Modern and contemporary history

At the end of the sixteenth century, following the Turks' increased interest in the western Mediterranean, Tunisia became a province of the Ottoman empire. After a few years of Turkish administration, the governing of Tunisia was put into the hands of a dey (1590) then of a bey, Murad I who founded a dynasty. Under the Muraditesas well as at the time of the early reigns of their husseinites successors (1705 -1957), Tunisia knew an incontestable boom. In 1881, alleging as a pretext the khroumire * incursion in Algeria, Jules Ferry decides a punitive expedition which leads to a treaty of protectorate (May 1881 12), a colonization which Tunisia got rid of only in 1956. Since then, independent, she has been advancing quickly towards progress the consistency of which is greeted again and again ; serene, she perpetuates this tradition of tolerance and openness on the world.