ries of bloody struggles known as the Punic Wars. In the third of these, in 149-146 BC, Rome defeated the Carthaginians and completely destroyed their capital with the result that through the 5th century AD most of the region now constituting Tunisia was part of the Roman province called Africa.
During the 5th century the Teutonic tribe known as the Vandals moved south through the Iberian Peninsula, crossed the Mediterranean, and wrested the province from Roman control. After a century of Vandal rule, the region was reconquered for Rome. In the 7th century, the region was overrun by Arab adherents of Islam; these conquerors ruled the region through early 16th century, during which time they replaced the existing Roman-Christian culture with a Moslem way of life. The length of their sovereignty is one of the most important historical factors shaping the country.
Arab political supremacy came to an end in the early 15th century and in 1574 armies of the Ottoman Empire defeated the Spanish and assumed hegemony over Tunisia. Under the Ottoman Turks, Tunisia enjoyed a period of relative stability from 1574 to 1881, when the country became a French protectorate. The many French who settled in Tunisia during the period of the protectorate exerted a strong Westernizing influence.
Ironically, it was the French who brought ideas about European-style democracy to Tunisia ideas that would later encourage Tunisians to agitate with increasing strength for self-rule. This desire for autonomy became even greater after World War II (when Tunisia had been under the governance of the Vichy collaborative government) and resulted in protocols being signed in 1956 that gave the country its independence from France, although France and Tunisia continued to have strained (and sometimes even militaristic) ties through the 1960s.
The past three decades have sometimes seen Tunisia embroiled in the regional conflicts of the Arab world (to...