The French attack on Algiers in 1830 had limited and ambiguous aims. Yet it set into motion forces which its initiators could not control, and which within twenty years made the French rulers of the whole of Algeria. The French installation in that country in turn had far-reaching effects on the development of French colonial ambitions in the rest of the Maghrib. It also, more than any other single factor, spurred on and coloured the major socio-political transformations which occurred in the region during the nineteenth century.

After 1830 the character of relations between the rulers of Tunisia, Morocco, and Tripolitania and the European powers underwent a change. The consuls of these powers emerged as centres of authority, using the weakness of the local rulers or their need for protection in order to advance the economic interests of their nationals at the expense of others, and by their ability to interfere in the functioning of the local administrations they fought with one another for prestige. The rulers of the Maghrib relied on compromise, concessions, and the rivalries between the powers to escape from being totally dominated by one of them. As long as the three European countries interested in the region, Britain, France, and Italy, were unable to agree on their respective zones of influence, France could not expand outside Algeria.