ABSTRACT
Bourguiba was born around the beginning of the twentieth century, some twenty years after the establishment of the Protectorate in Tunisia and the beginning of the Tunisian struggle for independence. In several respects, Tunisia presented then and still presents the image of a relatively more homogeneous society than other areas of the Arab world. Slightly trailing behind those of Egypt and of the central Ottoman Empire, Tunisia’s “reform” movement began in earnest during the first half of the nineteenth century, more or less following the same pattern as Muhammad Ali's efforts in Egypt to modernize the primary government instrument, the army. A recent critic of dependency theories, Paul Brenner, argues that “the particular, historically developed class structures” through which the processes of capitalist expansion in Third World countries occurred have been largely neglected in the work of such writers as Gunder-Frank and Wallerstein.
