Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945

by Philip Shukry Khoury

Overview

Why did Syrian political life continue to be dominated by a particular urban elite even after the dramatic changes following the end of four hundred years of Ottoman rule and the imposition of French control? Philip Khoury's comprehensive work discusses this and other questions in the framework of two related conflicts—one between France and the Syrian nationalists, and the other between liberal and radical nationalism.

Originally published in 1987.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691632995
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Studies on the Near East , #487
Pages:	722
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.00(d)

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Syria and the French Mandate

The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945

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By Philip S. Khoury

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1987 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05486-5

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CHAPTER 1

PRELUDE TO MANDATE

In 1920, France received the Mandate for Syria and Lebanon in recognition of the "special" position she had established for herself in these territories before World War I. This is especially remarkable since after the war her military and political position was inferior to Britain's, the composition of her interests in Syria and Lebanon were, to say the least, grossly uneven, and only a small number of Frenchmen, representing a rather narrow range of interests in France, were actively committed to adding this region to the French Empire. France's claim to such a position rested on three pillars: moral, political, and economic. Although the foundations of each pillar were laid well before the twentieth century, it was only in the years immediately preceding the Great War that these pillars were significantly reinforced. Even then, each pillar contained structural flaws which were to bring instability to French rule after 1920.

The Three Pillars

French moral influence stemmed from her religious protectorate, which dated from the seventeenth century and spanned the entire Middle East. After 1900, France not only deepened her religious and cultural interests but also narrowed their focus to Syria and Lebanon. Apart from a network of Catholic schools and other religious institutions supported by an array of missionary societies and the French government, French moral influence was disseminated through a growing system of lay education.

Use of a religious protectorate to establish a sphere of influence caused serious problems for French policy. Most glaring was that France's educational and other missionary activities appealed only to Syria's Uniate communities, especially the Maronites who were concentrated in Mount Lebanon and Beirut. French commitment to a Catholic protectorate automatically raised cultural and political barriers between Frenchmen directly involved in Syrian affairs — whether missionaries, traders, or officials of the Quai d'Orsay — and the Muslim majority. In support of France's focus, a rather simplistic, if not biased, understanding of the nature of social relations and interaction in Syria was developed. To the French, Syria contained a variety of religious and ethnic communities generally at odds with the Muslim majority to which they were bound by little more than common language, geography, and superficial political history. Given the skew of French moral influence, Frenchmen preferred to emphasize social and cultural differences among Syrians and to interpret these as the product of endemic sectarian conflict. In so doing, Frenchmen overlooked or discounted certain socio-economic and cultural affinities which encouraged members of different religious communities to undertake collective political action. This facile interpretation of the nature of Syrian society in terms of sectarian conflict also incorporated the French notion of "progress" which, in the Syrian situation, pitted a numerically weak but socially and culturally superior Christian minority, with an unquenchable thirst for European knowledge and values, against a large community of fanatical, narrow-minded, and intellectually underdeveloped Muslims bent on obstructing progress in all areas of Syrian life. The French proclivity to interpret all unrest in terms of sectarian ties and conflicts precluded a proper understanding of collective Arab aims and common political action on the eve of the First World War.

The French government expanded its political influence in the early twentieth century by developing ties with ascendant political movements in the region. The way it did so reflected French misconceptions and biases about the nature of Syria and the rather narrow range of French influence there. In particular, the French sought influence with two political movements, one Lebanese and the other Syrian-Arab. Both were reformist and increasingly nationalistic. The Lebanese movement, led by Maronites and purely Christian in membership, called for greater political autonomy from the Ottoman Turks for the special district of Mount Lebanon, known as the mutasarrifiyya. After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and growing Ottoman efforts to tie the Empire's provinces more tightly to Istanbul, the Lebanese movement adopted ideas of political separatism and territorial expansion under French protection. The Syrian-Arab movement was composed of Muslims and Christians, although its effective leadership was Muslim. It also agitated for greater administrative decentralization in the Syrian provinces. Not surprisingly, the Quai d'Orsay showed much greater sympathy and understanding for the aspirations of the Lebanese. The French government became closely involved with the Lebanese reform movement from the beginning of the century; it only began to take serious notice of Syrian political aspirations in 1912.

In that year, France decided to deepen her political influence in the key centers of political activity — Damascus and Beirut — by making official contact with and offering cautious support to the disaffected leadership of the Syrian-Arab reform movement. At the same time, French officials advised radical elements against any separation from the Ottoman Empire. By so doing, the Quai d'Orsay hoped to obstruct the efforts of other European Powers, especially Britain, to secure a political foothold in Syria through an alliance with the reform movement and to prevent the type of political upheavals that could internationalize the Syrian political question and threaten France's claim to exclusive influence in the whole region.

Although leaders of the Syrian reform movement distrusted French intentions, owing in large part to the religious thrust of French moral influence, they nevertheless concluded that only the European Powers were capable of persuading the Ottoman government of the importance of administrative decentralization. Political leaders in Damascus and Beirut never concealed their worries about French ambitions in Syria, but they hoped that France might use her good offices to assist them in wresting concessions from Istanbul. An appeal to European assistance did not guarantee that it would be forthcoming, however.

Syrian activists held an Arab Congress in Paris in June 1913. It adopted a reform program which the French government backed in Istanbul. Despite French advocacy, the Ottoman government refused to accept the fundamental principles of decentralization enumerated in the Congress program and Syrian sentiment moved toward separatism. In the meantime, the French government entered into complicated and lengthy negotiations with the Porte regarding a large French loan to Istanbul in return for exclusive railroad concessions in Syria. Syrian nationalist leaders, who had been led to believe by the French Consul in Damascus that one of the conditions of the loan was the establishment of a suitable Syrian reform program, had their hopes dashed when a final agreement was signed in April 1914. The Empire got its loan and France her railroad concessions as well as formal guarantees for her religious establishments in Syria, but there was no mention of a Syrian reform program.

Whether the French government had actually misled the Syrian reform movement leadership is a moot point: the Syrians thought they had done so. From their perspective, France had abandoned the reform program in order to satisfy her own economic interests as well as those of her Christian clients. In the four months before the war broke out, the sentiments of the Syrian reformers became increasingly separatist in orientation and blatantly anti-French. A massive propaganda campaign was waged in Damascus, Aleppo, and Beirut against French influence in Syria. France was accused of abandoning the Syrian-Arab reform movement for an exclusive sphere of economic influence in Syria.

The French decision to withdraw support from the reform program was in line with France's imperialist logic. Viable and secure economic interests in Syria gave her the international recognition needed to finalize her claim to an exclusive position there. In the process, however, France failed to gauge the depth of national sentiment in Syria. Although she had helped to guarantee her claim to Syria, she hampered her ability to win popularity and political influence among the vast majority of Syrians.

The third pillar of French influence in Syria was economic. France was at the vanguard of European efforts to absorb the Ottoman Empire into the world market, even though her total investment in the Empire was less than 40 percent of what she had invested in Russia and only equal to her investments in Egypt. Nevertheless, between 1890 and 1914 France was by far the largest investor in the Ottoman Empire. On the eve of World War I, her investments were more than double that of her nearest rival, Germany. Britain's investments, which ranked third, were minuscule by comparison. In 1913, French capitalists controlled 63 percent of the Ottoman Public Debt. They, along with their British counterparts, owned and directed the Imperial Ottoman Bank which "controlled the tobacco monopoly, several utilities, railway and industrial issues, and other business ramifications."

By 1900, French financial investments in Syria were firmly established, although the value of French trade with Syria was less than the value of trade of France's European rivals in the region, a gap she sought to narrow. The Imperial Ottoman Bank, which issued the Ottoman currency and often served as an agent of the Quai d'Orsay, had active branches in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Tripoli. The Beirut branch of the Credit Lyonnais was a key link between the silk industry of Mount Lebanon and silk factories in Lyons. In the transportation sector, French investors constructed the first paved road connecting Beirut with Damascus in 1857, and a French-owned company monopolized transport along the road. In the 1890s, French companies also constructed the port of Beirut and a railroad line connecting Beirut with Damascus and the Hawran.

The bulk of European investments in Syrian industries were also French. Financiers were primarily concerned with providing home industries with processed raw materials. The growing demand of Lyons and Marseilles silk factories for spun silk after the mid-nineteenth century, owing in large part to the destruction of French sericulture by disease, encouraged French banks and individual capitalists to finance new sericulture ventures and the construction of silk-spinning factories. By the early twentieth century, French capital financed the majority of Lebanese factories. The Régie de Tabac, a French-owned company established in 1883, completely replaced the Ottoman government in determining the mode of tobacco production in the Empire and collecting taxes on the crop and customs duties on all imports and exports of tobacco products by 1904. The Régie was one result of a "series of arrangements made by the Ottoman government with its European creditors in the wake of its bankruptcy" in the mid-1870s. It appeared at a time when tobacco growing in Syria was undergoing a major revival, which led the Régie to construct tobacco-processing factories in Damascus and Aleppo. By 1914, French companies not only owned all but one of the railroads that crisscrossed Syria (the exception being the Muslim-owned Hijaz Railway), but French capital had also been put into public utilities in Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo.

This type of expansion based on capital export and trade reflected a particular stage of Western capitalist development and manifested itself in intensified European competition for spheres of economic influence after 1870. It also had uneven effects on the development of the Syrian economy, as it did in so many other primary-producing regions of the world. The most noticeable feature of this lopsided development was that the Syrian coast and Mount Lebanon received far more attention from French capitalism than did the Syrian interior, even though the heavy concentration of French capital in railway lines and roads helped to bridge the geographical division between coast and interior created by two mountain ranges and thereby provided an outlet to the sea for agricultural produce and other raw materials from Syria's interior plains. The uneven effects of French investment on the Syrian economy correlated almost perfectly with the uneven effects of French moral and political influence.

France's financial investments in the region, like her religious and political investments, were concentrated in Beirut and Mount Lebanon where her strongest moral and political links were to the Christians. Thus, whereas the Syrian coast and interior became more economically interdependent, France's relationship favored the coast, and particularly Beirut, with its inextricable link to the French economy. The easy accessibility of the coastal strip and Mount Lebanon to France allowed the Christians of Beirut and the mutasarrifiyya to reap the lion's share of economic and political benefits created by the overall French involvement in Syria. By 1914, the effects of this unbalanced French expansion were already visible in the divergent political aspirations of Lebanese Maronites and other Catholics and Syria's Muslim majority. Nevertheless, by 1914, France had established her claim to an exclusive option on Syria in the event of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The war struck the long-awaited death blow to the Empire and France's claim was delivered in 1920, in the package of a Mandate for Syria and Lebanon.

Delivery of the French Claim

In a recent study, Christopher M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner convincingly argue that France owes her last stage of imperial expansion, along the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the early twentieth century, to a small but dedicated group of officials, politicians, businessmen, scholars, and missionaries who were known as the parti colonial. This group managed to expand the frontiers of the French Empire in spite of a lack of enthusiasm amongst the French public at large.

The colonial party was not a modern political party but several dozen pressure groups with overlapping memberships and aims. As far as its members can be categorized, they tended to be right of center politically, to belong to the bourgeoisie, and to be republicans. Few were on the extreme Left and extreme Right. Some were principally motivated by a mission civilisatrice and the idea of a "Greater France" while others

had been turned by their careers into professional defenders of the national interest, anxious to defend that interest against the conflicting claims of other powers in those areas of the globe for which they bore responsibility.

To make a case for imperial expansion, the colonial party relied more on appeals to "national prestige" than to economic gain, even in those territories where French businessmen were actively engaged. In the early twentieth century, Morocco drew most of the colonial party's attention. The colonial party showed little interest in Syria until France established the Moroccan Protectorate in 1912. But, as war approached it became increasingly concerned about the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and pushed the government to stake out a firm claim to Syria. The dominant feeling among French colonialists was that Syria should remain part of the Ottoman Empire, with the understanding among European powers that the territory was an exclusive sphere of French influence.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Syria and the French Mandate by Philip S. Khoury. Copyright © 1987 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. vii
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS, pg. ix
• LIST OF TABLES, pg. x
• FOREWORD, pg. xi
• PREFACE, pg. xiii
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. xvii
• NOTE ON TRANSCRIPTION, pg. xxi
• INTRODUCTION, pg. 3
• One. Prelude to Mandate, pg. 27
• Two. Discordant Rule, pg. 44
• Three. Implementation, pg. 71
• Four. Patterns of Early Resistance, pg. 97
• Five. Tinkering with the Political System, pg. 127
• Six. Origins The Druze Connection, pg. 151
• Seven. From Local to National Revolt, pg. 168
• Eight. Class and Nationalism, pg. 205
• Nine. Factionalism during the Early Mandate, pg. 219
• Ten. Alliance of Equals, pg. 245
• Eleven. Patrons, Clients, and Quarters, pg. 285
• Twelve. Constitutional Experiments, pg. 327
• Thirteen. The Rocky Road to Parliament, pg. 346
• Fourteen. Failure of Diplomacy, pg. 375
• Fifteen. Radicalization, pg. 397
• Sixteen. Crises before the Storm, pg. 434
• Seventeen. Ascent to Power, pg. 457
• Eighteen. TheTreatyThatNeverWas, pg. 485
• Nineteen. The Loss of the Sanjak, pg. 494
• Twenty. Druzes, Alawites, and Other Challengers, pg. 515
• Twenty-One. Rebellion in Palestine, pg. 535
• Twenty-Two. Factionalism during the Later Mandate, pg. 563
• Twenty-Three. Playing One against the Other, pg. 583
• Conclusion, pg. 619
• Appendix. Sources for Tables 10-1,10-2,10-3,15-1,15-2,15-3, pg. 631
• Glossary, pg. 635
• Bibliography, pg. 639
• Index, pg. 673

Editorial Reviews

". . . this is an extremely readable book, and in fact one which is often hard to put down, so well written is it, so beautifully produced, and so coherent in its presentation. . . . Basing his study on an exhaustive array of sources, from the French, British, and Syrian archives to conversations with virtually every surviving prominent participant in the events described, Philip Khoury has given us what will undoubtedly henceforth be the standard work on the subject. Packed with information, all of it clearly presented and much in the form of fascinating biographical nuggets, this book will be indispensable to students of Syria, of modern Arab history and politics, and of Arab nationalism, for the Mandatory period, as well as earlier and later ones."—-Rashid I. Khalidi, The Middle East Journal

"[Khoury] has produced a formidable piece of scholarship which, as well as analyzing new data on the period, surely cannot fail to stimulate many ideas for future research. The product of years of careful work, this is a book to feast on. . . . With the author exercising such an able grasp of his subject, not to mention an obviously deep affection, this work is thoroughly recommended."—-Philip Robins, MESA Bulletin

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