Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 by Mary Dewhurst Lewis (review)

Lewis’ book is a thorough and creative analysis of the notion of sovereignty and its social practices in a colonized, legally pluralistic state. It aims at renewing our historical, social and legal approaches of colonial empires. In discussion with Benton’s researches, this study provides a fascinating narrative of how the escalation of both diplomatic and legal conflicts and their resolution constantly reshapes society and politics.¹ Moreover, its methodology is remarkably innovative. Not only does Lewis align herself with the “new imperial history” by a providing historical context for a colonized land within a colonial empire; she also uncovers the connections between private legal conflicts and diplomatic issues in a broad political context—what she calls “geographies of powers,” in which “imperial powers and neighboring territories” are involved in an ongoing competition (5).

By building—in the most elegant way—bridges between these different scales of analysis, Lewis succeeds in demonstrating that local sovereignties should not always be seen as an “organized hypocrisy.”² In an imperial and legally pluralistic setting, colonial administrators (such as the French in Tunisia) could either weaken a local sovereign to the extent necessary to maintain him as a mere façade or reinforce his local authority enough to serve as a bulwark against the incursion of rival imperial powers. Indeed, France did not annex Tunisia after its conquest in 1881; such a move would have been too bold. Great Britain, Italy, and other European powers would have strenuously objected, since France had begun the process of establishing total control of neighboring Algeria in 1830. British and Italian diplomats insisted on keeping economic and legal privileges for their citizens in Tunisia. The outcome of several diplomatic compromises forced the French colonial administrators to negotiate carefully the extent of their authority over both the Europeans and the natives living in Tunisia.

Lewis’ account of the French administration’s response to these challenges brings new insight to the evolution of a consistent colonial policy in Tunisia, challenging both the colonial and the nationalistic narratives of this era. In the first strategic stage, facing the claims of European citizens as well as local Muslims and Jews protected by European states, the French rulers sought to reduce the status of Europeans, Muslims, and Jews in Tunisia to two main legal spheres and two main citizenships—Tunisian and French. Thus, even before the rise of nationalism in Tunisia by the 1920s, the French administration helped to create a local nationality and a hierarchy of justices. In the second stage, as the “indirect” form of colonial rule became a “much more invasive form of colonial governance,” and as nationalism spread among the colonized population, the colonizers started to promote the idea of a shared sovereignty between the French and Tunisians. The rejection of this measure by Tunisian nationalists led to the struggle for independence.

By following these strategies, Lewis shows that military conquests do not put an end to imperial rivalries; they only trigger a process of negotiation and compromise taking “into account both interimperial rivalry and intracolonial exchange” (167). Lewis raises crucial questions that have yet to be answered: Did the most efficient opposition to the colonial policy come from the nationalists, or was it the result of actions taken by colonized Tunisians in various social spaces, from courts to cemeteries? To what extent did Westerners lose/retain their legal and economic privileges during and after the colonial period?