Italian Tunisians (, or Italians of Tunisia) are Tunisian-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italian descent, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to Tunisia during the Italian diaspora, or Italian-born people in Tunisia. Migration and colonization, particularly during the 19th century, led to significant numbers of Italians settling in Tunisia.El Houssi L. 'Italians in Tunisia: between regional organisation, cultural adaptation and political division, 1860s-1940'. European Review Of History. 2012;19(1):163-181, p.164.
Italian presence in Tunisia The presence of Italian peoples in Tunisia began in the first half of the 19th century that its economic and social weight became critical in many fields of the social life of the country.Italians in Tunisia and French Maghreb
The Republic of Genoa owned the island of Tabarka near Biserta, where the Genoese family Lomellini, who had purchased the grant of the coral fishing from the Ottoman Turks, maintained a garrison from 1540 to 1742. Here may still be seen the ruins of a stronghold, a church and some Genoese buildings. At Tabarka the ruins consist of a pit once used as a church and some fragments of walls which belonged to Christian buildings.
Italian Jews from Livorno created the first foreign community in Tunisia, after the 16th century. In those centuries, the Italian language became the lingua franca in the field of the commerce in the Maghreb.
The first Italians in Tunisia at the beginning of the 19th century were mainly traders and professionals in search of new opportunities, coming from Liguria and the other regions of northern Italy. In those years even a great number of Italian political exiles (related to Giuseppe Mazzini and the Carbonari organizations) were forced into expatriation in Tunisia, in order to escape the political oppression enacted by the preunitary States of the Italian peninsula. One of them was Giuseppe Garibaldi, in 1834 and 1849.
In a move that foreshadowed the Triple alliance, Italian colonial interests in Tunisia were actually encouraged by the Germans and Austrians in the late 19th century to offset French interests in the region and to retain a perceived balance of power in Europe. The Austrians also had an interest in diverting Italy's attention away from the Trentino."A History of the Italian People" by Giuliano Procacci
At the end of the 19th century, Tunisia received the immigration of tens of thousands of Italians, mainly from Sicily and also Sardinia.El Houssi L. 'Italians in Tunisia: between regional organisation, cultural adaptation and political division, 1860s-1940'. European Review Of History. 2012;19(1):163-181. As a consequence, in the first years of the 20th century there were more than 100,000 Italian residents in Tunisia.Alberti Russell, Janice. The Italian Community in Tunisia, 1861-1961: a viable minority. pags. 34-37 They concentrated not only in Tunis, Biserta, La Goulette, and Sfax, but even in small cities like Zaghouan, Bouficha, Kelibia, and Ferryville.
In those years, the Italian community was the main European community in the French Protectorate: Sicilians made up 72.5% of the community's population, while 16.3% were from central Italy (mainly Tuscan Jews), 3.8% were Sardinians and 2.5% from northern Italy (mainly from Veneto and Emilia).Bonura, Francesco. Gli Italiani in Tunisia ed il problema della naturalizzazione. pag. 59
The small city of La Goulette (called La Goletta by the Italian Tunisians) was practically developed by Italian immigrants in the 19th century, who constituted nearly half the population until the 1950s (the international actress Claudia Cardinale was born there in 1938).
Year Muslim Tunisians Jewish Tunisians French Italian Tunisians Maltese Total19217781,5407722,449 (40,8%)3815,99719261,9982,0741,2642,921 (33,8%)2998,65319312,2748432,2333,476 (37,5%)3329,26019362,3431,6682,7133,801 (35,0%)26510,862Census (1921 to 1936) of La Goletta. From: Paul Sebag, Tunis. Histoire d'une ville, ed. L'Harmattan, Parigi 1998
The presence of the Italians was fundamental in the process of cultural modernization of the country with the creation of various schools and institutes of culture, with the foundation of newspapers and reviews in Italian language and with the construction of hospitals, roads and small manufacturing industries, supported by Italian financial institutions.
The British Encyclopedia states that "...after 1862, however, the kingdom of Italy began to take a deep interest in the future of Tunisia. When the country went bankrupt in 1869, a triple control was established over Tunisian finances, with British, French and Italian controllers.' In 1880 the Italians bought the British railway from Tunis to Goletta. This and other actions excited the French to act on the secret understanding effected with the British foreign minister at the Berlin Congress. In 1881 a French force crossed the Algerian frontier under pretext of chastising the independent Khmir tribes on the north-east of the regency, and, quickly dropping the mask, advanced on the capital and compelled the Bey to accept the French protectorate. The actual conquest of the country was not effected without a serious struggle with the existing Muslim population, especially at Sfax; but all Tunisia was brought completely under French jurisdiction and administration, supported by military posts at every important point. In 1883 the new situation under the French protectorate was recognized by the British government withdrawing its consular jurisdiction in favour of the French courts, and in 1885 it ceased to be represented by a diplomatic official. The other powers followed suit, except Italy, which did not recognize the full consequences of the French protectorate until 1896..."
On 30 September 1896, Italy and France signed a treaty whereby Italy virtually recognised Tunisia as a French dependency.Iliams, Dreyfus, Diplomatists and the Dual Alliance, p. 115
France and the Peril Italien
The French conquest of Tunisia in 1881, the so-called Schiaffo di Tunisi also called the Slap of Tunis, created many problems to the Tunisian Italians, who were seen as Le Peril Italien (the Italian danger) by the French colonial rulers.
In Tunisian cities (like Tunis, Biserta and La Goulette) there were highly populated quarters called “Little Sicily” or “Little Calabria”. Italian schools, religious institutions, orphanages and hospitals were opened. The prevailing Italian presence in Tunisia, at both the popular and entrepreneurial level, was such that France set in motion with its experienced diplomacy and its sound entrepreneurial sense the process which led to the "Treaty of Bardo" and a few years later the Conventions of La Marsa, which rendered Tunisia a Protectorate of France in 1881.
In this way France began its policy of economic and cultural expansion in Tunisia, opening free schools, spreading the French language and allowing, on request, French citizenship to foreign residents. Some Sicilians become French: in the 1926 Census there were 30,000 French "of foreign language" in Tunisia.Bonura, Francesco. Gli Italiani in Tunisia ed il problema della naturalizzazione. pag. 93 For example, attending free French schools, Mario Scalesi, the son of poor Sicilian emigrants, became a French speaker and in French wrote Les poèmes d’un maudit ("The poems of one damned") and was thus the first francophone poet from the Maghreb.
Even under the Protectorate the emigration of Italian workers to Tunisia continued unabated. Scalesi pinpointed that in 1910 there were 105,000 Italians in Tunisia, as against 35,000 Frenchmen, but there were only 1,167 holders of land among the former, with an aggregate of 83,000 hectares, whereas the Frenchmen include 2,395 landowners who had grabbed 700,000 hectares in the colony. A French decree of 1919 made the acquisition of real estate property practically prohibitive to the Tunisian ItaliansSmeaton Munro, Ion. Through Fascism to World Power: A History of the Revolution in Italy. pag 221 and this French attitude toward the Italians paved the way for the Mussolini's complaints in the 1920s and 1930s.
While such restrictions were imposed, historian Giuliano Fleri states that France still sought to nationalize the Italians in Tunisia as Frenchman. A decree from 1921 by the French president addressed "French nationality in the Regency of Tunis." Colonial officials and the new resident general, Lucien Saint, supported it. The decree stated that anyone born in Tunisia would receive French nationality, as long as at least one parent was also born there. This marked a significant step in integrating Tunisia into the French empire. Protectorate officials recognized that the decree effectively ended Tunisia's status as foreign land according to French law. The law mainly targeted the Italian community in Tunisia. However, it could not be enforced against Italian nationals initially: Rome quickly invoked the 1896 Franco-Italian agreements that defined the legal status of Italian migrants there. To bypass these limitations, the French issued a new naturalization decree in 1923 that more directly addressed the Italian population. This decree included provisions that were quite lenient for the time. Europeans needed only three years of residence, whether in Tunisia or anywhere in French territory, to qualify. The application process had no fees. Documentary requirements were reduced to the essentials. Those who gained French nationality through this process were also exempt from military service.
With the rise of Benito Mussolini, the contrasts between Rome and Paris were sharpened also because the Italians of Tunisia showed themselves to be very sensitive to the fascist propaganda and many of them joined in compact form the nationalistic ideals of the Fascism of the "Duce".
Indeed, the Tunisian Italians showed "to be defiantly nationalistic and robustly resistant to amalgamation"Foerster, Robert. The Italian Emigration of Our Times. pags. 221-222 and many of them refusedoften vehementlyto be naturalized by the French authorities.
Italian fascist pressure
The fact that the French government promoted actively the French citizenship between the Italians in Tunisia was one of the main reasons of the direct intervention of Mussolini in the Tunisian problems. From 1910 to 1926, the Italians were reduced by this French policy of assimilation from 105,000 to fewer than 90,000.
In the 1926 census of the Tunisian colony, there were 173,281 Europeans, of which 89,216 were Italians, 71,020 French and 8,396 Maltese.Moustapha Kraiem. Le fascisme et les italiens de Tunisie, 1918-1939 pag. 57 Indeed, this was a relative majority that prompted Laura Davi (in his Memoires italiennes en Tunisie of 1936) to write that "La Tunisia è una colonia italiana amministrata da funzionari francesi" (Tunisia is an Italian colony administered by French managers).
Initially, during the 1920s, fascists promoted only the defense of the national and social rights of the Italians of Tunisia against potential assimilation by France.Priestley, Herbert. France Overseas: Study of Modern Imperialism. p. 192 Mussolini opened some financial institutions and Italian banks (like the Banca siciliana) and some Italian newspapers (like L'Unione), but even Italian hospitals, teachers, cinemas, schools (primary and secondary) and health assistance organizations.
The March of Times (a documentary from Time magazine) in 1939 stated that