# Slap of Tunis

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1881 Italian-French political crisis

The **Slap of Tunis** (*Schiaffo di Tunisi* in [Italian](/source/Italian_language)), was an expression used by the Italian press and historiographers from the end of the 19th century to describe a political crisis between the [Kingdom of Italy](/source/Kingdom_of_Italy) and the [French Third Republic](/source/French_Third_Republic) following the [French conquest of Tunisia](/source/French_conquest_of_Tunisia). In 1881, the French government forcefully established a [protectorate over Tunisia](/source/French_protectorate_of_Tunisia), which already was a colonial objective of the Kingdom of Italy.

Meanwhile look: there's Tunis! … And the French are there, who have taken it by surprise! And tomorrow we could have them here, in our house, do you understand?

— [Luigi Pirandello](/source/Luigi_Pirandello), *I vecchi e i giovani*, 1913

## Background

See also: [Italian Tunisians](/source/Italian_Tunisians) and [History of Tunisia](/source/History_of_Tunisia)

### The Italo-Tunisian Treaty of 1868

Tunisia had strategic importance for the European powers when it came to ownership and controlling the flow of trade across the [Straits of Sicily](/source/Straits_of_Sicily). For that reason, [Britain](/source/United_Kingdom_of_Great_Britain_and_Ireland) would support the French claim to the protectorate, denying Italy the opportunity to develop a stranglehold over shipping routes going through Tunisia and Sicily. Italians had a long history in Tunisia, tracing back to the 16th century. The Italian language was a [lingua franca](/source/Lingua_franca) among merchants, due partially to the existing Italian-Jewish merchant community.

Italy had close relations with the [Bey of Tunis](/source/Bey_of_Tunis), receiving its own [capitulation](/source/Capitulation_(treaty)) in 1868 ([it](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trattato_della_Goletta)), giving it [most favored nation](/source/Most_favored_nation) status. The international accord granted Italians in Tunisia privileges already conceded to several Italian states pre-unification. Civil equality granted Italians freedom of commerce and extraterritoriality privileges for their factories. In fishing and navigation matters, they benefited from the same treatment as Tunisians. Moreover, the bey couldn't modify [tariffs](/source/Tariff) without preemptively consulting the Italian government.[1]

### French occupation

Benedetto Cairoli, the prime minister who suffered the "slap of Tunis" and had to resign from his position

The first foreign policy objective of the [second government](/source/Second_Cairoli_government) led by [Benedetto Cairoli](/source/Benedetto_Cairoli) was the colonisation of [Tunisia](/source/Beylik_of_Tunis), to which both France and Italy aspired. Cairoli, like [Agostino Depretis](/source/Agostino_Depretis) before him, never considered proceeding to occupation, being generally hostile towards a [militarist](/source/Militarism) policy.[2] However, they relied on a possible British opposition to an enlargement of the French sphere of influence in North Africa (while, if anything, London was hostile about a single country controlling the whole [Strait of Sicily](/source/Strait_of_Sicily)).[3]

At the beginning of 1881, France decided to militarily intervene in Tunisia. The motivations of this action were summarised by [Jules Ferry](/source/Jules_Ferry), who sustained that the Italians wouldn't have opposed it because some weeks before France had consented to a renewal of the Italo-French trade treaty, Italy was still paying the 600-million-[lire](/source/Italian_Lira) debt contracted with [France](/source/French_Third_Republic) and primarily it was Italy that was politically isolated despite its tentatives towards Berlin and Vienna. Ferry confirmed that it was [Otto von Bismarck](/source/Otto_von_Bismarck) to invite Paris to act in Tunisia precising that, in case of action, Germany wouldn't have raised objections.[4] While in Italy there was a debate about the reliability of the news about a possible French action in Tunisia, a twenty-thousand-men expeditionary corp was preparing in [Toulon](/source/Toulon). On 3 May a French contingent of two thousand men landed in [Bizerte](/source/Bizerte), followed on 11 May by the rest of the forces.[5] The episode gave an ulterior confirmation of the Italian political isolation, and rekindled the polemics that had followed the [Congress of Berlin](/source/Congress_of_Berlin) three years before. The events, in effect, demonstrated the unrealistic nature of the foreign policy of Cairoli and of Depretis, the impossibility of an alliance with France and the necessity of a rapprochement with Berlin and with Vienna, even if *obtorto collo*.

However, such an inversion of the foreign policy of the last decade, couldn't be led by the same men, and Cairoli resigned from office on 29 May 1881, thus avoiding that the Camera[*[clarification needed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify)*] would openly distrust him; since then he de facto disappeared from the political scene.

### Installation of the protectorate

Tunisia, located between [Algeria](/source/French_Algeria) to the west, a French colony since 1830, and [Ottoman Cyrenaica](/source/Ottoman_Cyrenaica) and [Tripolitania](/source/Ottoman_Tripolitania) to the south-east, was then both a French and an Italian strategical objective. The [bey](/source/Bey)'s weakness, the intrigues of the ministers, like [Mustapha Khaznadar](/source/Mustapha_Khaznadar) and [Mustapha Ben Ismaïl](/source/Mustapha_Ben_Isma%C3%AFl), constant pressure from European [consuls](/source/Consul_(representative)), the bankruptcy of the state, become hostage of the creditors despite the effort of the reformer [Hayreddin Pasha](/source/Hayreddin_Pasha), opened doors to French occupation (hoped by German chancellor [Otto von Bismarck](/source/Otto_von_Bismarck) to attract French attentions on the Mediterranean, and distract them from the Franco-German border).[6]

On 12 May 1881, the [Bardo Treaty](/source/Bardo_Treaty) was signed under the reign of [Sadok Bey](/source/Sadok_Bey): with it the Tunisian state deprived itself of the active legation right, assigning to «French diplomatic and consular agents in foreign countries […] Tunisian protection and interests». The bey, in his turn, couldn't conclude any international act without informing France and obtaining an agreement first. But article 6 of the decree of 9 June allowed him to take part in the conclusion of international treaties.

Two years later, the [conventions of La Marsa](/source/Conventions_of_La_Marsa), signed on 5 June 1883, emptied the treaty of its content and ended the [sovereignty](/source/Sovereignty) of Tunisia, forcing the bey to «proceed to administrative, judiciary and financial reforms that the French government will retain usefully»[7] Some decisions couldn't be taken without receiving the approval of the French general resident in Tunisia and of the French government general secretary. In the end, Europeans and Tunisians were equally represented (53 members for each community) in the Grand Council, a consultative assembly elected by [universal suffrage](/source/Universal_suffrage) with a double-turn system.

## Consequences

The European powers reacted differently depending on their interests: the United Kingdom hurried to occupy [Egypt](/source/Khedivate_of_Egypt), while Germany and [Austria-Hungary](/source/Austria-Hungary) didn't express dissent about the French behaviour.

In the twenty years following the French protectorate's creation in 1881, Tunisia's Italian population grew from roughly 10,000 to over 71,000, with Sicilians making up more than 70 percent of that community. Italian-Tunisian society thus grew at an ambiguous crossroads, where regional migration patterns overlapped with colonial designs. [8] The Italian immigrants in Tunisia would have protested and caused serious difficulties for France. However, little at a time, the problem was solved and the immigrants could later opt for French nationality and benefit from the same advantages as French colonists. Italo-French relation dangerously fractured. Among the hypotheses weighed by the Italian military staff, a possible invasion of the [Italian Peninsula](/source/Italian_Peninsula) by French troops was not excluded.[9]

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** ["L"](https://web.archive.org/web/20080308235419/http://profburp.free.fr/vrac/capitulations.htm). Archived from [the original](http://profburp.free.fr/vrac/capitulations.htm) on 8 March 2008. Retrieved 18 December 2007.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** In August and again in October 1876 Austro-Hungarian minister [Gyula Andrássy](/source/Gyula_Andr%C3%A1ssy) suggested to the Italian ambassador [Carlo Felice Nicolis, conte di Robilant](/source/Carlo_Felice_Nicolis%2C_conte_di_Robilant) that Italy could have occupied Tunis, but Robilant rejected the invitation, and received comfort, along this line, by his Foreign Affairs minister: William L. Langer, *The European Powers and the French Occupation of Tunis, 1878–1881, I*, The American Historical Review, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Oct. 1925), p. 60.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** [René Albrecht-Carrié](/source/Ren%C3%A9_Albrecht-Carri%C3%A9), "Storia Diplomatica d'Europa 1815–1968", Editori Laterza, Bari-Roma, 1978, pp. 209–210.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** Antonello Battaglia, *I rapporti italo-francesi e le linee d'invasione transalpina (1859–1882)*, Nuova Cultura, Roma, 2013, pp. 41–42.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** Antonello Battaglia, *I rapporti italo-francesi e le linee d'invasione transalpina (1859–1882)*, Nuova Cultura, Roma, 2013, p. 43.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** Antonello Battaglia, *I rapporti italo-francesi e le linee d'invasione transalpina (1859–1882)*, Nuova Cultura, Roma, 2013, p. 36.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-7)** Charles-André Julien, *L'Afrique du Nord en marche*, pagg. 48 e 52.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-8)** Fleri, Giuliano Beniamino (1 March 2026). ["Nations Behind Transnationalism: State Power and the Allegiances of Italian-Tunisians, 1920s–1940s"](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/739508). *The Journal of Modern History*. **98** (1): 152–153. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1086/739508](https://doi.org/10.1086%2F739508). [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [0022-2801](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0022-2801).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-9)** Antonello Battaglia, *I rapporti italo-francesi e le linee d'invasione transalpina (1859–1882)*, Nuova Cultura, Roma, 2013, pp. 45–46.

## See also

- [Benedetto Cairoli](/source/Benedetto_Cairoli)

- [Conventions of La Marsa](/source/Conventions_of_La_Marsa)

- [Italian Colonial Empire](/source/Italian_Colonial_Empire)

- [Protectorate](/source/Protectorate)

- [Tunisia](/source/Tunisia)

- [Bardo Treaty](/source/Bardo_Treaty)

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Slap of Tunis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slap_of_Tunis) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slap_of_Tunis?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.