This paper explores public debates and popular mobilizations around the question of development in early post-colonial Lebanon (1943-1955). These years were particularly contentious as various elite and popular groups sought to realize their particular visions for the post-war and post-colonial political economy. Within this context, "development" was neither a concept nor an objective within the exclusive purview of state elites, the business community, and international experts. Rather, it was a contested term that individuals and groups from various classes, regions, and political affiliations deployed and sought to impose their definition of. This paper therefore focuses on the ways in which political parties, labor unions, women's organizations, and ad-hoc formations were important sites for the articulation, circulation, and contestation of ideas of development in early independence Lebanon. Exploring competing visions of development in early independence Lebanon offers insight into a number of questions. For example, what were the range of visions that existed with respect to the question of development? Alternatively, what were the various premises and assumptions-economic or ethical or otherwise-upon which these visions were articulated? Furthermore, how might the fault lines in the debate about development challenge our assumptions about the nature of politics, identity, and collective action in Lebanon? This paper will therefore narrate and analyze the specific ideas of development and mobilizations around those ideas. At the same time, it seeks to move beyond abstract conceptions and theoretical debates, to reveal the substance of these ideas in relation to contemporaneous realities such as unemployment, high cost of living, low quality of public services, and rural neglect. This is paper is based on an analysis of variety of primary sources, including pamphlets, newspapers, books, letters, memoirs, consular reports, and development assessments. It locates Lebanon in both a historical and comparative perspective vis-à-vis the post-war period and the broader contexts of decolonization and modernization. While it draws on the insights of critical development studies, political economy, and social as well as cultural history, it takes off from an often ignored-if not exceptionalized-case study of post-colonial development in the Middle East and North Africa: Lebanon.