Africa
Highlights - Essential Info - Itineraries - History
Tunisia has witnessed over the ages a great sweep of history, having been home to some of the Mediterranean’s greatest empires. The name that looms largest is Carthage, the prosperous Phoenician trading post that emerged to dominate the western Mediterranean in the 6th Century BC. Originating in Tyre (in modern Lebanon) the Phoenicians set up trading posts all along the Tunisian coastline, but it was Carthage, located just north of modern day Tunis and founded by Queen Elissa (Dido), which grew into the capital of one of the most extensive commercial empires in history. Its success resulted in conflict however and after multiple wars over the centuries against the Greeks and the Romans (involving the Carthaginian general Hannibal during the Second Punic War in the 3rd Century BC) Carthage finally fell to the Romans in 146 BC: the city was destroyed, the people sold into slavery and the site symbolically sprinkled with salt.
Roman settlement of their new colony named ‘Africa Proconsularis’ gathered speed after Julius Caesar’s victory at the Battle of Thapsus in 46 BC and the country became a vital source of grain for the Roman Empire; other exports included olive oil, gold, ivory and slaves. The great cities of Dougga, Bulla Regia and Thysdrus/El Jem, amongst others, were built at the height of the province’s prosperity. As the decline of the Roman Empire hastened by the 5th Century AD, the Vandals invaded the territory closely followed by the Byzantines. The native Berber peoples still controlled the bulk of the country however.
The arrival of the armies of Islam in the 7th Century made the longest lasting impact on North Africa and by the beginning of the 8th Century, after long-running battles against the Berbers, Kairouan became the provincial capital in the rapidly expanding Islamic empire controlled by the Umayyad caliphs in Damascus. A succession of local Islamic dynasties ruled the land until the Ottoman Turks gained control of Tunis in 1574. By the late 19th Century France had become the new power in the western Mediterranean, abolishing piracy and slavery and settling the most fertile areas of northern Tunisia. During the 20th Century a massive mining operation of phosphate commenced in the south of the country.
Independence from France was granted on 20 March 1956 with Habib Bourguiba, the father of modern Tunisia, soon becoming President. He introduced sweeping political and social changes, looking to Westernisation as the way to modernise. In 1987 Bourguiba was replaced by Ben Ali, the minister of the interior, in a palace coup and he remains as President to this day.
