The crushing Bizerta riposte backfired and cost de Gaulle his only Arab ally

Evidence

By riposting with such crushing force, de Gaulle may well also have had at the back of his mind one final display of military might to impress the F.L.N. all the way to the peace table — much as President Nixon was to launch his all-out bombing of Hanoi on the eve of peace over a decade later. But, if this was his aim, it was equally counter-productive. In disillusion Bourguiba remarked: “I had wanted little Tunisia to become the West’s postage stamp on the African continent. Now all that is over.” After Bizerta, it would take France a year even to re-establish diplomatic relations with Bourguiba; meanwhile, de Gaulle lost his one ally capable of exerting a moderating influence on the G.P.R.A. and of encouraging it to accept peace terms in any way beneficial to France. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1443

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘postage stamp on the African continent’ quote captures the aspiration/settlement of a client-state relationship that the reader tracks across colonial Africa.
• XREF: connects to: France’s crushing victory at Bizerta destroyed its key Tunisian ally.; French retaliation at Bizerta killed over seven hundred Tunisians in three days — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1443

Related

• France’s crushing victory at Bizerta destroyed its key Tunisian ally. (similarity 0.92)
• Bourguiba attacked Bizerta partly to burnish his nationalist prestige (similarity 0.82)
• French retaliation at Bizerta killed over seven hundred Tunisians in three days (similarity 0.82)
• Bourguiba survived opposing French and FLN pressures as key intermediary (similarity 0.80)
• Bizerta cost about 700 Tunisian lives while French losses were minimal. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• French retaliation at Bizerta killed over seven hundred Tunisians in three days #expands (0.60) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1443