A Mobile Boundary: Empires, Nomads, and Refugees between Tripolitania and Tunisia

This article introduces the concept of a “mobile boundary” in the context of North Africa from 1881 to 1893, when various non-state actors resisted French and Ottoman attempts to delineate an official border between Tripolitania and Tunisia. By focusing on the activities of nomadic, tribal, and refugee populations, this study explores how these groups created a mobile boundary, one defined by their fluid mobility and identities and challenges to imperial conceptions of fixed borders. It challenges prevailing narratives on the making of the Tripolitania-Tunisia border that emphasize the cartographic diplomacy between France and the Ottoman Empire following the establishment of the French protectorate over Tunisia in 1881. This manuscript highlights the mobility of various non-state actors in destabilizing imperial cartographic conceptions of the Tripolitania-Tunisia border and the imperial attempt to manage mobility and settlement to advance state interests. It argues that these mobile populations continually reshaped imperial conceptions of the Tripolitania-Tunisian border and contributed to new challenges the French and Ottoman empires had to address. It also contends that tensions over the border evolved into attempts to exploit the mobility of “nomads-cum-refugees” as a destabilizing force to secure imperial interests.