page_title: Ahmad I ibn Mustafa
section_title: Relations with France
hierarchical_section_title: Ahmad I ibn Mustafa / Relations with France
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Arrivée du duc Antoine de Montpensier, fils du roi Louis-Phillipe de France, au port de La Goulette (Tunisie) en juin 1845
context_page_description: Ahmed I, born 2 December 1805 in Tunis died May 1855 at La Goulette, was the tenth Husainid Bey of Tunis, ruling from 1837 until his death. He was responsible for the abolition of slavery in Tunisia in 1846.
  He succeeded his father Mustafa Bey on 10 October 1837. He had grand ambitions - to expand his army and create a modern navy; to build a new royal residence, a mint and modern institutions of education but neither he nor his brother-in-law the young Mustapha Khaznadar who served as his finance minister, had a clear idea of what such initiatives would cost. As a result, many of his projects became expensive failures which damaged the financial health of the country.
context_section_description: Under a treaty with France signed in 1830 by Hussein Bey, a piece of land in Carthage had been ceded to allow the erection of a monument to Louis IX of France who had died there during the Eighth Crusade. On 25 August 1840 the first stone was laid in the cathedral of Carthage. Ahmad Bey also permitted the Christian community of Tunis, consisting mainly of European merchants, to enlarge their small church near the Bab el Bhar.
  In June and July 1846 the Duke of Montpensier, son of King Louis Philippe of France visited Tunis and Carthage. He was received with great solemnity by Ahmad Bey. During this visit the idea of a reciprocal visit of the Bey to France was proposed. This visit was organised by his advisor Giuseppe Raffo (whose sister was married to his uncle) and the French consul, and took place in November 1846. King Louis Philippe received Ahmad Bey with great ceremony. This visit confirmed the Bey's wish to modernise his country by learning from Europe. An 1897 article in La Revue tunisienne described it effect on his plans:
  'Among all the marvels he had occasion to admire, he was most particularly struck by the ingenious applications of industrial engineering; he conceived at that time the noble project of pulling native industry out of the routine into which it had fallen by encouraging it to embark on the road to progress and of endowing his country with modern industry, equipped with the means of production, of which the economic benefits had been revealed to him.'
   
  
  The Bey's visit to France, and the fact that he had been received with the honours customarily reserved for an independent sovereign, displeased the Ottoman authorities as the Bey was, at least theoretically, an Ottoman vassal.
caption: The duc de Montpensier received at La Goulette in June 1846 by a guard of honour of the Beylical army. To the left is a portion of the Al Sharfiya summer palace, which no longer remains.
exif: {}