Raffo inspired Ahmed bey’s reformist policies and the gradual rapprochement of the Regency with European powers. In 1846 he led a diplomatic mission to the United Kingdom alongside the British consul in Tunis, Richard Wood, a Syrian Jew named Rhattab who converted to Catholicism. The same year, he organized a state visit, the first of a sovereign Tunisian abroad: Ahmed I first went to Paris where he obtained a resounding diplomatic success that began the process of weakening Ottoman tutelage over Tunisia.
