Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-f97m6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-16T21:32:06.613Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Local Legitimacy and Tax Policy: Qaids as Part of a Composite State in Colonial Tunisia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2021

Antoine Perrier Open the ORCID record for Antoine Perrier [Opens in a new window]
Antoine Perrier*
Affiliation:
Aix Marseille University, CNRS, IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence, France
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: antoine.perrier@sciencespo.fr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The colonial history of Tunisia has long been dictated by colonial sources that made the qaid (an official in charge of fiscal attributions), from the viewpoint of the capital city, a local notable and often a prevaricator. This study proposes to reconsider the relationship between government and regional power in the colonial context by drawing on the recent work of Ottoman studies about provincial elites. The article studies the fiscal reforms of the interwar period in a cereal-growing region of Tunisia, relying on sources in Arabic produced by the qaids, namely the administrative correspondence between local authorities, the prime minister, and colonial controllers. This article describes the role of qaids in the negotiation between national law and local specificities and finally highlights the role of decentralization and a local way of thinking about the state in the 1930s. It contributes to colonial history and the history of taxation by highlighting the territorial fractures in North Africa and the agency of local actors under the protectorate.

Keywords

colonialismfiscal reformqaidsregional administrationtaxationTunisia

Information

Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 655 - 671
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

A correction has been made to this article since its initial publication. For details, see doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743822000514

References

1 Asma Moalla, The Regency of Tunis and the Ottoman Porte, 1777–1814: Army and Government of a North-Africa Ottoman Eyalet at the End of the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004).

2 Mongi Smida, Khereddine, ministre réformateur. 1873–1877 (Tunis: Maison tunisienne de l’édition, 1970); Gérard S. Van Krieken, Khayr al-Din et la Tunisie (1850–1881) (Leiden: Brill, 1976).

3 Haim Gerber, State and Society in the Ottoman Empire (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 40.

4 Elisabeth Mouilleau, Fonctionnaires de la République et artisans de l'Empire. Le cas des Contrôleurs civils en Tunisie (1881–1956) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000).

5 Mary D. Lewis, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013).

6 Elliott, John H., “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past & Present 137, no. 1 (1992): 48–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Pedro Cardim et al., eds., Polycentric Monarchies: How Did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain a Global Hegemony? (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2013).

8 Carminati, Lucia and Gamal-Eldin, Mohamed, “Decentering Egyptian Historiography: Provincializing Geographies, Methodologies, and Sources,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 53, no. 1 (2021): 107–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Albert Hourani, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, ed. William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 41–68.

10 Ahmed Kassab, L’évolution de la vie rurale dans les régions de la Moyenne Medjerda et de Béja-Mateur (Tunis: Université de Tunis, 1979).

11 Emile Violard, La Tunisie du Nord. Les contrôles civils de Souk El Arba, Béja, Tunis, Bizerte et Grombalia (Tunis: Imprimerie Moderne, 1906); Protectorat français, Direction générale de l'agriculture, L'agriculture en Tunisie (Bourg, France: De Victor Berthod, 1931).

12 See rural cases cited by Ali Mahjoubi, Les origines du mouvement national en Tunisie (Tunis: Université de Tunis, 1982).

13 Douigi, Noureddine, “La politique fiscale du protectorat français en Tunisie (1884–1939),” Revue d'histoire maghrébine 23, no. 81–82 (1996): 183–200Google Scholar.

14 Charles-André Julien, L'Afrique du Nord en marche, Algérie-Tunisie-Maroc, 1880–1952 (Paris: Omnibus, 2002); Kenneth Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

15 M'hamed Oualdi, A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).

16 Abdallah Laroui, Les origines sociales et culturelles du nationalisme marocain (1830–1912) (Paris: Maspero, 1977); Germain Ayache, Études d'histoire marocaine (Rabat: Société marocaine des éditeurs réunis, 1979).

17 See the literature review in Muhammad al-‘Ayadi, “Al-Madrasa al-Tarikhiyya al-Maghribiyya al-Haditha al-Mujtam‘a: Ishkaliyyat wa-l-Mafahim,” in Dirasat fi al-Mujtama’‘wa-l-Tarīih wa-l-Din (Casablanca: Fondation du Roi Abdulaziz al Saud, 2014).

18 Salim Labyad, Mujtamaʿ al-Qabila : al-Bināa al-Ijtimaʿi wa Tahawwulatuhu fi Tunis: Dirasa fi Qabilat ʿAkara (Tunis: al-Matba‘a al-Magharibiyya li-l-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Ishhar, 2006); Muhammad al-Hamas, al-Isti‘mar al-Faransi wa Qaba’il al-Wasat wa-l-Janub bi-l-Bilad al-Tunsiyya (1881–1950) (Tunis : Markaz al-Nashr al-Jami‘i, 2008); al-Tayyib al-Nafati, Mujtamaʿ al-Watan al-Qabali Zaman al-Istiʿmar al-Faransi: Dirasa fi Waqiʿ Fuqaraʾ al-Aryaf 1881–1956 (Tunis: University of Tunis, 2012).

19 Salwa Hwidi, “Dirasa li-Fi'at al-Qiyad ‘al-Thanwiyyīn’ min Khilal Namudhaj al-Qiyad Muḥammad b. Nasr b. Maluka,” in Le personnel de l’État dans la Tunisie moderne et contemporaine, ed. Hassine-Raouf Hamza, Ali Noureddine, Adel Ben Youssef, and Thouraya Belkahia Karoui (Tunis: Amal éditions, 2011).

20 Abdelhamid Hénia, Le Grid, ses rapports avec le beylik de Tunis (1676–1840) (Tunis: Université de Tunis, 1980).

21 M'hamed Oualdi, Esclaves et maîtres: Les mamelouks au service des beys de Tunis du XVIIe siècle aux années 1880 (Paris: Sorbonne, 2011).

22 Jean Ganiage, Les origines du protectorat français en Tunisie (1861–1881) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), 133.

23 “Status of the ‘Ummal,” Archives Nationales de Tunisie (hereafter ANT), H, 55.

24 Oualdi, Esclaves et maîtres, 325–50.

25 Abdelhamid Hénia, ed., Être notable au Maghreb: Dynamique des configurations notabiliaires (Tunis: Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain, 2006), 16.

26 Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997); Arnold Green, The Tunisian Ulama: 1873–1915; Social Structure and Response to Ideological Currents (Leiden: Brill, 1978); Mahjoubi, Origines, 92; ‘Adnan al-Mansar, Istratijiyya al-Haymana, al-Imaya al-Faransiyya wa Mu'assasat al-Dawla al-Tunisiyya (Sousse, Tunisia: Faculté de lettres et de Sciences humaines de Sousse, 2003), 367.

27 Al-Hamas, al-Isti‘mar al-Faransi, 286.

28 Chater, Khalifa, “Changements politiques et exclusion lors de la décolonisation: le cas du Makhzen en Tunisie (1954–1959),” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 69, no. 2 (2004): 63–75Google Scholar.

29 Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya: 1830–1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).

30 See Gelvin, James L., “The ‘Politics of Notables’ Forty Years After,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 40, no. 1 (2006): 19–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus; 1700–1900 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 2.

32 I. Metin Kunt, The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government; 1550–1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 77.

33 Linda T. Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire; 1560–1660 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 281.

34 John K. Bragg, Ottoman Notables and Participatory Politics: Tanzimat Reform in Tokaet; 1839–1876 (London: Routledge, 2014), 5.

35 Dina Rizk Khoury, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul; 1540–1834 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 10.

36 Ehud R. Toledano, “The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700–1900): A Framework for Research,” in Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from Within, ed. Ilan Pappé and Moshe Maoz (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 154.

37 Ali Yaycioglu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016).

38 Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, 19.

39 “Did the benevolent tanẓīmāt reforms (Tanẓīmāt-I ḥayriye) turn the Ottoman Empire into a colonial empire? Is it time to ‘mainstream’ the Ottoman Empire and integrate I into academic debates on imperialism and colonialism elsewhere in the world, or would we abandon the specificities of the historical Ottoman context?” Jens Hanssen, Thomas Philipp, and Stefan Weber, eds., The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire (Würzburg, Germany: Ergon Verlag, 2002), 6.

40 According to Randi Deguilhem, “True localism expresses the degree of self-sufficiency, self-determination and solidarity in a society, not just the origins of its rulers or the degree to which external control is successfully resisted”; “Centralized Authority and Local Decisional Power,” in Hanssen et al., Empire in the City, 219.

41 Jens Hanssen, “Practices of Integration: Center-Periphery Relations in the Ottoman Empire,” in Hanssen et al., Empire in the City, 56.

42 Marc Aymes, “Affaires courantes pour marcheurs d'empire: Le métier d'administrateur dans les provinces ottomanes au XIXe siècle,” Genèses 72, no. 3 (2008): 4–25.

43 For the bedouins, see Büssow, Johann, Franz, Kurt, and Leder, Stefan, “The Arab East and the Bedouin Component in Modern History: Emerging Perspectives on the Arid Lands as a Social Space,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58, no. 1–2 (2015): 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Bragg, Ottoman Notables, 6.

45 Gerber, State and Society.

46 Marc Aymes, A Provincial History of the Ottoman Empire: Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2014).

47 Büssow, Johann, “Street Politics in Damascus: Kinship and Other Social Categories as Bases of Political Action; 1830–1841,” History of the Family 16, no. 2 (2011): 108–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Ben-Bassat, Yuval, “Bedouin Petitions from Late Ottoman Palestine: Evaluating the Effects of Sedentarization,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58, no. 1–2 (2015): 135–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Chalcraft, John, “Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt on the Eve of Colonial Rule,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37, no. 3 (2005): 303–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 For these details, see Arthur Girault, Principes de colonisation et de législation coloniale. La Tunisie et le Maroc (Paris: Sirey, 1936); and Antoine Perrier, “La liberté des protégés: souverains, ministres et serviteurs des monarchies marocaine et tunisienne sous protectorat français (1881–1956)” (PhD diss., Paris Institute of Political Studies, 2019), 292.

51 Colette Establet, Être caïd dans l'Algérie coloniale (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1991).

52 T. Sato, “ʿUshr,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 2010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004206106_eifo_COM_1309.

53 Gerber, State and Society, 48.

54 Ganiage, Les origines du protectorat, 99.

55 Van Krieken, Khayr al-Din, 200.

56 Note from the secretary general to the director of finance, ANT, E, 23/1, 7 August 1901.

57 Ibid.

58 Circular of the prime minister to the qaids, ANT, E, 23/1, 6 March 1909.

59 Circular of the resident general to civil controllers, ANT, E, 23/1, 3 April 1901.

60 Letter from the qaid of Teboursouk to the director of finance, ANT, E, 23/1, 17 May 1909.

61 Makram Abbes, Islam et politique à l’âge classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009). For an example of this literature in North Africa, see Terem, Etty, “Navigating Modernity: Lessons in Government and Statecraft in Precolonial Morocco,” Mediterranean Studies 25, no. 1 (2017): 76–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Büssow, “Street Politics in Damascus,” 115.

63 Al-Hamas, al-Isti‘mar al-Faransi, 267.

64 Poncet, Jean, “La Crise des années 30 et ses répercussions sur la colonisation française en Tunisie,” Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer 63, no. 232–233 (1976) : 622–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Poncet, “Crise des années 30,” 624.

66 Undated secret intelligence note, ANT, E, 23/8.

67 Letter from the qaid of Béja to the prime minister, ANT, E, 23/8, 16 January 1936.

68 The word usually refers to the bedouin steppe, but in this context it is definitely the countryside.

69 Mansar, Adnan, “Pouvoir caïdal et régime colonial en Tunisie dans l'entre-deux-guerres: le cas Zouari,” Rawafid 5 (1999–2000): 41–76Google Scholar.

70 Marcelin Beaussier, Dictionnaire pratique arabe-français (Algiers, 1887), 473. This dictionary does not mention mushab.

71 Claude Cahen considered the comparison between iqṭā‘ and feudalism, despite strong similarities, irrelevant. “L’évolution de l'iqtâ‘ du IXe au XIIIe siècle: contribution à une histoire comparée des sociétés médiévales,” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 8, no. 1 (1953): 25–52.

72 Nicolas Michel, L’Égypte des villages autour du 16ème siècle (Paris: Peeters, 2018), 105.

73 Robert Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives: 1805–1879; From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), 19.

74 Perrier, “La liberté des protégés,” 292.

75 La Tunisie Martyre, ses revendications (Paris: Jouve and Cie, 1920).

76 Mahjoubi, Origines, 542.

77 Lahmar, Mouldi, ‘“La ‘révolte du pain’ dans la campagne tunisienne. Notables, ouvriers et Fellahs,” Esprit 100, no. 4 (1985): 9–19Google Scholar.

78 Perrier, “La liberté des protégés,” 306.

79 The Welfare Society was a kind of mutual pension fund for Tunisian civil servants. ANT, A, 201/67, 25 January 1937.

80 Mustapha Tlili, “Ahmed Ben Youssef des Hamâma: Itinéraire d'un notable de milieu tribal au XIXe siècle,” in Hénia, Être notable, 220–27.

81 Letter from the qaid of the Hammama to the prime minister, Centre des archives diplomatiques de Nantes (hereafter CADN), 1/TU/1V/2498, 23 December 1937.

82 Letter from the qaid of Béja to the prime minister, ANT, E, 3/24, 8 January 1939.

83 Letter from the qaid of Kairouan to the prime minister, CADN, 1/TU/AV/2493/3, 17 January 1938.

84 Ibid.

85 Letter from the qaid of the Hammama to the prime minister, ANT, A, 82/4, 7 November 1941.

86 Letter from the qaid of Kairouan to the prime minister, CADN, 1/TU/AV/2493/3, 17 January 1938.

87 For the Moroccan case, see Nicolas Michel, Une économie de subsistances. Le Maroc précolonial (Cairo: IFAO, 1997).

88 Administrative note, CADN, 1/TU/1V/2553, 1936.

89 Comparison of note about the remuneration of religious dignitaries (CADN, 1TU/1V/2012, c. 1937) with table of salaries of public works management auxiliaries (CADN, 1/TU/2V/7561, c. 1942).

90 Felicitas Opwis, Maṣlaḥa and the Purpose of the Law: Islamic Discourse on Legal Change from the 4th/10th to 8th/14th century (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

91 Brown, Nathan “Peasants and Notables in Egyptian Politics,” Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 2 (1990): 145–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 James Whidden, Monarchy and Modernity in Egypt: Politics, Islam and Neo-Colonialism between the Wars (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013).

93 Leon C. Brown, ed., Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint of the Balkans and the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Oualdi, A Slave between Empires.