Abdeljelil Zaouche

Abdeljelil Zaouche (rear RTL عبدالجليلالزّاوش), born the December 15th 1873 with Marsa and dead the January 3rd 1947 with Tunis, is a politician and Business man Tunisia N.

Youth

Born with the family palate of Marsa, it is resulting from the Aristocratie Tunis oise arrived of Andalusia at the 18th century via the Algérie. His/her father, Tahar Zaouche, and his/her uncle, Hassan Zaouche, occupy of high loads under Ali III Bey: General of the guard of the bey and brigadier general in charge of the lifting of the taxes. He is the father of Ahmed Zaouche and Rachid Zaouche.

He carries out his secondary studies with the Collège Saint-Charles then with the Louis-the-Large Lycée with Paris where he makes a success of his baccalaureat. In 1894, it is registered with the Faculty of Law of Paris while continuing courses to the Institut of political sciences and the Collège de France. Strongly influenced by the interventions of Jean Jaurès, he is also the pupil of Emile Durkheim, Emile Boutroux, Henri Poincaré, Antoine Aulard and Ernest Lavisse. He impassions himself, written Charles-Andre Julien, “for the problems raised by the transformation of the modern East and the influence of Western civilization. ” Laid off in Right, it returns to Tunis in 1900 where it engages in the public affairs.

Industrialist

In partnership with the Ramella brothers, it founds in 1901 the Minoterie of the View-point, first Tunisian Industrie whose offices are located at the number 24 of the avenue from France to Tunis. It directs the commercial Union in addition.

In 1903, it creates the scientific first Imprimerie Arab Monde: Al Matbâa Al Ilmiya. The first printing works, founded the July 20th 1860 by Sadok Bey, had for only objective the impression of the Tunisian Official journal .

Reformer

While making the training of the Industry in its Flour mill, it engages in creation and defense of the Tunisian Public service. He pleads the republican principles in turn, engages in safeguarding of the national entity and tries to set up the qualified institutions, honest and independent of a rule of law. Founder and great figure of the nationalist movement of the Young Tunisians, cofounder of the Association of old of the College Sadiki and the Tunisian Circle (1904) - intellectual club where the topicality is followed and where one prepares the defense of the Tunisian interests -, president of the Khaldounia, he is also shareholder and member of the boards of directors several newspapers of the place such the Tunisian Dispatch , Progress , La Poste Tunisian , Autonomous the and, in Paris, Temps . Zaouche in addition writes many articles for the socialist Quotidien the Liberal . It also maintains the bonds with the Young person-Turks, the reforming nationalists Egyptian, like Mohamed Abduh or Moustafa Kamel Pasha, and Syria NS as of the intellectuals sympathizers of the Tunisian cause and of the panarabe like Pierre Loti and Charles Géniaux causes.

Throughout the five years of publication of the newspaper the Tunisian , it militates at the coasts of Ali Bach Hamba - of which it will marry the German cousin Chérifa - as well as other Young Tunisians. He maintains the pressure with blows of articles made indignant on various aspects of the policy of the French protectorate.

Economic reforms and tax

In the group of the Young Tunisians, Zaouche is characterized by the priority which it holds for the economic sector: Agriculture, Craft industry and Trade. It devotes the essence of its activities and is mobilized to it in writings and acts on the formation of the Economic agent: professional qualification, quality of manager, creativity and competitiveness to exceed the saving in subsistence.

Zaouche takes part in 1908 in the first mixed meeting of the Tunisian advisory Conférence and chooses to be a rapporteur and Member of the Commission of finances of the section Tunisian of this assembly, true pulse of all the economic life, social and thus policy of the country. Its combat is triple and relates to initially the suppression of the Medjba, the “tax of poor”, then the reform of the loans and the appropriations mutualists and finally the restoration of the tax of the Achour.

Suppression of the medjba

The taxation, writing Nazli Hafsia, in addition to its character of budget revenue, is presented by Zaouche like the essential of political condition, economic and social indicator of the country (category of Contribuable S, rate, plate, etc). This last denounces the load then weighing on the work compared to the Capital because, he writes, “the Tunisians are not responsible for the bad management of their leaders whose heavy debt had disastrous consequences. ” As of the first mixed meeting of the advisory Conference, he asserts the suppression of the medjba. He denounces what there is the anachronistic one and of unjust in this tax which strikes the labor force and weakens it by reducing it to the Misère. Through the medjba, which covers the sixth of the budgetary Recette S, the Agriculture is being the independent source of public finance, going until the direct Rémunération of certain government officials: Caïd S, Khalifa S and sheiks, etc the increasing weakness of the agricultural taxpayer makes in addition the medjba increasingly unbearable and honnie until causing many Révolte S whose “famous revolt of Ben Ghedaham, name of its principal chief, revolts whose repression which lasted several years completed to ruin the Tunisian State. ”

The nature and the amount of the taxes which he proposes to counterbalance, according to the traditional budgetary rule, the desired suppression of the receipt covered by the medjba reveals to the program progressist Young Tunisians. To the republican idea of equality in front of the law and the tax, it brings the essential complement which is to apply the tax like control stick for the Economic growth - defined not only in terms of national product but also and especially in National revenue - and to generalize its recipients with all the members of the national community. Accordingly, he proposes a tax reform which is in fact a true economic program. The objective of its proposals relates to the principal imposition of the capital - and thus of the substantial element of the Colonisation - and the lightening of the load on work. If it privileges the force of work, it would like to also see the tax being used to consolidate the Public health by striking the new consumption brought by the foreign occupation such as the alcohol and the Jeu. Like “taxes of replacement” to the medjba, he thus proposes the creation of new taxes which are characterized by their generalization with all the population, nationals and foreigners confused, a “personal coast” whose “the question to exempt such or such element of the Tunisian population it is quite out ofit is quite out of” because “it is not a tax of five francs which will be able to ruin the colonist, the tradesman or the civil servant French. While subjecting itself willingly to this tax, the guards will give pledge of their sympathy to the unhappy Fellah S who to pour with the Fisc 26,85 frank representing for them 25 to 30 day's works are too often obliged to deprive itself, them and their, of bare essential. ”

Beside the “personal coast”, it envisages the creation of a tax on the Bétail having to strike the whole of the Tunisian Cheptel. Lastly, it turns to the colonial large capital by proposing “export duties on the products other than those of the ground”, i.e. those of the basement (mines and Phosphate S):

We are not dissimulated that we approach here the part of our task of much most delicate. We indeed attack considerable interests and which tend more and more to play in this country a paramount role. We do not forget that it is thanks to the mining companies and phosphatières whom we saw creating so quickly important a network of railways. But we also consider that Tunisia, which makes it possible many capitalists of any nationality to realize in the exploitation of its natural wealths of the sometimes considerable Bénéfice S, cannot eternally require of its: 3000 proletarian the money which is necessary for him to balance its Budget. Is this well the poor wretch Khammès, hardly gaining 150 francs per annum which must come to assistance of the budget from Tunisia or the Actionnaire which in a few months saw going up from 500 to: 4000 francs the value of its titles? To put the question with men of intelligence and heart, it east we believe the résoudre.

He answers the arguments of the French section thus by defending the Tunisian taxpayer, in particular small the Agriculteur S and craftsmen.

The advisory Conference chaired by the Résident general of France in Tunisia however is dominated by the elements extremists of the French colony which will oppose an end not to receive with this program, resorting to the dilatory procedures to the most racist arguments, feeling their preponderance and the colonial capital as called in question. In 1908, Zaouche confirms in a new report/ratio of the conference:

The statements of the Civil statue are taken of it, the surplus of the deaths on the births is considerable among the Muslim population of Tunis. Be certain that misery is the principal factor of the mortality Indigène and do not seek to worsen by tax measures a situation already if alarming! The tax medjba could not appear indefinitely in the budget of a State placed under the protectorate of the France! In the metropolis, where all the poll-taxes were abolished for a long time, where since a Siècle one makes the most serious efforts to improve the living conditions of the proletarians, one discusses in this moment a system of Income tax which would cause to exonerate the small property foncière. completely

Therefore, if new loan it must have there, it asks that a part be assigned by it to the direct benefit of the Tunisian population of which the major part suffers from the Analphabétisme and of a lack of saving:

We want well that one continues to build roads and we but railroads estimates that one does not need only this work to which one already devoted the largest part of the budget surpluses absorbs also all the credit of which can lay out Regency! It is certainly not less urgent to give to the Tunisians schools where their children will learn how to use the tools with which one equipped their country. However, on: 150000 children of school age which Tunisia must count, it is less: 7000 which receives a rational education primary and, from here a long time, one will not arrive, on the normal resources of the budget, to build enough schools for the tenth part only of: 143000 autres.

In parallel, it invites to support the accession with the Crédit small Tunisian Agriculteur “to improve its modest Cheptel, to buy a solid modern Charrue and animals” and “to acquire sophisticated concepts of culture”. He consequently asks that ten franc million of the loan is reserved “for the creation of schools free-Arabic”, “the equipment of agricultural banks for the small farmers” and concludes:

Creation of schools free-Arabic organization of the agricultural credit to facilitate the constitution of the small indigenous property are, with the eyes of our compatriots, of the questions which appreciably precede that of the extension at least fast of the railway lines. ” As for the load of the loan, the main thing and Interest S, it tries with same energy to reduce of them the weight for the Tunisian active sectors, in particular the traders, as well as the Tunisian consumers, “the great mass of the public, i.e. that which has less ressources.

Putting the land tax question in the total context of Tunisian agriculture and the miserable economic situation of the small farmers, he writes in the Tunisian in April 1910:

However already, by an anomaly which is not besides an exception in our tax mode, richest are those which pay less… Admittedly, if agricultural training had been spread, if one had in the important centers legatee of the firm-schools, if one for the natives had created of the agricultural banks, so finally one had, by parcelling out certain great properties, put the small capable farmer to become owner of a small holding, one would have seen indigenous agriculture changing whole with the whole, and this, with the great advantage of the rural population and public finances. But today, one proclaims with the envi the atavistic indolence of the Arab without taking account of the various contingencies which put it in comparison with European in a state of deplorable inferiority. Among these contingencies, it is necessary to arrange the tax Achour I estimate that one must leave it there and that it is especially necessary to give up applying such or such measurement which, like the standardization of the méchia, could only consume the ruin of agriculture indigène.

Institutional reforms and legal

August 1st

Educational reforms and social stakes

For Abdeljelil Zaouche, the instruction is the essential lever of the re-starting of the economic growth and social. With the Young Tunisians, written Nazli Hafsia, “one is not yet with the concept of État-providence. One militates for the intervention of a State public service. ” For Zaouche, in addition to the economic activities, the instruction is alone to guarantee the opening of the Public office with the Tunisians from which they are excluded. He thus sensitizes the interested parties in the conditions of their future and asks the authorities the installation of entrance examination. The public office, it is also and especially the magistrature, the formation and the writing having to guarantee a qualified and independent justice.

At the same time general and specialized, the teaching which he proposes must answer the economic needs all while resting on the Culture of Tunisia defined in the base by the national language.

Teaching of Arabic like identity stake

It summarizes the essence of its thought by referring to the men of the French revolution: “Education is the first need for people after the Pain said Danton: we go further and we affirm that in Tunisia, nowadays, the conquest of the bread is absolutely subordinate for our co-religionists to their instruction and with their professional education” he in 1931 declares in front of the colonial Academy of Science. “The most practical solution and which were suggested many times by the Tunisians, it is to make the test of Arab not optional, as it is it currently, but obligatory to the examinations of Certificat of primary studies for all the Moslem pupils. ”

At the primary education stage, “it would be perhaps more advantageous for him Tunisian to give him this Arabic teaching, i.e. in its Native tongue, the elements necessary of Lecture and calculation will remain to him much more easily once sure thus” adds it. The teaching of Arabic should also continue during the secondary. This teaching would relate to several cycles starting from a school reformed free-Arabic and of kotabs , as well in their program as in their teachers and their method, which will brilliantly plead at the time of a congress held with Paris in 1908 Khairallah Ben Mustapha: “To inform in French, to teach the Arab language” because the Tunisian “when it is in liaison with European, it is not possible for him another to fight on the economic ground and to preserve his place in his own country”.

Other Young Tunisians, in particular Khairallah Ben Mustapha and Sadok Zmerli, militate for the access of the woman to education. The first develops, during the congress of 1908 held in Paris, the topic of the instruction of the woman who enjoys since the XIXe century, in Turkey and Egypt, of the instruction and the culture modern:

Because if the Moslem woman did not profit in a broader measurement from the instruction, it is not with the Islam that it would have to be allotted, as certain European writers are often carried to do it, but with blind passion or the fanatic zeal of some commentators of the period décadente.

Reform of Sadiki and Zitouna

Abdeljelil Zaouche draws the attention of the administration to the mediocrity of the teaching of the koutabs which is not in conformity with the Décret of 1907 regulating the situation of the teaching personnel. It calls then with the creation of schools free-Arabic with competent teachers. He insists vigorously so that with the basic elements are grafted a professional technical education open to the scientific matters. In this context, it belongs to the commission of modernization of the teaching of the Université Zitouna following the Grève S of 1910 as of the Joint Committee of reform of the Collège Sadiki of which he is the rapporteur. He writes whereas “the program of this school is not in conformity enough with the modern studies or for better saying there is program at all. The pupils do not aspire for no reason, they have one goal, officialism: one will take among them some interpreters. ” He also denounces discriminations of access to the Lycée Carnot of Tunis against the Moslem natives, this the more so as it is about the only establishment giving access to the modern university.

Agricultural reforms

Following the losses undergone in France during the First World War and especially to the fall of the agricultural production, the French colonists will accentuate the Expropriation grounds Indigène S (four million Hectare S of ground is almost 20% of all the cultivable grounds). While acting for the conservation and the safeguard of the land ownership (in membership of the commission of the land legislation), Zaouche carries a glance criticizes on the modes of its exploitation. It tends to record the weaknesses, the insufficiencies of them, and proposes the corrective measures concerning the problems structural of the Agriculture.

Modernization of the tools

He thus seeks better a Plus-value with the ground and an improvement of the Purchasing power and standard of living of the small farmer. He is not satisfied with theory but works out concrete solutions with deficiencies of the farm. Taking as a starting point the methods applied by the modern French economy, he preaches the adoption of progressists measurements as well in the mode of development of the real estate as in the education of the farmer himself, actor of this modernization. He clarifies the positive role of the agricultural farm of Ansarine, “left firm-school founded by the private initiative of the natives”, that of the assistance of the administration of the Habous, that of the indigenous Companies of precaution, by their loans of helps and reciprocity agricultural, and that of the cases of agricultural credit. Indeed, he believes deeply in the mutual action as well in the level of the Crédit as of that of the Assurance and this for all the sectors of the economy.

Agricultural education of stripped

He goes further and affirms that all these measurements have limited effects because the instruction of the natives was completely neglected. However, for him, this instruction must be bilingual because the training of the French language gives access to the European modern knowledge and the European economy. With basic teaching, he recommends the complement “of encouragements and of premiums silver to the farmers” and he quotes in support of his proposals, the policy followed in Egypt by Méhémet Ali for the encouragement of the Fellah S of the the Nile and whose results are very positive for him. Inlassablement, it defends the Middle-class and classifies it stripped with the concern of their promotion by the education of their members. It with this intention uses all the platforms - press, interventions and reports/ratios - and the direct action the more so as, Caïd of Sousse as of 1917, it concretely saw the situation of the fishermen and the farmers. Especially, it is advisable for him to build the future: “II acts to form a generation of farmers. It is necessary to make the agricultural education of the young people. Which means have for that? The school” declares it in 1912.

Tunisian room of agriculture

In its defense of the Tunisian ground and farm, Zaouche is interested in all the aspects which encourage this evolution. In 1913, it reaffirms its wish to see creating a room of Tunisian agriculture which would allow the farmers and with the indigenous tradesmen to discuss with the government the questions which interest them. He frequently insists and reconsiders, by the voice of the newspaper the Tunisian and with the platform of the advisory Conférence, on the importance of the modernization of agriculture in his methods and his programs and thus on the primacy of agricultural training for the farmer like the need for improving the administration of the indigenous Companies of precaution, created by Décret of the May 20th 1907, whose formalities and procedure obstruct the granting of the appropriations and slow down the agricultural actions.

Reform craft industry

With the introduction of the French Protectorate in Tunisia, the free entry of the French manufactured goods - new or imitating Tunisian artisanal products at low prices - is reinforced and encouraged by the absence of any customs protection. Foreign units Industrie it concurrent are established in Tunisia and the craft industry did not manage to adapt and to be integrated into the incipient modern economy. The decline of this economic sector, the retreat of its production and the fall of the incomes of all the industrial active population, highly are lived and felt by Zaouche. It thus intervenes in this field to take part in the recovery of the artisanal industrial sector which is reduced to poverty and disaggregates at the same time as the trade is reached and by consequence the quality of the product. Zaouche is not satisfied with reports and negative assessments. Its action goes on the public level at the same time as in the field of private initiative. He preaches a program for a society based on an economy open to the modern means of production of equipment and credit, and the acquisition of the foreign languages. It is at these institutions credit writes it in the Tunisian May 27th 1909 that the Germany and the Italy owe their prosperity mainly.

Qualification and legislation workers

Zaouche challenges also the State to call with its Interventionnisme in the economic domain. The State traditional gendarme, he asks measurements in the medium and long term, in particular protective customs tariffs and instigators for the Exportation S of the artisanal products towards the Algérie. He calls with insistence the administration to create, on many points of the territory, vocational schools where, by primarily practical methods, one would form Maçon S, Forgeron S and Menuisier S ready to fight with equal footings with the foreign competition. He also asks that a quota of Tunisian labor be obligatorily imposed on the adjudications of the government contracts at the same time as the Salaire S of this labor cease being “remunerations of misery and exploitation”.

This will to act to regenerate industry and to safeguard - by enriching it technically - the professional Know-how in the building, the Weaving, construction materials, the Ceramic , the Chechia, the Leather, the Ironwork and other trades, by an urgent call with the official intervention remained non-existent up to that point, is heard with all the platforms which are offered to him (international bases, internal commissions, press, etc).

Parallel to the study of the French, which would make it possible the new generation to be initiated with the progress made in the economic order by the western world, and with commercial and technical teaching, Zaouche pleads for the promulgation of a “complete legislation working” which would make it possible to the indigenous workmen to be placed at equal conditions, wage and tax, with the foreign workmen while the representation with the professional rooms and the opening to the credit should be assured to the industrialists and commercial Tunisian. In addition to its participation in the introduction of scientific teaching, he is the initiator and the actor of the raising of the industrial sector and commercial by a self-regulating action. This regeneration, it conceives it by association and the Mutualité in a co-operative spirit. It is thus all at the same time about a modernization of the antiquated professional structures of the Corporation S, by the creation of Coopérative S of services, which will open the access to the credit, the provisioning of raw materials and a competing marketing of the products.

Cooperative society and mutual insurance companies

Abdeljelil Zaouche thus organizes the creation of the Tunisian cooperative society. The other remedy which he recommends directly with the interested parties is to organize themselves in a mutualist spirit to counter the intermediaries and to mitigate the weaknesses of access to the credit. It intervenes as well in the trade as in industry. Speaking about the retailers, it indicates in 1908:

Among these small shopkeepers djerbiens, it is which, conscious of their inferiority, solved to group to fight jointly. On my councils, some have, two years ago, founded a co-operative having for object the direct purchase in the best conditions of the goods of which they make trade. ” Thus creates for itself the Essaada cooperative society, grouping more than 800 manufacturers of Balgha S with Tunis and more than 100 with Kairouan, which ensures the purchase of the raw materials, with additional goals such as the instruction or the wellbeing of its members, and in parallel, and answers the problem of the credit that the narrowness of the individual production and thus the absence of guarantee excluded the access from them. Zaouche organizes also the creation of companies of mutual credit.

The success of the cooperative society Es-Saadia encourages the grocers and the general storekeepers to be linked in a commercial Union which it directs itself. He thus exerts a determining action in the creation of a new spirit and the adoption of the modern forms of economic action: public limit companies and Co-operative S, mutual insurance companies and associations various which learn the concepts of responsibilities for the social inheritance and the risk for private initiative. Many companies will be created in all Tunisia such as Progress (Tissu S of Laine) in 1910, Ikbal (food) in 1911, the Tunisian Companies in 1912, Itidal (Verrerie) in 1913, the mutual Assistance (grains and spices) in 1914 and the economic Rebirth (agricultural equipment) in 1920.

Business of Djellaz

Statesman

Starting from April 1917, Zaouche becomes, for 17 years, Caïd of Sousse. It does not give up therefore its efforts in favor of the national movement. It publishes many reports on education and agriculture. It creates special assistances for the farmers of the the Sahel, encourages the plantation of olive-tree S and renews the institution of the Kolla of Sousse.

The May 18th 1934, Zaouche becomes Sheik El Médina of Tunis and, the October 7th 1935, Ministre for the feather. From April 1936 with 1942, date of the incident with the general resident Jean-Pierre Esteva, Zaouche is Minister for justice. He resigns like all the Ministers for the government of Hédi Lakhoua at the request of Moncef Bey. Architect of the Tunisian co-operatives, reformer, lawyer, journalist, industrialist, minister, Zaouche is also one of the Young most radical Tunisians as regards criticism of the religious tradition, as well as most enthusiastic francophile. He attends only great French establishments, which often isolates it from the fringe sadikienne of the Young Tunisians. About it, Victor de Carnières exclaims: “Young Tunisian, flower of greenhouse! He has two centuries in advance on his co-religionists! ”

Quotations

Abdeljelil Zaouche answers in February 1914 the review of the colonial and maritime Questions : “It is out of doubt that the mode of protectorate, with the maintenance of the prerogatives of S.A. the bey, of the indigenous jurisdictions and of the administrative wheels which function here more or less well since long years, gives the natives, with the mass at least, the illusion to have preserved a certain independence. They see that their manners and their Croyance S is respected and it is not necessary for of it to them more to conclude that the role from France east only to protect them from any attack from outside and to repress the abuses as far as possible. But those of the Tunisians who received a European education - and their number grows the every day -, which they would like especially, whatever the mode under which they are placed, it is to see itself equipped with legal institutions based on the principle so precisely preached by Montesquieu of the Séparation of the capacities. What they would still like, it is to have the Droit to write and speak and as that more modest to circulate in Tunisia and France without being compelled to provide itself as a preliminary and realizing finance with an administrative authorization as one can always refuse to them under a pretext or another. It is seen, which they ask they are relative freedoms, i.e. much less than what Mr. Thiers called freedoms very necessary. ”

“If we endeavor to bring back the religion to its true principles, if we fights the Confrérie S which distorted the Doctrine Islam, which took for task to maintain the population of the campaigns in most contemptible ignorance, it is to manage to make go of agreement the religion and science, which is not unrealizable since the Moslem Foi is based on the reason and logic. If we claim the instruction for our co-religionists, if we ask that vocational training and agricultural be closed to them more, it is that we know that there is for them a question of life or death. And when we attract on this lamentable state of affairs the attention of the government, when we ask for the creation of firm-schools where the natives will be able to initiate themselves with the modern methods, one represents us like the agents of the Panislamisme, it is the alarm clock of Islam! We have the deep conviction that there is strictly speaking alarm clock of Islam but we know not less pertinently than, in each Moslem country, according to its geographical location and its political regime, the people tests the imperative need to achieve an evolution likely to improve its fate. ”

References

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