Before being called Tunisia, the area was known as Ifriqiya or Africa. It was the home of the ancient city of Carthage which started as a Phoenician colony founded in 814 BC. Like the later Hanseatic league of the Baltic, various market towns and city states were connected through trade and mutual defence. The idea of a state wasn't a contiguous piece of land. We could travel by sea before we could share ideas beyond our community through language. The edges of what we call continents are not borders. They aren't even edges. We are defined by what we connect to, not by what we are separate from. Tunisia was one of the first Mediterranean countries to sign an Association agreement with the European Union in 1995, slowly chipping away at the barriers and becoming a Free Trade area with the EU by 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment