L'École Rue du Pacha, Tunis: L'enseignement de la femme arabe et « la Plus Grande France » (1900-1914)

Abstract

Education for colonized women was a question long discussed in the French colonies, particularly in Islamic countries. The Ecole Millet, founded in 1900 in Tunis, was the first non missionary institution offering a modern curriculum for indigenous girls in French North Africa. But education is never an innocent business. In this article, I present four hypotheses. first is methodological in nature and suggests that investigation of a modest institution for muslims can serve as a point of access for the problematics of women and gender, nation state and empire. Secondly, the article treats education in Tunisia as a stake in state level conflicts, or rather a stake in competition among several nation states. These conflicts produced debate not only concerning the role of women in muslim societies under French control, but also concerning the obligation of metropolitant French women towards the empire. Also suggested is the idea that some French colonies were used as laboratories in which social reform programs could be tried out. Finally, if French expatriate women were given new roles in the overseas territories, sometimes they themselves took advantage of the colonial situation to create opportunities not available in the metropole.