M'hamed Belkhûja (Tunis, 1869-1943) : Un historien en situation coloniale

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M’hamed Belkhûja (1869-1943), historien et fonctionnaire du Protectorat, est une personnalité troublante aux yeux de l’historiographie nationaliste, en partie à cause de sa collaboration à l’administration coloniale. Pour situer son apport à l’histoire contemporaine, cet article présente le personnage politique, sa formation bilingue entre deux traditions académiques comme il replace son œuvre dans son cadre de production et de réception, révélateur de mixage culturel. L’itinéraire comme les écrits de ce lettré tunisien témoignent des lieux et des formes d’élaboration d’une histoire nationale en situation coloniale, partagée entre l’affirmation patriotique d’un passé et sa formulation selon des codes d’expression nouveaux, tels que l’article de revue.

M’hamed Belkhûja (Tunis, 1869-1943)A historian and a civil servant in the Protectorate Era in Tunisia, MB (1869-1943) appears as a blurred figure in nationalist historiography as he was involved with colonial administration. To assess his contribution to Tunisian contemporary history, this article traces his political career and his bilingual training in two different academic traditions. It also reconstructs the context of his research and writings, a context indicative of cultural mixing. His trajectory as well as his works point to places and ways in which a national history could be built out of a colonial situation. This history was torn between a patriotic assertion of the past and its reformulation according to new codes of expression such as articles in academic journals.