Capital accumulation and provincial power in pre‐protectorate Tunisia (1850–81): notes from the Tunis archives

Abstract

One of the striking characteristics of Tunisian history in the second half of the nineteenth century was the massive expropriation of the rural suirplus from the tribes, peasant-farmers, and local craftsmen to European bankers and creditors, on the one hand, and to members of the Tunisian political class, on the other. The transfer of capital and other resources from Tunisia to the northern side of the Mediterranean basin and its impact upon Tunisian society have already been studied; but the appropriation of the rural surplus by the Tunisian political class in the provinces, a development that contributed to the ruin of the peasantry and the collapse of the dynastic state, is less well understood. This article will shed light upon this process by suggesting certain archival collections and documents useful for its study, and stating the tentative conclusions of recent research on this subject carried out in the Tunisian archives.' The Tunisian National Archives, housed in Dar al-Bey palace at the Place du Gouvernement on the edge of the Medina, is a rich storehouse of documents for the nineteenth century. Organized into collections of dossiers (Serie Historique) and registers (whose main catalogue is entitled Daftar dabt aldafatir al-mahfuzah), these materials cover virtually every subject in which the government had an interest, which by the 1 870s included nearly every form of social and economic activity.2 Despite the intrinsic importance of these documents, researchers face difficulties in gaining full access to the materials. Mostly, this is a problem of organization. A complete and accurate catalogue of all holdings does not yet exist, and documents which appear to be missing frequently turn up in unexpected places. Yet in spite of these difficulties, the patient and persistent researcher will usually find his efforts amply rewarded, as witnessed by the numerous studies in Tunisian social history currently in progress by local university professors and their students, for whom Dar al-Bey is almost a second home. In Dar al-Bey, two registers help to establish a working definition of the political class in the countryside in pre-Protectorate Tunisia. The first, Bayan usul madakhil al-dawlah 'an 'amm 1277 ila 'amm 1285, no.2131, a list of government revenues between 1860 and 1869, provides the names of the tax farmers who purchased the right to collect the indirect taxes (mahsulat) on goods and commodities and the fees on exported goods and other government monopolies (lizmahs) that formed about one-sixth of all government revenue.3 The second register, Zimam al-ittifaqat al-jadid, no. 2127, gives the names of all provincial governors or qa'ids (in French, caid) and many deputy-governors (khalifahs) who served between 1244/1828-29 and 1272/1855-56.4 For the period after 1861, researchers can consult issues