Great Britain and France, as colonial powers, had been competing for influence in Tunisia, long a province of the Ottoman Empire, since 1871. During the 1878 Congress of Berlin, a diplomatic compromise was reached whereby Britain seized Cyprus from the Ottomans and France took over Tunisia. Using the pretext that Tunisian tribes had advanced towards the French colony of Algeria, the French sent their troops across the Tunisian borders and besieged the palace of Bey Muhammad As-Sadiq, forcing him to sign the Bardo Treaty and thus turning Tunisia into a French protectorate.

Although they maintained the system of Beys (the Ottomans title of provincial rulers), the French were the ones exercising actual power in the country, a domination reinforced by the 1883 Al-Marsa Convention signed by Ali Bey, successor of As-Sadiq. The strict French military rules did not allow initially for any systematic political opposition. However, demonstrations started to pick up pace, encouraged by two incidents: the Djellaz riots that erupted when the Tunisian municipality falling under French control applied for the registration of the Djellaz cemetery domain, and the boycott of Tunisian trams following the accidental death of an 8-year old Tunisian child, killed by a tram run by a French company.

On the heels of World War I, and with the US President Woodrow Wilson declaring that all peoples have the right to determine their own fate, the Constitutional Liberal Party, Destour, was founded, advocating reforms but without an explicit call for independence. Later though, the party became uncontrolled and its leader, Abdelaziz Thaalabi, was forced into exile. In the early 1930s, tensions flared up following the Eucharistic Congress at Carthage which was deemed provoking to Islam. Tensions ran even higher when the population refused to bury French Tunisians in Muslim cemeteries.

In this atmosphere, a group of Tunisian nationalist politicians, lead by Habib Bourguiba, founded the New Constitutional Liberal Party, commonly known as the Neo Destour, in 1934. But the party was outlawed after its leader was deported to the south, only to be released again in 1936. Fed up with these incidents, the Tunisians staged violent demonstrations in 1938 demanding fairer reforms; the demonstrations cost them several casualties and fatalities. The Neo Destour was banned again and its leaders were repeatedly detained. In 1950, the Neo Destour participated in negotiations discussing Tunisia’s internal autonomy but the talks produced no results and paved the way for the eruption of armed resistance against French intransigence in January 1952.

The French confronted the revolt by launching large-scale combing operations and arresting top Neo Destour officials including Habib Bourguiba. However, against the heightened Tunisian, Libyan and Algerian guerilla attacks on one hand and the deterioration of the situation in other colonies on the other, the president of the French Council, Pierre Mendes, recognized Tunisia’s right to internal autonomy.

Conventions were signed in 1955 and Bourguiba returned to Tunisia as a hero. Soon after the formation of the first government on September 18, the party’s secretary general Saleh Ben Youssef initiated an open conflict with Bourguiba calling for total independence and alliance with the Algerian revolution. However, Bourguiba was able to defy Ben Youssef’s faction and independence was finally declared on March 20, 1956, thus ending the 75-year long protectorate era.