page_title: Early political career of Habib Bourguiba
section_title: Challenging the protectorate
hierarchical_section_title: Early political career of Habib Bourguiba / First steps in politics / Challenging the protectorate
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of Habib Bourguiba in the early 1930s.
context_page_description: The early political career of Habib Bourguiba began in the early 1930s when he joined the main political party of the Tunisian national movement, the Destour. His political beginnings were characterized with a "battle" in newspapers such as L'Étandar Tunisien and La voix du Tunisien, while defending Tunisia's integrity and the preservation of its national identity. Shocked by the 1930 International Eucharistic Congress of Carthage, Bourguiba and his mates decided to start a press campaign to denounce the event. They soon acquired an unprecedented popularity, and stood out from the elders of Destour. They attracted the hostility of settlers, eager to put an end to their activism and press campaign. However, Bourguiba and his friends founded their own newspaper, despite the colonial attempts to stop them. L'Action Tunisienne was thus created in order to defend the "little people" in a context of economic crisis, following the Great Depression.
  Bourguiba, worried about his country's state, knew that a good cause would revive the national movement, weakened by the 1926 repressions.
context_section_description: In the early 1930s, Bourguiba joined the Destour party, then the major political organization of the Tunisian national movement. He rose to its leadership along with Mahmoud El Materi, Bahri Guiga, Tahar Sfar and his brother M'hamed. As preparations took place to host French President Paul Doumer as part of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the protectorate, nationalists were not pleased. In an article he wrote in Le Croissant, a newspaper managed by his cousin Abdelaziz El-Aroui, Bourguiba denounced the festivities as a "humiliating affront to the dignity of the Tunisian people to whom France recalls the loss of freedom and independence".
  
  Following these events, the Destour leadership gathered in an emergency meeting at the Hôtel d'Orient in February 1931. It was decided to constitute a supporting committee for Chedly Khairallah's weekly newspaper, La Voix du Tunisien, which became a daily. The young nationalists joined the team and wrote critical analyses of the protectorate. Bourguiba, unlike his elders, dared to challenge the protectorate, publishing numerous articles and defining his own views on the colonial administration. He questioned both its effects and existence, writing: 
  A State can not be both subject and sovereign: Any treaty of protectorate, because of its nature, carries its own seed of death [...] Is it a lifeless country, a degenerate people who declines? Reduced to be nothing more than a dust of individuals; that means awaiting for downfall [...] In short, total and inevitable demise. Is it, in contrary, a sain people, vigorous, that international races or a momentary crisis forced them to accept the tutelage of a strong state, the necessarily inferior status imposed upon them, the contact of a more advanced civilization determines in them a salutary reaction [...] a real regeneration occurs in them and through judicious assimilation, they inevitably come to realize in stages their final emancipation. Time will tell if the Tunisian people belong to one or the other category.
  — Habib Bourguiba, La Voix du Tunisien (February 23, 1931)
  La Voix du Tunisien became a very popular newspaper because of the originality with which Bourguiba, Sfar, Guiga and Materi addressed problems. They stood out from their Destour elders by their new ways of thinking. Bourguiba reckoned the end of the protectorate as the outcome of an evolution that had taken its roots in the very principles of French civilization, unlike Abdelaziz Thâalbi, who thought of it as a breakup, in an article he wrote in La Tunisie martyre. Referred to as the "four musketeers", they were in favor of the intangibility of national personality and political sovereignty of the Tunisian people with a progressive emancipation of the country, while advocating for a nationalism that struggled against a regime and not a civilization.
  
  Their work soon attracted the interest of both public opinion and wealthy landowners and businessmen (preponderants) who had a strong influence on the colonial administration. Hostile to their daring plea, the preponderants wrote in La Tunisie française: "Mr Bourguiba proposes to transform the Destourian lament into a doctoral thesis in law. The claims are not modest [...] They must be demanded to tone down their Voix du Tunisien". During the conference he held in November 1973, Bourguiba related the events of his beginnings in journalism and the success of his articles: 
  A strong turmoil had broken in Tunisia. In cafés and public places, my articles were read and commented. They seriously bothered French people because they did not only paint a grim picture of the current conditions, they also denounced, through logical deductions, the hidden agendas of authorities and exposed their concealed wills. I denounced the goals they had aimed and alerted them against the dangers of their policy that only could, eventually, jeopardize the security of France. I highlighted, at last, all the interests the french government had to negotiate with a free and independent Tunisian state.
  — Habib Bourguiba, Fourth conference held
caption: Portrait of Habib Bourguiba in the early 1930s
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