Habib Bourguiba the meeting, Bourguiba was sent to Paris to set forth the platform of the party. In France, he became close to the Tunisian nationalist students such as Habib Thameur, Hédi Nouira and Slimane Ben Slimane. Furthermore, he met under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, Pierre Viénot, on 6 July 1936. This publicly stated interview was unpopular among the French colonialists in Tunisia, which led later meetings to be conducted secretly. But French authorities were opposed to the hopes of Tunisian militants, and some of them even thought that it was a mere illusion. When he returned to Tunis, in September,
Early life of Habib Bourguiba on the very night he got back home, in 1865. When he left the army, France had just taken full control over the country, with the signature of the Bardo Treaty on May 12, 1881 and the Conventions of La Marsa of June 8, 1883, which established the French protectorate with the approval of Sadok Bey. One year before its establishment, Ali Bourguiba, who was 30 years old, married Fattouma Khefacha, daughter of Ahmed Khefacha and Khadouja Mzali, which linked the Bourguiba family to the Mzali one (family of Habib Bourguiba's future prime minister Mohamed Mzali). Impoverished, the family was