The Arabs: A History

The British entered the Middle East with the intention of integrating the Arab world into an empire they thought would last forever. They encountered stiff opposition from the outset—in Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine in particular. As nationalist opposition mounted and the cost of formal empire escalated, Britain tried to modify the terms of empire by conceding nominal independence and securing its strategic interests by treaty. Yet even this concession to their nationalist opponents failed to reconcile the Arabs to Britain’s position in the Middle East. By the Second World War, internal opposition left Britain highly vulnerable in its Arab possessions. Italy and Germany were quick to exploit Britain’s weakness and played on Arab national aspirations to the Axis powers’ advantage. As the Arab world slipped from Britain’s control, the British Empire in the Middle East proved more of a liability than an asset. The only possible consolation for the British was that their imperial rival France had proven no more successful in its Arab possessions.

CHAPTER 8

The French Empire in the Middle East

France long had coveted Greater Syria—that land mass embracing the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan—for its empire in the Arab world. Napoleon had invaded Syria from Egypt in 1799, though his progress was checked by stubborn resistance from the Ottoman defenders in Acre, and he was forced to withdraw. France gave its support to Muhammad ’Ali in his invasion of Syria in the 1830s, hoping to extend French influence over the region through their Egyptian ally. When Egypt withdrew from Syria in 1840, the French deepened their ties to the indigenous Catholic communities of Syria, particularly the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. When the Druzes massacred the Maronites of Mount Lebanon in 1860, France dispatched a campaign force of 6,000 men in a transparent bid to stake its claim to the Syrian coast. Again the French were frustrated, as the Ottoman government managed to reassert control over its Arab provinces for the next half century. The First World War finally offered France the opportunity to secure its claim to Syria. At war with the Ottoman Empire, France and its Entente allies could openly discuss the division of Ottoman territories in the event of victory. The French government won Britain’s support for its ambitions through intense negotiations between Sir Mark Sykes and Franзois Georges-Picot over the years 1915–1916, culminating in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Having already colonized Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, France was confident it had the knowledge and experience to rule Arabs successfully. What worked in Morocco, the French maintained, would work in Syria. Moreover, France had earned the loyalty and support of the Maronite Christian community of Mount Lebanon over the decades. Indeed, by the end of the First World War, Lebanon was probably the only country in the world with a significant constituency actively lobbying for a French mandate. Late-Ottoman Lebanon was a strangely truncated land. In the aftermath of the Christian massacres of 1860, the Ottomans and the European powers conferred to establish a special province of Mount Lebanon in the highlands overlooking the Mediterranean to the west, and the Bekaa Valley to the east. The Ottomans had kept the strategic coastline, with its port cities of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Tripoli, under their own direct administration. In 1888 the Syrian littoral was redesignated as the Province of Beirut. Mount Lebanon was for the most part cut off from the sea, and the Province of Beirut was at many points no more than a few miles wide. One of the chief shortcomings of the autonomous province of Mount Lebanon was its geographic constraints. The territory was too small and infertile to support a large population, and many Lebanese were driven from their homeland in search of better economic opportunities in the last years of Ottoman rule. Between 1900 and 1914 an estimated 100,000 Lebanese—perhaps one-quarter the total population—left Mount Lebanon for Egypt, West Africa, and the Americas.1 This was a cause of growing concern to the twelve-member Administrative Council that ruled Mount Lebanon, whose members were drawn proportionately from the territory’s diverse communities. As the First World War came to an end, the members of the Administrative Council aspired to a larger country and looked to their long-time patron France to help achieve their ambitions. The Administrative Council of Mount Lebanon met on December 9, 1918, and agreed on the terms it wished to present to the Paris Peace Conference. The council sought Lebanon’s complete independence, within its “natural boundaries,” under French tutelage. By “natural boundaries,” the council members envisaged the expansion of Mount Lebanon to include the coastal cities of Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon, and Tyre as well as the eastern Bekaa Valley up to the western slopes of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. A Lebanon within its “natural boundaries” would be framed between rivers to the north and south, mountains to the east and the Mediterranean to the west. The people of Mount Lebanon knew that France had advocated such a “Greater Lebanon” since the 1860s, and they hoped to achieve this critical land mass through a French mandate. Consequently, the Administrative Council of Mount Lebanon was formally invited by the French government to present its case to the Paris Peace Conference—unlike such inconvenient Arab states as Egypt or Syria, which were snubbed or excluded because their nationalist aspirations conflicted with imperial ambitions at the conference. The Administrative Council dispatched a five-man delegation to Paris headed by Daoud Ammoun, a leading Maronite politician.2 Ammoun set out Mount Lebanon’s aspirations in his address to the Paris Peace Conference’s Council of Ten on February 15, 1919: We want a Lebanon removed from all servitude, a Lebanon free to pursue its national destiny and reestablished in its natural frontiers—all indispensable conditions for it to live in its own freedom and to prosper in peace. Yet we all know that it is not possible for us to develop economically and to organize our liberty without the support of a great power, as we lack the technicians trained in the workings of modern life and Western civilization. Always in the past, France has defended us, supported us, guided, instructed and secured us. We feel a constant friendship for her. We wish for her support to organize ourselves, and her guarantee of our independence.3

The Lebanese delegation was not seeking French colonialism in Lebanon but French assistance toward their ultimate goal of independence. However, the French seemed only to hear what they wanted to hear, and they were glad to use the Lebanese delegation to legitimate their own claims over Lebanon. The Administrative Council, however, did not speak for all Lebanese. Over 100,000 Lebanese emigrants lived abroad—in Africa, Europe, and the Americas—and took a passionate interest in the political future of their homeland. Many of the Lebanese expatriate community had come to see themselves as members of a broader Syrian people that embraced йmigrйs from Palestine, inland Syria, and Transjordan. These “Syrians” included some of Lebanon’s most celebrated men of letters, including Khalil Gibran, author of the mystical masterpiece The Prophet. They saw Lebanon as an integral if distinct part of Greater Syria and lobbied for the independence of Syria as a whole, under French tutelage. Given their support for French rule, the Lebanese advocates of Greater Syria were also invited to present their case at the Paris Peace Conference. One of the most prominent of the Lebanese expatriates was Shukri Ghanim. President of the Syrian Central Committee, a nationalist network with branches in Brazil, the United States, and Egypt, Ghanim appeared before the Council of Ten in February 1919, calling for a federation of Syrian states under French mandatory rule. “Syria must be divided into three parts,” he argued, “or four, if Palestine is not excluded. Greater Lebanon or Phoenicia, the region of Damascus, and that of Aleppo, [should be] constituted in independent, democratic states.” Yet Ghanim did not believe all Syrians were created equal, concluding ominously, “France is there to guide, advise and balance all things, and—we should not fear to say this to our compatriots, who are reasonable men—will dose our liberties according to our different states of moral health.”4 While we can only guess what Ghanim meant by “moral health,” it is clear he believed Lebanon was far more advanced than the other parts of Syria and better prepared to enjoy full political liberties under French protection than Damascus, Aleppo, and the like. In many ways, Ghanim’s appeal was more in line with French thought than Daoud Ammoun?s presentation on behalf of the Administrative Council of Mount Lebanon. There was, however, a third trend in Lebanese politics that was overtly hostile to France’s position in the Levant. The Su