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France's Informal Empire in the Mediterranean, 1815–1830

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2021

Dzavid Dzanic Open the ORCID record for Dzavid Dzanic [Opens in a new window]
Dzavid Dzanic*
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Department of History and Philosophy, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee, USA
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Abstract

Recent works on France's informal projection of power have begun remapping French imperialism during the nineteenth century. More studies in this vein could broaden our understanding of informal empire as an analytical category by decentring it from its roots in British imperial studies. This article argues that between 1815 and 1830, French diplomats remoulded the Regency of Tunisia into an informal imperial periphery. Although they lacked the military and economic leverage of their British counterparts, French consuls coerced the Tunisian rulers into submission by wielding threats and treaties. This strategy unfolded in three stages. First, the consuls used rumours of a possible invasion in order to impose a new vision of international law and dismantle the corsair system in the Regency. Second, they claimed French territorial sovereignty over a part of the Tunisian coast by appealing to the international legal norms enshrined in the existing treaties. And, third, the Tunisian ruler accepted most consular demands following the French invasion of Algeria in 1830. Tunisia's entrance into the French imperial orbit in turn led French diplomats to seek the establishment of French economic ascendency in Tunisia during the early 1830s.

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The Historical Journal , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , June 2022 , pp. 663 - 684
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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References

1 For important exceptions, see Shawcross, Edward, France, Mexico and informal empire in Latin America, 1820–1867: equilibrium in the new world (Basingstoke, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Todd, David, ‘Transnational projects of empire in France, c. 1815 – c. 1870’, Modern Intellectual History, 12 (2015), pp. 265–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Todd, David, A velvet empire: French informal imperialism in the nineteenth century (Princeton, NJ, 2021)Google Scholar. On the limits of French imperial scholarship, see Todd, David, ‘A French imperial meridian, 1814–1870’, Past & Present, 210 (2011), pp. 155–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Gallagher, John and Robinson, Ronald, ‘The imperialism of free trade’, Economic History Review, 6 (1953), pp. 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 7. Gregory A. Barton has used an expanded view of informal imperialism in Informal empire and the rise of one world culture (Basingstoke, 2014).

3 John Darwin has emphasized the blurry lines that separated formal from informal imperial tactics in ‘Imperialism and the Victorians: the dynamics of territorial expansion’, English Historical Review, 112 (1997), pp. 614–42.

4 On the ‘mission civilisatrice’, see, inter alia, Pascale Pellerin, ed., Les Lumières, l'esclavage et l'idéologie coloniale, XVIIIe–XXe siècles (Paris, 2020); Dino Costantini, Mission civilisatrice: le rôle de l'histoire coloniale dans la construction de l'identité politique française (Paris, 2008); Alice L. Conklin, A mission to civilize: the republican idea of empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, CA, 1997); Raymond F. Betts, Assimilation and association in French colonial theory, 1890–1914 (1960; Lincoln, NE, 2005).

5 Rachida Tlili has examined French plans to conquer parts of North Africa after 1789 in ‘Les projets de conquête en direction du Maghreb sous la révolution et l'Empire’, in Yves Bénot and Marcel Dorigny, eds., Rétablissement de l'esclavage dans les colonies françaises: aux origines de Haïti (Paris, 2003), pp. 485–503. On the wider French Mediterranean context, see Ian Coller, Arab France: Islam and the making of modern Europe, 1798–1831 (Berkeley, CA, 2011); Patricia M. E. Lorcin and Todd Shepard, eds., French Mediterraneans: transnational and imperial histories (Lincoln, NE, 2016).

6 On the intersection between Islamic and European law in the Maghreb, see Jörg Manfred Mössner, Die Völkerrechtspersönlichkeit und die Völkerrechtspraxis der Barbareskenstaaten (Algier, Tripolis, Tunis, 1518–1830) (Berlin, 1968).

7 Lotfi Ben Rejeb has examined the idea of ‘Barbary’ as a civilizational category in ‘“The general belief of the world”: Barbary as genre and discourse in Mediterranean history’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, 19 (2012), pp. 15–31.

8 Jacques Devoize to Ministre des Relations Extérieures (MRE), Tunis, 16 Apr. 1816, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (AMAE), La Courneuve, France, Tunis/42, fos. 183r, 184r.

9 Déclaration du bey de Tunis sur l'affranchissement des esclaves chrétiens, Gazette de Turin, 2 May 1816, AMAE, Tunis/42, fo. 190v. The bey had issued the declaration on 19 Jumādā al-ʾAwwal 1231 (17 Apr. 1816).

10 Devoize to MRE, Tunis, 31 Dec. 1816, AMAE, Tunis/42, fos. 267v–277r. Kalman, Julie has recently studied Franco-British competition in ‘Competitive imperialism in the early nineteenth-century Mediterranean’, Historical Journal, 63 (2020), pp. 1160–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, while Sara ElGaddari had examined the British imperial vision in the Regency of Tripoli in ‘His Majesty's agents: the British consul at Tripoli, 1795–1832’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 43 (2015), pp. 770–86.

11 Déclaration du bey de Tunis sur l'affranchissement des esclaves chrétiens, Gazette de Turin, 2 Mar. 1816, AMAE, Tunis/42, fo. 190r.

12 Pierre Jurien to Sidi Mahmud, Tunis, 27 Sept. 1819, AMAE, Tunis/43, fo. 219r. Devoize noted that the bey was shocked to hear the accusation of having engaged in piracy: Devoize to MRE, Tunis, 20 Oct. 1819, AMAE, Tunis/43, fo. 217r.

13 Mahmud bin Muhammad to Pierre Jurien, Bardo Palace, Tunis, 9 Dhū al-Ḥijjah 1234 (29 Sept. 1819), AMAE, Tunis/43. This Arabic letter was archived without the usual folio numbers.

14 Charles-Étienne Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 20 Nov. 1819, AMAE, Tunis/43, fos. 236v–237r.

15 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 1 Dec. 1819, AMAE, Tunis/43, fo. 242r–v.

16 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 1 Dec. 1819, AMAE, Tunis/43, fo. 253r. The bey presented the same justification to European consuls: see Mahmud bin Muhammad to European consuls, Bardo Palace, Tunis, 3 Rabīʿ al-ʾAwwal 1235 (22 Dec. 1819), AMAE, Tunis/43, fo. 254r–v.

17 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 10 Dec. 1821, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 86v.

18 Guys took up his consular duties after 15 Jan. 1824, the date of his arrival in the Regency: Hyacinthe-Constantin Guys to MRE, Tunis, 16 Jan. 1824, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 343r.

19 Instructions supplémentaires pour M. Guys, 27 Nov. 1823, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 317r.

20 Ibid., fos. 317v–318r.

21 Ibid., fos. 318r, 319r. On the French community in Tunisia, see Anne-Marie Planel, Du comptoir à la colonie: histoire de la communauté française de Tunisie, 1814–1883 (Paris, 2015).

22 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 10 Jan. 1824, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 342r.

23 Quoted in Guys to MRE, Tunis, 31 Jan. 1824, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 356r.

24 Ibid., fo. 357v.

25 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 22 Feb. 1824, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 371r; Guys to MRE, Tunis, 20 Mar. 1824, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 377v. The minister of foreign affairs acknowledged receipt of the request for a show of force: MRE to Guys, Paris, 10 Aug. 1824, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 426r.

26 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 25 Sept. 1824, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 448r.

27 Traité fait pour le renouvellement des capitulations et articles de paix, 15 Nov. 1824 (23 Rabīʿ al-ʾAwwal 1240), AMAE, Tunis/44, fos. 458r–461r.

28 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 26 Sept. 1825, AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 147r–v. For Pierre Deval's intervention on behalf of the Papal States in Algeria, see Pierre Deval to MRE, Algiers, 1 Feb. 1825, AMAE, Algiers/47, fos. 154r–155v.

29 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 26 Sept. 1825, AMAE, Tunis/45, fos. 147v–148r.

30 MRE to Guys, Paris, 17 Nov. 1825, AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 164v.

31 Ibid.

32 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 23 Feb. 1826, AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 186v.

33 Déclaration de l'E. le Bey de Tunis en faveur des États Romains accordée à la demande de Sa Majesté l'Empereur de France, 4 Shaʿbān 1241 (14 Mar. 1826), AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 198r (French translation).

34 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 29 Apr. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 68r.

35 MRE to Pierre Deval, Paris, 23 Aug. 1826, AMAE, Mémoires et documents, Algeria/1, fos. 101r–102r; Deval to MRE, Algiers, 1 Feb. 1825, AMAE, Mémoires et documents, Algeria/1, fo. 119v.

36 Mémoire rélatif aux avantages que l'on peut se promettre de la réprise des concessions d'Afrique, Marseille, 27 May 1816, AMAE, Tunis/42, fo. 212r–v. It is very likely that Antoine Peyron, the main French agent in the concessions, wrote this memoir. On the history of the concessions, see Paul Masson, Histoire des établissements et du commerce français dans l'Afrique barbaresque, 1560–1793 (Algérie, Tunisie, Tripolitaine, Maroc) (Paris, 1903).

37 Mémoire rélatif aux avantages que l'on peut se promettre de la réprise des concessions d'Afrique, Marseille, 27 May 1816, AMAE, Tunis/42, fo. 219r.

38 Devoize to MAE, Tunis, 20 Sept. 1817, AMAE, Tunis/43, fo. 74r.

39 Adrien Dupré, ancien consul à Bône, Notice sur les concessions d'Afrique, AMAE, Tunis/43, fo. 346r.

40 Ibid., fo. 346v.

41 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 20 June 1821, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 37v.

42 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 14 July 1821, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 41r.

43 In the same report, Malivoire in fact noted that the bey claimed the area up to Cape Rose, beyond La Calle, but this must have been a simple misidentification. It is likely that the similarity between the names Rose and Roux led to the clerical error: Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 14 July 1821, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 41r–v.

44 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 14 July 1821, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 42r.

45 Malivoire to Sidi Sulayman Kahiya, Ministre de S. E. le Bey de Tunis, 3 Dec. 1821, AMAE, Tunis/44. In the archival record, this letter does not have an individual folio number, and it is located between fos. 86 and 87. Cosmes Bottari, the French consular agent in Bizerte, witnessed the confiscation of Neapolitan coral: see his Procès-verbal, Bizerte, 17 Oct. 1821, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 57r–v.

46 Pierre Deval to MRE, Algiers, 24 Dec. 1819, AMAE, Algiers/45, fos. 74v–75r.

47 MRE to Malivoire, Paris, 16 Apr. 1822, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 128r.

48 Ibid., fo. 128v.

49 Ibid., fo. 129r.

50 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 25 Oct. 1822, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 140r–v; MRE to Malivoire, Paris, 17 Aug. 1822, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 157r.

51 Sidi Sulayman Kahiya to Malivoire, 20 Rabīʿ al-ʾAwwal 1237 (15 Dec. 1821), AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 93r. In the French documents, the kāhiya title is transliterated as kiaja. I am grateful to Lameen Souag for helping me find the original Arabic word.

52 Sidi Sulayman Kahiya to Malivoire, 20 Rabīʿ al-ʾAwwal 1237 (15 Dec. 1821), AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 93v.

53 Ibid., fo. 94r.

54 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 10 May 1822, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 131v.

55 Copie du procès verbal, 17 Sept. 1821, AMAE, Tunis/44, fos. 133r, 134v.

56 Malivoire to MRE, Tunis, 24 May 1822, AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 136v.

57 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 4 Jan. 1825, AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 1r–v. The third article of the 1824 treaty reaffirmed France's status as ‘the most-favoured nation’: Traité fait pour le renouvellement des capitulations et articles de paix, 15 Nov. 1824 (23 Rabīʿ al-ʾAwwal 1240), AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 458v.

58 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 4 Jan. 1825, AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 2r.

59 MRE to Alexandre Deval, Paris, 11 July 1826, AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 92v.

60 Ibid., fos. 92r, 93r.

61 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 12 Jan. 1826, AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 176r.

62 Ibid., fo. 177r.

63 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 23 Oct. 1826, AMAE, Tunis/45, fo. 299v.

64 MRE to Guys, Paris, 6 Jan. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fos. 2r, 3r.

65 Ibid., fo. 2v.

66 Guys to MRE, Tunis, Feb. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fos. 19v–20r.

67 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 13 Mar. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 24r.

68 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 20 Mar. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fos. 50v–51v.

69 Guys to Pierre Deval, Tunis, 15 Mar. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 36v.

70 Ibid., fo. 36v.

71 Mathieu de Lesseps to Commandant du Petit-Thouars, Tunis, 26 Mar. 1829, AMAE, Tunis/48, fos. 69v–70r.

72 Ibid., AMAE, Tunis/48, fo. 70v.

73 Ibid., fo. 71v.

74 Traité entre la France et Tunis, 8 Aug. 1830 (17 Ṣafar 1246), AMAE, Tunis/48, fo. 378v (my emphasis).

75 Husayn bin Muhammad to Alexandre Deval, 7 Muḥarram 1249 (27 May 1833), AMAE, Tunis/50, fo. 293v (Arabic letter). Alexandre Deval held the consulship in Tunis between 1832 and 1836.

76 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 20 June 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 101r.

77 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 6 July 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fos. 113r–115r.

78 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 26 June 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 106v; Guys to MRE, Tunis, 24 July 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 124v.

79 MRE to Guys, Paris, 6 Sept. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fos. 166v–167r.

80 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 13 Sept. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 168v; Guys to MRE, Tunis, 17 Sept. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 179v.

81 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 17 Sept. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 179v; Guys to MRE, Tunis, 20 Sept. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 185r.

82 Guys to MRE, Tunis, 6 Oct. 1827, AMAE, Tunis/46, fo. 217v.

83 After two Europeans purchased La Jeune Clarisse, the bey expressed surprise upon receiving a firm French request for compensation: Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 5 Jan. 1828, AMAE, Tunis/47, fo. 15r.

84 Ibid., fo. 14v.

85 Ibid., fo. 15v.

86 Ibid., fo. 16r.

87 Ibid., fo. 16v.

88 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 26 Jan. 1828, AMAE, Tunis/47, fo. 52r–v.

89 Quoted in ibid., fo. 52v.

90 Ibid., fo. 52v.

91 Ibid., fo. 53v.

92 Ibid., fo. 53r.

93 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 25 Feb. 1828, AMAE, Tunis/47, fos. 83v–84r.

94 Quoted in ibid., fos. 87v–88r.

95 Ibid., fo. 88r.

96 Christian Windler made a similar observation about the consular reliance on beylical authority in La diplomatie comme expérience de l'autre: consuls français au Maghreb (1700–1840) (Geneva, 2002), pp. 296, 304. See also Windler's ‘Representing a state in a segmentary society: French consuls in Tunis from the Ancien Régime to the Restoration’, Journal of Modern History, 73 (2001), pp. 233–74.

97 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 6 Mar. 1828, AMAE, Tunis/47, fos. 92v–93r.

98 In these circumstances, Lesseps noted that the British consul allegedly envied France's ascendancy in Tunisia: Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 15 Apr. 1828, AMAE, Tunis/47, fo. 135r.

99 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 21 May 1828, AMAE, Tunis/47, fos. 161r–163r.

100 Ibid., fo. 162r.

101 Ibid., fos. 163r–164r.

102 Ibid., fos. 164v–165r.

103 Ibid., fo. 165r–v.

104 Quoted in ibid., fo. 166v.

105 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 27 May 1828, AMAE, Tunis/47, fo. 208r–v; Bach Mamlouk to Lesseps, Tunis, 26 Rabīʿ al-ʾAwwal 1244 (6 Oct. 1828), AMAE, Tunis/47, fo. 336r.

106 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 19 July 1829, AMAE, Tunis/48, fo. 192r–v.

107 Ibid., fo. 192v.

108 Ibid., fo. 193r.

109 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 9 Sept. 1829, AMAE, Tunis/48, fo. 248r.

110 Quoted in ibid., fo. 248r–v.

111 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 2 Nov. 1829, AMAE, Tunis/48, fos. 289r–291r.

112 Armand Marcescheau, letter, Tunis, 5 May 1826, in J. Letaille, ‘Voyage de Marcescheau dans le Sud de la Régence de Tunis en 1826’, Revue tunisienne, 8 (1901), pp. 149–55, at p. 154.

113 Armand Marcescheau to MRE, Quelques réflexions relatives au commerce de Marseille avec le Levant et la Barbarie, Tunis, 7 May 1826, AMAE, Tunis/45, fos. 229v–230r.

114 On treaties and imperial expansion, see Saliha Belmessous, ed., Empire by treaty: negotiating European expansion, 1600–1900 (Oxford, 2014).

115 Traité entre la France et Tunis, 8 Aug. 1830 (17 Ṣafar 1246), AMAE, Tunis/48, fos. 377v–378v.

116 Ibid., fos. 378v–379r.

117 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 10 Aug. 1830, AMAE, Tunis/48, fo. 381r.

118 On the later impact of European economic pressure on Tunisia's political and legal system, see Abdel-Jawed Zouari, ‘European capitalist penetration of Tunisia, 1860–1881: a case study of the Regency's debt crisis and the establishment of the International Financial Commission’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1998). See also Ganiage, Jean, Les origines du protectorat français en Tunisie (1861–1881) (Paris, 1959)Google Scholar; Rosenbaum, Jürgen, Frankreich in Tunesien. Die Anfänge des Protektorates, 1881–1886 (Zurich, 1971)Google Scholar; Lewis, Mary Dewhurst, Divided rule: sovereignty and empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 (Berkeley, CA, 2014)Google Scholar.

119 On the emergence of these legal visions, see Martti Koskenniemi, The gentle civilizer of nations: the rise and fall of international law, 1870–1960 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 13, 53.

120 Ibid., p. 34.

121 This observation echoes Julia A. Clancy-Smith's claim that Tunisia was a Mediterranean borderland where pre-colonial and colonial developments could not be neatly disentangled: Julia A. Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an age of migration, c. 1800–1900 (Berkeley, CA, 2011), p. 16. On the overlapping imperial ambitions in the Mediterranean, see Oualdi, M'hamed, A slave between empires: a transimperial history of North Africa (New York, NY, 2020)Google Scholar.

122 The southward expansion of French Algeria after 1830 probably transformed this geographic orientation. On the intersection between geography, law, and empire, see Benton, Lauren, A search for sovereignty: law and geography in European empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar; and Pitts, Jennifer, Boundaries of the international: law and empire (Cambridge, MA, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

123 See, for instance, the 1831 Franco-Tunisian agreement between Paul-Ambroise Volland and Khayr al-Din Agha for the Tunisian administration of French-captured Oran in Archives nationales d'Outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France, 1H/6.

124 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 21 Jan. 1832, AMAE, Tunis/50, fos. 87r–92v.

125 In the case of commercial disputes, article fourteen of the 1824 treaty established a mixed court composed of an equal number of French and Tunisian merchants. The same article stipulated that in the event of a split vote, the bey would issue the final ruling ‘in accord with the consul-general’: Traité fait pour le renouvellement des capitulations et articles de paix, 15 Nov. 1824 (23 Rabīʿ al-ʾAwwal 1240), AMAE, Tunis/44, fo. 460r–v. In Lesseps's interpretation of this article, the final ruling would only be binding if he accepted its validity, but he anticipated that the bey would not accept the resulting primacy of consular jurisdiction in Tunisia: Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 30 Oct. 1831, AMAE, Tunis/49, fos. 287r–292r.

126 Cf. Windler, La diplomatie comme expérience de l'autre, pp. 400, 484, 549, 551.

127 Lesseps to MRE, Tunis, 28 Aug. 1830, AMAE, Tunis/49, fos. 7v–8r.

128 ‘Wa-sharru al-ʾumūri muḥdathātuhā wa-kullu muḥdathatin bidʿatun wa-kullu bidʿatin ḍalālatun wa-kullu ḍalālatin fī al-nār’: Sunan al-Nisāʾī 1578.