De l’usage diplomatique du discours sur le panislamisme

La correspondance de l’ambassadeur français à Istanbul Charles-Joseph Tissot, lors de la crise tunisienne de 1881

  • Aldo D’Agostini
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47979/aror.j.81.2.149-172
Keywords: France, Nineteenth Century, Colonial Politics, Diplomacy, Pan-Islamism, Campaign of Tunisia (1881)

Abstract

The idea of the existence of an Islamic danger has been used occasionally as an instrument of pressure and dissuasion against some governments of countries of the Islamic world. In 1881, French government developed this kind of strategy during a diplomatic conflict with the Ottoman government caused by French invasion of Tunisia. In this circumstance, the idea of the Islamic danger developed into a discourse on Pan-Islamism: the French ambassador, Charles-Joseph Tissot, accused the Ottoman government of exerting a secret Pan-Islamic policy which consisted in fomenting a general uprising of Islamic peoples in North Africa. This indeed was a tactic to elude the Ottoman protestations about French occupation of Tunis. In this article, we analyze this diplomatic strategy throughout the political correspondence between Paris and Istanbul in 1880–81.

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Author Biography

Aldo D’Agostini

Dr. Aldo D’Agostini started his career in the field of inter-culture working as social operator and documentarist for some NGOs in Turin. In the meantime he studied Arabic at the Bourguiba School of Tunis and Sociology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” By 2001 he was devoting all of his time to historical research and to the topic of the European representations of Islam in the late Nineteenth Century. His earlier research at the University of Rome focused on the travel books of Italian explorers and missionaries in North and East Africa. Then, at the IAE (Institut d’Etudes Africaines) of the University of Aix-Marseille, he extended his reflections to French colonial sources and developed a comparative analysis on the Italian and French colonial ideologies and contexts. His PhD at the IREMAM (Institut de Recherche sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman) of the University of Aix-Marseille was dedicated to the study of the phenomenology of the discourse on pan-Islamism in French sources during two decades of the Nineteenth Century. This work allowed him to specialize in three major fields of research: Oriental diplomacy, colonial politics and the press. He published in Geostorie (“Islam e civilizzazione dell’Africa nei resoconti di viaggio di Giovanni Beltrame, 1824–1906,” 2/3, 2003) and in Rives Méditerranéennes (“L’agency de Julette Adam, 1836–1936: des lieu, des rôles et des combats pour agir en politique,” 41, 2012).

Published
2013-09-12
How to Cite
D’Agostini, A. (2013). De l’usage diplomatique du discours sur le panislamisme: La correspondance de l’ambassadeur français à Istanbul Charles-Joseph Tissot, lors de la crise tunisienne de 1881. Archiv orientální, 81(2), 149-172. https://doi.org/10.47979/aror.j.81.2.149-172
Issue
Vol. 81 No. 2 (2013)
Section
Research Article

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