inspired by the Young Turks of the same period, taking from them the ideas of panislamism and panarabism. They also based their principles on those of earlier reformers such as Hayreddin Pasha. The party, which consisted mainly of middle-class French-educated Tunisians, campaigned to safeguard Tunisia's Arab-Muslim heritage, preserve the character of the Tunisian state and restore the Tunisian identity, but it stopped short of challenging the protectorate.

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