of the new powers that Théodore Roustan, hitherto French consul general, had assumed. Roustan had informed the consular community that he had assumed the new title “resident minister” and would serve simultaneously as France’s representative in Tunis and the bey’s foreign minister.41 For Maccio, this was a legal impossibility: Roustan could not represent two countries at once, and he was clearly trying to establish himself as the “absolute master of the country” by undermining the personal authority of the bey and his ministers. Along with consuls from other countries, Maccio vowed to “abstain from responding” until he received further instructions from his home government.42 Although Foreign Minister Mancini offered him little immediate direction, the notes he jotted down suggest that he, too, wondered how it was possible, given that France and Tunisia were two distinct countries, that the “same individual can” represent both “debtor and creditor.”43
The announcement that Roustan was to serve as the “sole intermediary” between the bey and foreign governments took the British government “by surprise” as well.44 Noting the lack of “known rule or precedent” for the French behavior, British Foreign Secretary Granville feared that if a friendly understanding on the question of consular representation were not reached with France, “complications may hereafter arise which it would be better to avoid.”45 Yet, however loudly Granville proclaimed that the French move was unprecedented, surely it could not be lost on him that Roustan had just assumed the same title as that held by British administrators in India’s Princely States. General Menabrea, Italy’s ambassador in London, wasted little time in pointing out such comparisons to the British foreign office, underscoring that the title denoted the “vassalage of the power that received the resident in relation to the one sending it.”46 Perhaps it was this awkward parallel that prevented her majesty’s government from pressing the issue, much to the chagrin of Italian authorities, who cautioned Granville that the
government of the Bey was becoming more powerless [esautorato] each day, such that one could predict the moment, perhaps not very distant, when the French felt compelled to take on the administration of the Regency themselves and so complete, in this way, an annexation if not in name then certainly in fact, like that which took place of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria [sic].47
The British foreign office hardly wanted annexation (though Granville pronounced it preferable to “anarchy”), but its instructions to the British consul in Tunis remained the same despite Italy’s pleas to join it in formal protest: Consul General Reade was to continue dealing with the bey as usual, but when referred by the bey’s government to Roustan, the consul could “communicate with him accordingly.” Consenting to treat Roustan as the bey’s delegate, however, was in no way to “preclude . . . taking any course which they may deem most advisable in case of an infraction of Treaty rights.” To this end, the British foreign office would prefer that the role of beylical foreign minister and French representative not be conjoined in the “same officer.”48
At the Italian consulate, Maccio’s successor, Annibale Raybaudi Massiglia, was dissatisfied by the British solution. Granville’s approach ignored, according to Raybaudi Massiglia, the fact that communications to the consuls from the bey’s government already were written by Roustan, who invoked his “dual role” [doppia qualità] regularly by signing the letters “The French resident and delegate [to the bey] for external affairs.”49 Since the resident minister was also effectively the French consul general, this also violated the principle that all consuls should have equal standing vis-à-vis the bey. The solution France soon offered—to name a figurehead consul general, André Lequeux, to serve alongside Roustan—also was deemed unsatisfactory as long as Roustan retained the dual role of resident of France and beylical representative, for, as Mancini put it, this did nothing to satisfy the “dignity of the other governments.”50 Nonetheless, the Italian daily Il Diritto spun the French appointment of Lequeux as an “incontestable satisfaction” of Italian and British interests and hoped that “good relations” could now be restored between the powers.51
Restoring friendly relations was easier said than done. Consul Raybaudi Massiglia, for his part, still preferred to communicate directly with the bey, particularly when he was frustrated by French management of the protectorate. When the French army entered the capital city of Tunis on 11 October, for instance, Raybaudi Massiglia complained personally to the bey.52 When Roustan subsequently notified all consuls that the occupation of Tunis had military, and no political, objectives, Raybaudi Massiglia refused to sign in receipt of the circular, rejecting Roustan’s signature as “the bey’s delegate for foreign relations.”53 The Consulta suggested a different strategy: acknowledge receipt but respond only to the bey,54 a solution that proved unworkable after the consul received word that “any note addressed directly to His Highness [the bey] would be rejected without a doubt.”55
On the first anniversary of the Bardo Treaty, Raybaudi Massiglia reported on “the path taken by France in Tunisia in the space of a year” and the extent to which it was “diametrically opposed to [France’s] official declarations.” The original treaty, he recalled, had affirmed that the military occupation would be “temporary and circumscribed” and had limited the role of France’s representative to that of an “intermediary [between] the French government and the Tunisian authorities for all affairs common to the two countries.” This treaty, he contended, effectively “no longer exists.” Instead, the French resident had “elevated” himself above the other foreign representatives in Tunisia; the military occupation had been extended from those areas “necessary for the reestablishment of order on the borders and coastline” to all the regency including the capital, and, although the occupation was supposed to have been temporary, “the French government recently decreed the formation of a permanent army.”56
The symbolic dimension of this new regime particularly bothered Raybaudi Massiglia. Following the death of Muhammad al-Sadiq bey in the fall of 1882, he wrote a long dispatch about the many protocol violations that had occurred with regard to Muhammad al-Sadiq’s funeral and the investiture of his successor, Ali: Raybaudi Massiglia had received the summons to the investiture only two hours before it took place; at the event itself, the French resident condescended to present him to the new bey (“the moment was not right to create an incident regarding the abnormal procedure”); the new bey showed little “deference” to the foreign representatives by wearing “humble attire” to receive the consular corps, who were “in grand uniform”; and, finally, after the investiture, the bey accompanied the French resident to his home, an act the consul characterized as an “abdication of prestige and of authority.” Concluding his dispatch, Raybaudi Massiglia wrote that the relationship of the French resident to the bey was now one of “master to slave,” and, as a result, “we will not tarry to see most aspects of local government suppressed.”57
Raybaudi Massiglia’s dispatches were prescient in some ways and exaggerated in others. He rightly ascertained that the French government would seek to reform Tunisia’s internal as well as external affairs, though local government would not, in fact, be abandoned. Yet even if it was in some ways true that the bey had already abdicated a great deal of authority in allowing Roustan to represent him, French authorities still did not have free rein in the protectorate. The Bardo Treaty, which Raybaudi Massiglia had pronounced dead in May 1882, actually formed the basis for Italy’s ongoing influence in Tunisia for many years to come. Indeed, France’s first order of business after forcing the bey to sign the Bardo Treaty and putting down major rebellions in Sfax, Kairouan, and Gabès was not to undermine the bey’s power so much as to end the extraterritorial sovereignty of European governments. Such an endeavor turned out to be much more difficult than French leaders had anticipated.
TWO
Ending Extraterritoriality?
THE FRENCH
