The object of this book, as the author states in her preface, is to analyze “the transformation of what was supposed to be an ‘indirect’ form of colonial rule, whereby France would rule through the local sovereign and his institutions, into a much more invasive form of colonial governance” (ix). The narration begins with the signing of the Bardo Treaty on May 12, 1881, which established a de facto protectorate, a few days after the French military occupation of Tunisia. The title is explained in the introduction: it refers to the “divide and rule” tactics that the French traditionally applied: “Instead the French in Tunisia confronted a problem of ‘divided rule’” (1). For the author, this divided rule was characterized by the fact that, under the protectorate, plural sources of legal authority remained in the country: not only the French one and that of the Husaynid dynasty, but also those of Italy and Great Britain “whose prior treaty arrangements with the Tunisian bey secured them pockets of influence” (3). This is the originality of this book: analyzing a specific form of colonial rule on the basis of its initial nature of diplomatic compromise. In order not to present a top-down-only perspective on this question, Lewis uses the concept of typically Mediterranean affiliation change that Julia Clancy Smith developed, and illustrates how the different categories of inhabitants of Tunisia used the legal ambiguities of “divided rule” to serve their own interests. She also argues that when after World War I the French canceled most of the characteristics of “divided rule,” they “helped engender challenges that eventually crystallized into a powerful independence movement” (4).

The first chapter is about the events that led to the establishment of the protectorate. It starts with an analysis of the peculiar position of the province of Tunisia within the Ottoman Empire: a local dynasty ruled and had established relations with European powers. Lewis's vision and evaluation of this matter of fact depends too much, however, on European sources. An examination of Ottoman sources in Istanbul might have lent nuance to the vision of a quasiautonomous province and might have suggested a more Ottoman interpretation of the changes that occurred in Tunis between the 1850s and the beginning of the 1880s. As for the general narration of the diplomatic negotiations among France, Great Britain, and Italy that led to the events of 1881, it follows the 1959 seminal work by Jean Ganiage on the subject, (Les origines du protectorat français en Tunisie [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959]; see also Anne-Marie Planel, Du comptoir à la colonie: Histoire de la communauté française de Tunisie [Paris-Tunis, Riveneuve-IRMC, 2015]) adding in crucial moments a very useful recourse to original French, British, and Italian diplomatic sources.

The second chapter is about the persistence of a form of legal pluralism during the years that followed the establishment of the protectorate. It focuses on French efforts at replacing European consular courts with new French colonial jurisdictions in order to contain the extraterritorial rights of other European powers (especially Great Britain and Italy). The author proposes a firsthand reading of this process through the study of various cases of high symbolic value, such as that of a Sicilian barber, Paolo Meschino, involved in a dispute with a French soldier. This is the force of this book: linking the study of the diplomatic negotiation of a new local colonial order, expressed by the 1883 convention of La Marsa, with concrete cases taken from the archives. Considerations on the Tunisian judiciary system itself and on how it evolved under colonial domination in cases involving so-called “natives” are more vague, however, but Lewis offers very interesting considerations on the new legal situation regarding all those seen as Europeans, or who used legal and rhetorical inventiveness in order to be considered as such. It allows her, as a result of recourse to original sources, to unearth various ambiguous aspects that remained even after the establishment of French courts.

In the third chapter, Lewis proposes reflections on the notion and practice of consular protection. Because of the ambiguities of the reform of the judiciary system under French rule, this old possibility given to Ottoman subjects, mostly members of non-Muslim confessional communities, to adopt a European passport, was paradoxically revivified. Numerous Tunisian Jews, for example, and also Muslims, obtained British and Italian consular protection at the end of the nineteenth century. This led populations that the colonizers saw as “natives” to be treated like Europeans. Even more paradoxical was the situation, evoked by the author, of Algerians in Tunisia, who, although originating from a former Ottoman province submitted to a violent colonial occupation, could pretend, because of article one of the 1865 Senatus Consulte that gave Algerians French nationality (but not citizenship and the rights attached to it), to be treated as French protégés in another French colony. This point raises interesting questions on the nature of colonization. The fourth chapter is about the years 1912–22, when France profoundly modified the previous system. It begins with considerations of the legal consequences in Tunisia of the Italian occupation of Libya in 1911, which modified the status of Libyans in the country. Lewis also examines how the “affair of the false Maltese” (trafficking of false Maltese birth certificates that gave Tunisian Jews access to British protection) was used by the French as a pretext in order to restrict “divided rule,” first with a 1914 decree. She illustrates convincingly how the context of such legal debates was a decisive element in the growth of the Tunisian national movement. The book ends with a chapter on the 1930s, with a focus on how controversies on nationality grew around the question of burial rites. The author shows how the Destour independence party of Habib Bourguiba successfully used such controversies in order to extend its influence in the country.