Under the energetic but confused prodding of the activist ruler Ahmad
Bey, Tunisia made its first effort to institute European-inspired
political and military reforms. L. Carl Brown's book on the reign of
Ahmad Bey is thus a case study in modernization as well as a historical
survey of Tunisia in the mid-nineteenth century. Professor Brown
explains the workings of the traditional political system, an elaborate
blend of Hafsid and Ottoman governmental ideas and practices. He
explores the ways in which the changes imposed on Tunisia by the West
made this system unworkable. Turning to the modernization movement
itself, the author argues that the first phase of modernization was
almost exclusively in the hands of the existing political elite, whose
background, education, career pattern, and self-image he examines. This
elite, working within a political climate characterized by a close
interweaving of domestic and diplomatic concerns, developed an operating
style described as collaborationist modernization. In addition to
recapturing in a narrative history the age of Ahmad Bey and the
political class over which he ruled, Professor Brown fits the Tunisian
story of these years into the broader historical context of change
imposed by the West on the rest of the world.
Originally published in 1975.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from
the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions
preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting
them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the
Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich
scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by
Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
