Tunis slap in the face
The Tunis slap ( Italian Schiaffo di Tunisi ) was a journalistic term that was mainly used by the press and historians of Italy since the end of the 19th century to describe the political crisis between the Kingdom of Italy and the French Republic . The conflict over Tunisia was a major reason for Italy joining the anti-French Triple Alliance in 1882 and could only be resolved after the overthrow of the Triple Alliance-friendly Prime Minister Francesco Crispi in 1896.
history
The Italo-Tunisian Treaty
Italy and Tunisia signed a treaty on September 8, 1868, it was to last for 28 years and restricted the influence of the Ottoman Empire on Tunisia, which was still part of the empire de jure. With this agreement, Tunisia guaranteed rights, privileges and immunity, which were granted to the small Italian states before they were unified. The Italians living in Tunisia were allowed to retain their original citizenship, they were given independence from various Tunisian authorities, but could not easily leave Tunisia and could continue to be convicted by the courts of the Beys . The treaty guaranteed Italians freedom of trade and the right to settle in Tunisia for business or pleasure. In the areas of navigation and fishing, too , the Italians were granted the same privileges as the Tunisians. In addition, the Bey was no longer allowed to change customs duties without first consulting the Italian government.
Large amounts of Italian capital had already flowed into Tunis. The Italian company Rubattino had applied for the concession for the Tunis- Goletta railway line in 1880 and competed with a French company.
The French occupation of Tunisia
The main goal of the Italian government under Benedetto Cairoli was the colonization of Tunisia, which the French government also strived for. Neither Cairoli nor his predecessor Agostino Depretis thought much of a military occupation. Instead, they hoped that Britain would oppose the French to prevent the expansion of French influence in North Africa . Britain, on the other hand, did not want a single state - whether France or Italy - to control the Straits of Sicily alone.
France relied on the neutrality of Great Britain, which wanted to prevent Italy from taking control of the sea route over the Suez Canal , and also on the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck trying to divert France's attention from the Alsace-Lorraine issue. In mid-1878 representatives of the major European powers, namely the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, France, Great Britain, Italy and Russia as well as the Ottoman Empire met in Berlin. At this meeting, the Berlin Congress , Great Britain declared its readiness to accept a French takeover of Tunisia in order to be able to take over Cyprus without French interference. This, in turn, was accepted by the Ottomans in order to prevent the great powers from intervening in favor of Russian expansion claims and possible further territorial losses.
In April 1881, 2,000 French soldiers entered Tunisia and occupied the country within three weeks. On May 12, 1881, Bey Muhammad III. al-Husain forced to sign the Bardo Treaty . Italian Prime Minister Benedetto Carioli, who had described himself as pro-French, then resigned.
Tunisian uprisings under Mansour Houch around Kairuan and Sfax a few months later were suppressed. When the victorious French troops returned in June 1881 , xenophobic riots against Italian guest workers ("Vêpres marseillaises" or "chasse aux Italiens") broke out in Marseille .
The Treaty of La Marsa of June 8, 1883, gave France even greater powers in Tunisia's foreign, war and domestic policy. France incorporated the country into its colonial empire and subsequently also represented Tunisia in foreign policy. The Bey had to surrender almost all of its power to the President General .
France friend Benedetto Cairoli fell over the outbreak of the conflict in 1881
France's enemy Francesco Crispi also provoked a trade war
Crispi's successor, Antonio di Rudinì , sought reconciliation with France from 1891
consequences
The great European powers showed different reactions to the French invasion of Tunisia: Great Britain rushed to occupy Egypt , while Germany and Austria-Hungary remained neutral, but Italy accepted into their anti-French defensive alliance in 1882 .
As in Tunis, France ignored Italian claims in Raheita on the Red Sea. The local sultan, who had sold Obock to the French in 1862 and Assab to the Italians in 1870 and 1879 , had signed a treaty with Italy in 1880, according to which his sultanate should be placed under Italian protectorate after his death. After his death in 1884, however, the French occupied the southern half of the sultanate, Italy protested in vain.
Italy's diplomatic relations with France hit rock bottom. According to the Italian General Staff, an invasion of Italy by French troops could not be ruled out, while France's ally Russia was supposed to occupy Sicily.
Instead, Prime Minister Francesco Crispi , who had been ruling since 1887, unleashed an economic war with France when the trade agreement was terminated in 1888 and, for example, stopped. B. the export of wine, fruit and vegetables, whereupon French banks withdrew capital from Italy and the country plunged into a financial crisis.
Settlement of the conflict
After the Treaty of La Marsa, France had already suggested in 1884 that Italy should compensate for the loss of Tunisia by occupying Tripolitania. Instead, Italy initially sought the occupation of Ethiopia, which failed with the defeat at Dogali in 1887. Thereupon France again offered Tripolitania to Italy in 1888, but Crispi also rejected this offer and also sought alliances with Great Britain and Spain against France within the framework of the Mediterranean Entents. The financial consequences of the economic war with France forced him to resign temporarily in 1891 and his successor Antonio Starabba di Rudinì tried to improve relations with France. Such efforts were initially brought to an end when Crispis took over government again in 1892. In France there were again fatal riots between French and Italians, for example in Aigues-Mortes in August 1893 and in Lyon in 1894 .
In Aigues-Mortes , French salt workers attacked Italian colleagues
The gendarmerie could not prevent the massacre of the Italians
The army took the angry Italians under their protection
After another defeat against (supported by France) Ethiopia, Crispi was finally overthrown in 1896 and again succeeded by Rudinì. On September 28, 1896, Italy finally recognized the French protectorate over Tunis. The Franco-Italian understanding guaranteed the rights of the Italians who came under French rule in Tunisia. Up to 93,000 Italian settlers remained in the country under French protectorate. At the beginning of the war in 1914, the number of Italians in Tunisia exceeded the number of French immigrants. A new trade agreement was also signed with France in 1898. In the period that followed, Franco-Italian relations continued to improve.
In the meantime, a new Raheita incident (1898) and, above all, the Anglo- French Sudan Treaty (1899) again led to Italian disappointment. At least parts of the public opinion saw Italian interests violated in a very similar way as by the French occupation of Tunisia. In this treaty, France and Great Britain had delimited their spheres of interest in Africa and at the same time divided the inner-African hinterland of Tripolitania even before Italy could even take possession of Tripolitania itself. But this incident was also quickly settled. Negotiations led to the division of Raheita in 1900 and 1901 and finally to a secret neutrality agreement in 1902, through which Italy effectively broke away from the Triple Alliance and in which France recognized the Italian claim to Tripolitania just as Italy recognized the French claim to Morocco.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hendrik Lodewijk Wesseling: Divide and rule: The division of Africa 1880-1914. Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-515-07543-7 , p. 23ff.
- ^ Philippe Conrad: Le Maghreb sous domination française (1830–1962) , January 2003.
- ↑ a b c d Benedetto Croce : Geschichte Italien 1871-1915 , pages 109ff, 122ff and 165-201. Lambert Schneider Publishing House, Berlin 1928
- ↑ a b c Dietmar Stübler: Italy - 1798 to the present , page 68ff. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1987
- ^ Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - from the beginnings to the present , Volume 2 (The Arabs in the fight against Ottoman despotism and European colonial conquest), page 461. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1975
- Jump up ↑ Bernhard Schwertfeger : The Belgian documents on the prehistory of the World War 1885-1914 , second volume (The Dual Alliance and the Anglo-German Contrast 1897-1904), pages 42ff and 174. Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, Berlin 1925
- ^ The Evening Times (Washington) of November 17, 1898: France and Italy once more on good terms