After periods of varying lengths under European rule, the four territorial entities of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco emerged as independent and relatively integrated nation-states. Of them only Tunisia had from the start had the potential for nationhood, because of her homogeneous population and a tradition of effective and centralized administration under the Husaynids going back to the eighteenth century. In Tunisia, as in the other three countries, foreign rule acted as the catalyst in nation-building. Through the bringing of the disparate parts of the colonized country under the authority of the colonizing power and the weakening of the organization of the tribes, as well as through the advances in communication and transportation achieved in the colonial period, the various groups came to have a greater sense of belonging to the same community.

The heterogeneous native groups were further brought together by the realization that regardless of their locality, social background, or educational attainment, they were all treated as different from and inferior to the foreign colonizers. As racial differentiation on the basis of colour was not always possible, and some of the Maghribi Muslims adopted the customs and ways of the Europeans, the distinction between colonizer and colonized came to be based on religion. The term ‘Muslim’ in Algeria, for example, became a generic one for the indigenous people. As a counterpart to ‘colon’ or ‘Algerian-French’ it signified backwardness, unprivileged political status, and generally being economically dispossessed.