When the Second Empire succumbed to the Prussian onslaught the French had already been established in North Africa for forty years. Even before the conquest of Algeria had been completed, they had advanced into the Sahara, and occupied the great northern oases. Morocco had managed to preserve its independence by a policy of systematic non-involvement in the outside world, but the two regencies of Tunis and Tripoli, which had hitherto been vassals of the Porte, became the objects of French expansionism. Reconquered by Turkey in 1835, Tripoli had become an Ottoman province. The bey of Tunis had escaped the same fate only by placing himself under French protection. As for the heart of the great desert, a no man's land inhabited by Arab and Tuareg nomads, it was in practice still free from the rival influences of French, Turks and Moroccans.

Ten years later, in 1881, France established a protectorate over the Regency of Tunis. The momentum of European penetration increased as the twentieth century approached. After the conquest of the Algerian Sahara, the French decided to establish a protectorate over Morocco, while the Italians cast their mantle over Tripolitania. The 1904 agreements between France, England and Spain appeared to seal the fate of the Sharifian empire. The intervention of Germany and the start of another international crisis merely delayed by a few years a French conquest that had become inevitable.