February 10, 2026
Hèla Yousfi, Associate professor, Paris Dauphine University - PSL
"The indigenous cling to their land, even when it ruins them.” Resident-General, Tunisia, January 31, 1912
Arabic version
The case of the Gafsa Phosphate and Railway Company- Compagnie des phosphates et du chemin de fer de Gafsa- (CPG), founded in 1897 under French colonial rule, offers a revealing lens into how colonial extractivist capitalism structured not only Tunisia’s economic landscape but also its patterns of labor organization, social hierarchies, and political struggles. This paper aims to revisit the history of the Gafsa Phosphate and Railway Company, located at the heart of the economic and political forces that shaped the anatomy of French colonial extractivist capitalism in Tunisia, providing the structuring matrix for Tunisia's post-independence economic and political trajectory. Drawing primarily on the company's colonial archives, which document the transition from agriculture and nomadism to the world of mine workers as well as union struggles, this article explores how the colonial enterprise shaped both Tunisia's political economy and the organization of labor. The company’s extractivist and racially segmented management system laid the foundations for enduring regional inequalities, forms of social domination, and the persistence of clientelist governance in postcolonial Tunisia.
Through three analytical movements—the colonial formation of extractivist capitalism, the racial and tribal organization of labor, and the post-independence reproduction of asymmetries and regional inequalities culminating in the 2008 Gafsa revolt—this article explores how the colonial enterprise shaped both Tunisia's political economy and the organization of labor.
I. Colonial Capitalism and the Foundations of Extractivist Management
1. The political economy of colonial extraction
The establishment of the CPG in 1897 marked the consolidation of French economic domination in Tunisia. Following the 1881 protectorate treaty, the colonial administration sought to transform Tunisia into a supplier of raw materials for the metropole’s industrial expansion. As Yousfi (2017) shows, the CPG became the embodiment of extractivist capitalism—a system defined by the large-scale extraction of natural resources for export with minimal local transformation or reinvestment (Acosta, 2013).
The discovery of phosphate deposits in the Gafsa basin by geologist Philippe Thomas in 1885 coincided with France’s ideological justification for empire. Jules Ferry’s famous claim that “superior races have the duty to civilize inferior races” provided the moral cover for what was essentially a project of economic predation. Financed by major Parisian banks such as Mirabaud and Hottinguer and industrial groups like Mokta-el-Hadid, the CPG secured a 60-year concession to exploit a vast area of 500 km² and to build a railway linking the mines to the port of Sfax.
The economic logic of the enterprise was clear: maximize profits through minimal investment, cheap labor, and state-supported infrastructure. Between 1897 and 1956, between 90 and 100 million tons of Tunisian phosphate were exported, mainly to France and other European powers, generating massive profits for investors but leaving behind widespread poverty and environmental degradation (Dupont, 1952). The colonial administration’s role was to ensure this profitability by expropriating land, controlling labor, and maintaining order through coercion. During the colonial period, between 90 and 100 million tonnes of Tunisian phosphates were unjustly exported to European countries such as France, Italy, Belgium, the UK and Germany. This excerpt from an article by Maurice Dupont in 1952 illustrates the mechanisms of the colonial fossil economy established in Tunisia:
“We saw colonization in North Africa lead to Muslims being dispossessed of their soil and driven to the least favorable lands, while agricultural speculation took on a particular orientation, with subsistence production occupying only a derisory place. Subsurface mining, although very old—lead mines, in particular—was neglected at the time of the conquest. The Europeans took over the subsurface without resistance and, above all, without sharing it. The entire mining industry is colonial property. High finance controls mining much more directly than agriculture. Certain financial firms have achieved a virtual monopoly on subsurface commodities. Commodities, because the organization of the country's mining industry, as always, has been at the taxpayers' expense. Mining involves a number of operations that are profitable to varying degrees. In a country whose geology was initially poorly understood, prospecting and research are expensive and often unpredictable activities. Basic investments, such as the construction of railroads, roads and ports for the transport of minerals, are also costly and only profitable in the long term. On the other hand, once geological research and prospecting have identified certain deposits, and roads and ports have been built, the mining industry can extract the commodities without any worries. In North Africa, the big companies have entrusted the state with ‘the first two operations, reserving the third for themselves. Public expenditure and private profit are at odds when it comes to starting up mining operations, and the direction in which they are taken snuffs out any hope of improving the population's standard of living. The ore is often exported unprocessed, without being beneficiation, and North Africa is thus deprived of the wages that beneficiation would bring, as well as of the capital that could remain in the country. We won't go into the history of how these “interests” were established in the subsurface, or the speculation that local mining laws seemed designed to encourage. We will limit ourselves to an analysis of the current situation.” (Maurice Dupont, Esprit, août-septembre 1952)
2. The state as a guarantor of exploitation
The colonial state was instrumental in legitimizing and protecting the CPG’s operations. Through legal instruments such as the 1893 decree that classified phosphate deposits as “quarries” belonging to the landowner—effectively the colonial state—it facilitated the transfer of indigenous lands to foreign investors. The military was deployed to suppress local resistance and secure mining territories (Dougui, 1982).
This mode of governance reflected the logic of “public costs, private profits”: the Tunisian taxpayer financed infrastructure such as railways and ports, while profits flowed abroad. The colonial model thus established an enclave economy disconnected from local development. As Baduel (1981) notes, the CPG destroyed traditional agro-pastoral systems without creating alternative industries, embedding structural dependence into the regional economy.
3. Extractivism as colonial management
The CPG’s management practices epitomized the colonial rationality of control and efficiency. Its administrative hierarchy mirrored the racial order of empire: European engineers and managers occupied the top levels, while “indigenous” workers performed manual labor under severe conditions. Work organization prioritized discipline over skill development, efficiency over welfare. The Tunisian workforce, displaced from agriculture, was transformed into a proletariat without rights or representation—a process that would later shape the birth of the labor movement.
In this way, the CPG became both a laboratory of colonial management and a precursor of Tunisia’s postcolonial developmental model—centralized, rentier, and dependent on external capital.
II. Racialized Labor and the Making of the “People of the Mines”
1. Segregation and paternalism
The CPG created a social world that was spatially and racially segregated. European employees lived in well-serviced quarters with electricity, medical care, and recreational facilities, while Tunisian workers and migrant laborers from Algeria, Libya, and Morocco lived in overcrowded, underdeveloped neighborhoods. This segregation was not merely social but also organizational: the division of labor corresponded to the colonial hierarchy of race and origin. Europeans occupied supervisory positions; Tunisians and North Africans worked as unskilled laborers.
The company’s paternalistic management structure reinforced dependence. By controlling housing, healthcare, and education, the CPG functioned as both employer and local state—a microcosm of colonial governance where the “patron” was also the “colonizer.” This created a form of total institutional control that blurred the line between economic exploitation and political domination.
2. Labor, tribe, and class
While colonial officials often dismissed Tunisian workers as “backward” or “tribal,” these very social solidarities became crucial in sustaining resistance. As Yousfi (2017) and Amami (2008) note, the organization of labor at the CPG intertwined capitalist wage relations with pre-existing tribal and regional structures. Workers from the same tribe or locality often lived and worked together, fostering collective identities that transcended racial hierarchies.
This hybrid social formation produced what might be called a localized proletariat—a working class bound by both labor and lineage. Contrary to colonial stereotypes that tribalism hindered modernization, these networks enabled workers to organize collectively, culminating in the rise of early trade unions. By the 1920s, Tunisian workers, marginalized within French unions like the CGT affiliated to the communist party, began to form autonomous organizations such as the Confédération Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (CGTT) and later the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT), which became a cornerstone of national liberation (Yousfi, 2017).
3. Rebellion and repression
The violent suppression of the 1937 miners’ strike marked a turning point in Tunisia’s labor history. When 6,000 miners went on strike for better wages and conditions, colonial troops responded with lethal force, killing 17 and wounding 29. The massacre revealed the inseparability of labor struggle and anti-colonial resistance. As Simone Weil wrote in Le Sang Coule en Tunisie (1937), the bloodshed exposed the moral bankruptcy of the colonial project and foreshadowed the “great revenge of the colonized peoples.”
These events forged the myth of the “people of the mines”—a community defined by suffering, dignity, and defiance. The collective memory of resistance in Gafsa became a foundational element of Tunisia’s political consciousness, resurfacing in later waves of protest throughout the 20th century.
III. Post-Independence Continuity and the 2008 Gafsa Revolt
1. Nationalization without transformation
Following independence in 1956, the Tunisian state “Tunisified” the CPG, acquiring a 51% stake in 1959. However, as Yousfi (2017) demonstrates, this political shift did not fundamentally alter the extractivist model. The state replaced colonial capital with bureaucratic control but maintained the same logic of centralized accumulation. The phosphate industry continued to serve as a major source of national revenue, yet profits remained concentrated in coastal regions, leaving the mining basin impoverished.
In the decades that followed, the CPG’s role oscillated between industrial enterprise and social provider. It financed housing, schools, and hospitals, functioning as a quasi-state in the Gafsa region. But the structural imbalances inherited from colonial rule—regional inequality, dependence on raw exports, and authoritarian management—persisted under new nationalist rhetoric.
2. Neoliberal reforms and social dislocation
The economic liberalization of the 1980s marked a new phase of disempowerment. Under structural adjustment programs imposed by the World Bank, the CPG underwent massive restructuring, resulting in the loss of over 10,000 jobs by 1986 (Allal, 2010). Efficiency and profitability replaced employment and welfare as the company’s guiding principles.
These reforms deepened existing inequalities: while the CPG modernized its operations, local communities faced soaring unemployment and environmental degradation. Recruitment became a site of corruption and clientelism, managed through networks linking company officials, local branches of the ruling party (RCD), and the UGTT. The resulting sense of injustice culminated in the 2008 uprising, when rejected job applicants and unemployed youth took to the streets of Redeyef, demanding “work, dignity, and justice.”
3. The 2008 uprising: a rehearsal for 2011 Tunisian revolution
The 2008 Gafsa revolt was the most significant social movement in Tunisia since the “bread riots” of 1984. Triggered by allegations of nepotism in CPG hiring practices, it quickly evolved into a broader critique of systemic corruption, regional marginalization, and authoritarianism. Over six months of sustained protest, demonstrators—joined by women, students, and trade unionists—challenged the legitimacy of the Ben Ali regime (Chouikha and Geisser, 2010).
The state’s response was brutal: mass arrests, torture, and the killing of several protesters. Yet, as Yousfi (2017) notes, the revolt had already exposed the cracks in Tunisia’s “economic miracle.” It revealed how decades of neoliberal and clientelist governance had reproduced the same extractivist dynamics established under colonialism—an economy dependent on natural resource rents and sustained by coercive state power.
In hindsight, the Gafsa movement was a precursor to the 2010–2011 revolution. Its slogans, actors, and grievances foreshadowed the uprising that began in Sidi Bouzid, another marginalized inland region, and culminated in the fall of Ben Ali. The continuity between colonial extraction, postcolonial rentierism, and neoliberal precarity underscores the enduring legacy of the CPG as both a symbol and a structure of domination.
Rethinking Colonial Legacy through the lens of national public corporations
The history of the Compagnie des phosphates et du chemin de fer de Gafsa encapsulates the trajectory of Tunisia’s political economy from colonial subjugation to postcolonial dependency. As this article has shown, the CPG was not simply a mining company—it was a social institution that organized labor, space, and power according to the principles of extractivist capitalism. Its racialized and hierarchical management model served as a prototype for the broader colonial governance system, while its postcolonial successor preserved the same structures under new ideological banners.
The “Gafsa model” highlights three enduring dimensions of colonial management. First, the economic dimension, where extraction without transformation entrenched dependence and inequality. Second, the organizational dimension, where hierarchical and racialized labor relations shaped Tunisia’s managerial culture. Third, the political dimension, where the fusion of economic control and coercive power sustained domination across eras.
Ultimately, the persistence of social unrest—from the 1937 massacre to the 2008 uprising—reveals the limits of development strategies built on extraction and exclusion. “The people of the mines,” once subjects of colonial exploitation, have become the conscience of the nation, reminding us that genuine modernization cannot emerge from systems that reproduce inequality and dispossession.
Revisiting the CPG’s history thus invites a rethinking of management itself—not as a neutral technical practice, but as a social and political project rooted in power relations. Understanding Tunisia’s present requires confronting this colonial genealogy, acknowledging how extractivist management has shaped not only its economy but also its visions of justice, work, and community.
References
Acosta, A. (2013). Extractivism and neoextractivism: Two sides of the same curse. In Beyond Development: Alternative Visions from Latin America.
Allal, A. (2010). Neoliberal reforms, clientelism, and protest under authoritarianism: The Gafsa mining basin in Tunisia. Politique Africaine, 117, 107–125.
Baduel, P.R. (1981). Gafsa comme enjeu. Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord, CRESM.
Dougui, N. (1995). Histoire d’une grande entreprise coloniale : la CPG, 1897–1930. Tunis: Faculté des lettres de La Manouba.
Dupont, M. (1952). Les intérêts français contre l’intérêt de la France en Afrique du Nord. Esprit, July.
Yousfi, H. (2017). Trade unions and Arab revolutions, the Tunisian case of UGTT, Routledge.
Chouikha, L., & Geisser, V. (2010). Retour sur la révolte du bassin minier. L’Année du Maghreb, VI, 415–426.
Benjamin, W. (1942/2000). On the Concept of History. In Œuvres III. Paris: Gallimard.