On a History of Modern Tunisia

Decent synthetic work on Tunisia, 1835 to the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The major flaw that I found is that the work places the Tunisian anticolonial movement as the central aspect of Tunisian history after 1912, establishing a teleology the push for independence was the fundamental feature of Tunisian history between 1912 and 1956. I don’t know that this is quite true, and other aspects of this history are downplayed in favor of it. Moreover, the work eschews social and cultural history in favor of a strictly political history. While political history is obviously fundamental to this story, there was a great deal happening outside of the “political” realm.

Nevertheless, this is the best synthetic work on Tunisian history to date and it’s worth reading.