Although Rome had signed several treaties with Carthage and recognised its power, the Roman leaders watched closely for an opportunity to overthrow it. War clouds gathered and three bloody struggles -- the Punic Wars -- were fought. In the third and last of these, which took place in 149-146BC, the Carthaginians were completely defeated and the city of Carthage destroyed by Scipio's army.

Carthaginian territory, roughly corresponding to modern Tunisia, was made a Roman province known as "Africa Vetus". As a province of Rome, the land was intensively cultivated and provided the Romans with wood, wool, olive oil and wheat. The region's prosperity grew, and a large number of cities spread across the province. Many archaeological sites today bear witness to the splendour of both pre-Roman and Roman Carthage.

The Vandals and Islam
By the 5th century AD, the power of Rome was weakening and the province known as Africa fell to a Teutonic tribe, the Vandals, in about AD430. The Vandals ruled for a century before Rome, under Belisarius, re-captured it in about AD534. Arab invaders conquered the region in the 7th century AD, and the former Romano-Christian culture was replaced by Islam.

The land was now known as Ifriqiya, and power was wielded by a succession of ruling dynasties, including the Aghlabites, the Fatimids and, by the 10th century, the Zeirids. The capital was moved from Carthage to al-Kaiouan. Later invasions were made by the Sicilian Normans under Roger II in the 12th century and by the Spanish in the first half of the 16th century.

In 1574, Ottoman armies defeated the Spanish, and Tunisia became part of the Ottoman Empire. A period of peace and stability followed, with Turkish imperial rule effected through local governors, known first as deys and later as beys. The first of these, al-Husayn ibn Ali (ruled 1705-1740) founded the Husaynid dynasty and established considerable prosperity in the region.

Much of this prosperity was founded on piracy. This had been an important Tunisian enterprise for several centuries, with Tunisia receiving 'protection money' in the form of bribes from a large number of sea-going nations. The Barbary Coast of North Africa harboured several corsair bases, all of which flourished during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The end came in 1815, when the US Navy attacked Tunis and put an end to its piratical source of revenue.

French colonisation
The demise of piracy and the resulting loss of revenue plunged the region into economic chaos. France, Italy and Great Britain all sought to realise their imperialistic ambitions in Tunisia, and in 1881, France wielded the upper hand in the signing of the Bardo Treaty (Treaty of Kasser Said), which acknowledged Tunisia as a French protectorate.

During the late 1880s a group of French settlers colonised the region along the northern coast. They began opening businesses and exerted a strong Western influence on the hitherto Arab culture. Although the bey was still Tunisia's nominal ruler, the country was effectively governed by a French resident general. Despite some unrest by local patriotic movements, Tunisia remained a French protectorate until 1956.

During the Second World War, Tunisia supported the Vichy government which ruled France after its capitulation to the Nazis in 1940. Allied forces landed in Algeria and Morocco and there was fierce fighting between the Allies and the German forces, resulting in Germany's capitulation in north Africa in 1943. Control of Tunisia was immediately handed over to the Free French and the reigning bey was arrested as a German collaborator. This exacerbated bad feeling against the French authorities and eventually resulted in a renewal of nationalist unrest.

Violent resistance to French rule boiled up in 1954. The French premier, Pierre Mendes-France, arrived in July of that year to attempt conciliation and, after lengthy negotiations, France promised the protectorate full internal autonomy under a Tunisian government. France was to retain control of foreign policy and defence, however.

This proposition proved acceptable to the nationalist leaders and the first all-Tunisian government was set up in September 1954. Not all nationalists were content with the new regime, however, and pressed for even greater independence. In March 1956, a treaty was signed in Paris, invalidating the Bardo Treaty of 1881, and recognising Tunisia as a sovereign state, ruled as a constitutional monarchy under the bey. Tunisia, the northernmost country of Africa has for over 3000 years witnessed the passage of Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Turks, Spanish and French. They came as fugitive s or adventurers, to conquer or to claim, warriors and missionaries, traders and farmers each leaving a part of their story in stone or mosaics, on hills of Carthage and the threshold of the Sahara.

The first Tunisian elections took place in April 1956 and the Tunisian statesman Habib Bourguiba was elected President of the first National Assembly. Bourguiba had previously been head of the national liberation movement, Neo-Destour. Tunisia became a member of the United Nations in November 1956.

During the following year, the bey was finally overthrown and Tunisia was proclaimed a republic, with Bourguiba elected President. Many French residents departed in haste, fearing local reprisals, and relations with France deteriorated still further in 1957 with clashes between Tunisian and French troops along the Algerian border. The 1958 bombing of the Tunisian village of Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef by French military planes killed 68 Tunisians and wounded a further 100. The French government stated that this attack had been retaliatory action for Tunisian support of Algeria over independence.

Tunisia demanded the French evacuation of a naval base at Bizerte, and Tunisian troops held the base under siege in July 1961. A UN cease-fire was demanded, and France was asked by the UN General Assembly to withdraw from Bizerte. After lengthy discussion, France did withdraw in October 1963.

In 1957, the Bey was overthrown and a republic proclaimed, with Bourguiba as President. Despite independence, the French insisted on holding onto a naval base at Bizerta on the northern coast, but lost it in 1963 after a naval blockade by the Tunisians and several months of heavy fighting.

The ruling Parti Socialiste Destourien (renamed Rassemblement Constitutionel Democratique in 1988), successor to the NDP, has maintained a strong grip. Bourguiba pursued unsuccessful socialist policies in the early part of his regime, but in the 1970s opened the economy up to foreign investment and allowed the development of a private sector.

By the crude measure of per capita domestic income, the lot of the Tunisians greatly improved during this second phase. At the time of his fall from power in November 1987, Bourguiba had been in control for 30 years, at first through elections to the single party, and after 1975 as President-for-Life.

Following a pronouncement by his own team of doctors that Bourguiba was no longer of sound mind, Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali assumed the presidency unopposed.

Tunisia has played host to the leadership and many of the fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation since their enforced departure from the Lebanon following the Israeli invasion in 1982.

An important foreign policy development occurred in February 1989 with the formation of the Union of the Arab Maghreb, conceived as a political and economic bloc in north Africa, in response to the EC in Europe, and comprising Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia.

As President Ben Ali consolidated his position, the Government introduced economic reforms to complement the political liberalisation process. Tunisia has watched developments in neighbouring Algeria with increasing concern, but the thwarting of the fundamentalists by the Algerian government has been followed by an improvement in relations.

Tunisia has its own influential Islamic movement, Nahda, but it is not a legal political party within the Government.

Nahda has grown quickly in the last few years and may have benefited from outside funding. The Islamists have not benefited from the partial relaxation of previous strict controls of political parties which has been underway since the early 1980s.

Candidates other than those from the PSD are now able to stand for election, but there are definite limits to political dissent which the government will not tolerate, as the arrest and detention of the leaders of the communists and Democratic Socialists at various times in the last 18 months illustrate.

Presidential elections were held in March 1994 and Ben Ali was re-elected with 99.90f the vote. At legislative elections held at the same time, half of the 19 seats reserved for the opposition were allocated to the Democratic Socialists, and the others divided between the Mouvement de la Renovation (formerly the communists), the Union Democratique Unioniste and the Parti de l'Unit? Populaire.

Abroad, because of the crisis in Algeria, Tunisia has taken over some of the traditional mediating role which was frequently assumed by Algeria (during the Iran-Iraq war, for example).

A recent example is Tunisia's mediation in the dispute between the West and Libya over the extradition of Libyan suspects for the Lockerbie aircraft bombing in 1987.