Female Agency and Colonial Repression: Memory and Archives in Tunisia
By Nora Lafi
This article is a shortened version of a MECAM Paper, originally published by the Merian Centre for Advanced Study in the Maghreb (MECAM) and the GIGA Institute in Hamburg, Germany, in 2024. The full version can be accessed here (also available in Arabic and French).

Female Agency as a Challenge to Colonial and Patriarchal Historical Narratives
On 5 February 1916 in Tataouine, southern Tunisia, the landed property of various people accused of rebellion by the colonial system of repression was put up for public auction in the town market. Among the victims of this violent act of eviction were several women, including Mariem and Mabrouka Ben A., as well as Aicha and Mariem K., Rim Bent K., and Regaia Bent A. They were accused of being, in colonial terminology, “rebels” (ANT, series A, box 208TER). The proceedings followed military crackdowns and an investigation by the French army:
“The sector battalion commander proposed that a seizure be made […]. The census of rebel property revealed that the above-mentioned woman, who had fled to Tripolitania with her husband, owned a certain number of buildings. It seems necessary not to leave her the property.”
Let us now seek to follow both the fate of these rebel women and the present memory of their struggles.
For a long time, historians neglected or even denied the agency of women in colonial contexts. Faced with the inertia of both Eurocentric and masculinist readings of history, since the 1990s, academic studies devoted to women’s capacity to act, to be conscious and autonomous in society, and to actively influence collective destinies have gradually proliferated. This movement has developed on the basis of both feminist theories and a philosophy of challenging paradigms of domination and dominant paradigms. Alternative narratives, methods, and concepts have emerged, ones that powerfully challenge traditional visions of past societies and preconceptions that continue to shape the present. The notion of “agency,” as defined in feminist historiography (Haicault 2012), has been central to such approaches.
Some scholars have also emphasized the importance of considering not only the fate but also the capacity for action of women from marginalized social backgrounds. These debates have been guided by critical discussions about the challenges of capturing the historical voices and actions of subaltern women (Spivak 2004). In response, historiography has increasingly focused on restoring agency to individuals who have often been paradoxically dispossessed of it, even in well-meaning attempts to highlight subaltern narratives (Navarro Tejero 2004). Scholars have argued that subaltern women not only had voices but also demonstrated significant agency, actively shaping their own historical realities (Davidson and Roach Pierson 2001).
For historians, such an approach raises fundamental questions about sources. The very conditions that led to the negation of female agency also mean that traces of it are rare in the archives, which overwhelmingly document male domination. These archival biases reinforce the image of a past in which women appear absent, shaping both contemporary narratives and projected futures (Lafi 2020). Consequently, historians face a dual challenge: first, to identify traces of women’s agency in historical records, and second, to reveal the ways in which women’s exclusion from these records has shaped enduring power structures.
In the case of the Arab world (Ghabrial 2016; Moghadam 2010) and the Ottoman Empire more broadly (Faroqhi 2023), scholars have sought to shift perspectives, revise chronologies, and develop analytical frameworks that acknowledge women’s capacity for action. This approach contrasts with colonial and Orientalist frameworks that often depicted women as doubly subjugated—both by local patriarchal structures and by colonial rule. By centering women’s agency, scholars have not only illuminated the nature of colonial domination but also explored how its legacies persist in postcolonial contexts (Prakash 1994; Sadiqi 2008; Sibeud 2004). Contemporary research also highlights the agency of the colonized, challenging traditional imperial narratives and reconnecting histories of empire with the lived experiences of affected societies (Edwards 2017; Cooper 1994).
Writing Feminist History Helps Decolonize Knowledge
With this approach in mind, I studied a collection held by the National Archives of Tunisia (ANT, Series A, Boxes 187 to 208). These records document the French military crackdown on resistance to colonization in southern Tunisia, a territory seized by France in 1881 after decades of colonial competition. The documents refer to individuals labeled as “rebels” by the colonial administration. Predictably, most of these records focus on men—fighters, political activists, protest leaders, and those resisting colonial rule. However, a significant number of women (20–25%) also appear in these documents, their identities and life trajectories preserved through the meticulous, often perverse, precision of colonial bureaucracy.
These women faced various forms of repression, revealing different modes of agency. Some were targeted for their family connections, such as being the wives, mothers, daughters, or sisters of resistance fighters. Rather than being passive figures, these women were drawn into the colonial state’s web of surveillance, police repression, and judicial control, leading to their own direct engagement in acts of resistance. This constituted the first type of agency: women’s social roles and their reactions to colonial intrusion. In 1899/1900, for example, Mabruka Bent K. was summoned to appear before the colonial courts in connection with her brother’s insurgent activities in the Matmata region (ANT, series A, box 187ter, file 207). Similar cases involved Mansoura Bent A. and Rima Bent B., both persecuted for their familial ties to known dissidents.
Other women were prosecuted for their own actions, demonstrating their direct involvement in resistance movements. This marks the second type of agency. The case of Fatma Bent M. Bent S. from the Ouled Ouezzan tribe falls into this category (ANT, series A, box 208ter, files 233, 234). Convicted of “rebellion” in 1915 in the Tataouine region, her properties were seized and auctioned off. The colonial administration extended this punishment to her heirs and co-owners, treating property expropriation as a collective punishment. The colonial authorities even sought to confiscate religious endowments (habous) associated with rebel families, systematically dismantling collective economic resources such as agricultural land, shops, and community infrastructure. This reveals how colonial repression targeted not only individuals but also the broader social and economic structures supporting indigenous communities.
A third type of agency emerges from these documents—one tied to women’s economic roles in southern Tunisia at the turn of the twentieth century. The confiscation of properties from rebel women indicates that they were landowners, merchants, and managers. Some archival records detail how these women actively maintained their businesses and agricultural holdings. This suggests that colonial repression sought not only to suppress political resistance but also to undermine the social and economic autonomy of women. Beyond physical violence—imprisonment, torture, forced displacement, and social degradation—colonial authorities strategically attacked women’s economic foundations.
Among the victims of this process were Khalifa Ben M. and her sisters, Meriem and Aicha, who were expropriated in Tataouine in 1915 through a ma‘rūḍ (expropriation order) issued by the colonial courts. Their family lands, covering approximately 150,000 square meters, were seized along with their date palm groves (ANT, series A box 208ter, file 2005). Another victim, Messaouda Bent M., faced similar expropriation in 1916 (ANT, series A, box 208ter, file 1997). Colonial repression also weaponized starvation as a tool of control. As Major Miquel, head of the Remada Bir Kecira outpost, noted:
“Since we will be closing off Tunisian territory to them, the Ouezzen tribe will be reduced to starvation… To ensure that sequestration is effective, we must provide the necessary military forces for its application” (ANT, series A, box files 233 and 234).
The stories of these rebel women provide critical insights into female agency in anti-colonial resistance. Writing history through this lens not only decolonizes historical narratives but also challenges dominant timelines of colonial conquest. Women’s resistance was continuous and integral to national struggles—far from the secondary role often assigned to them in mainstream accounts.
Click here to read the full paper.
About the Author
Nora Lafi worked on the theme of women rebels against colonization in the Maghreb during her stay as a Fellow at MECAM / University of Tunis in 2023/2024. She has a doctorate in History (1999) and the qualification to supervise research (2011). Since 2004, she has been a researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, where she directed the HISDEMAB research program on the historicity of democracy in the Arab world from 2020 to 2023. She also teaches at Freie Universität Berlin. She is a member of the group of supervisors at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. Within the EUME program (Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin), she co-directs the re-search area “Cities Compared: Governance, Participation and Diversity.” She has published numerous studies on the cities of the Ottoman Empire, on the civic dimension of urban governance in this context, and on the Arab world in general during the Ottoman and colonial periods
Citation: Nora Lafi, Female Agency and Colonial Repression: Memory and Archives in Tunisia, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 11.03.2025, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/55784
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (March 11, 2025). Female Agency and Colonial Repression: Memory and Archives in Tunisia. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved March 25, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13g7a