In the summer of 1920, at opposite ends of the Beirut-Damascus road, two events took place that would shape the divergent colonial histories of the region. At Maysalun, some 25 kilometers from Damascus, French forces under General Henri Gouraud defeated the remaining Arab Army of King Faisal, who had proclaimed an independent Syrian kingdom four months earlier. The battle’s outcome became a reference point in narratives of French imperial triumph and duplicity, and functioned as a potent symbol of Arab nationalism and martyrdom in the coming years. Yet it also brought into sharper relief a division articulated just over a month later, when Gouraud, as High Commissioner of the newly formed French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, proclaimed from Beirut on September 1 the formation of the state of Greater Lebanon. The juxtaposition of these two occurrences, this paper suggests, offers key insight into the distinct colonial trajectories of post-war Syria and Lebanon. While Syria was envisioned as a terrain of rebellion and discontent, to be pacified and repressed through colonial violence, the newly aggrandized Lebanese state was presented as a loyal “younger sister” of France, grateful for French intervention. Through these opposing discursive frameworks, I argue, French officials sought to reconcile a long-standing mythology of influence and prestige in the Levant with the complex politics of war and colonial occupation. Moving beyond interpretations that focus primarily on dynamics of nationalism or sectarianism to explain the contrasting experiences of Mandate Syria and Lebanon, this paper queries how this partition functioned within an unstable imperial ideology, one that balanced contemporary colonial tactics of divide-and-rule with adherence to older notions of France’s supposed “long historical tradition…of protection, honor, and reciprocal affection” in the Near East. Attempts to preserve a conviction in the “intimately linked” history and “indestructible” bonds between France and the broader Levant co-existed with appeals to the particular status of Lebanon within both the region and the French imperial imaginary. Drawing from press reports, official public statements, and the recently deposited personal papers of General Gouraud, this account will closely analyze political discourses surrounding the pronouncement of Greater Lebanon, which occurred against a backdrop of colonial violence and counterinsurgency in Syria. It will seek to explain how imperial myths persevered alongside colonial practices, harnessing languages of amity and enmity to cultivate a fiction of French benevolence amidst the repressive colonial measures of the interwar period.

In 1925, the French Empire simultaneously battled two anti-colonial rebellions in Morocco and Syria. Both the Rif Rebellion (1921-1926), which started in Spanish Morocco but spread to the French Protectorate, as well the Great Syrian Revolt (1925-1927), can both be thought of as responses to the failures of the postwar international system to deliver upon the promises of self-determination and sovereignty. Both events called attention to the failings of colonial rule--French in particular--spurring critique among a spectrum of European leftists, as well as activists belonging to the region. Moreover, the League of Nations often assessed French rule in light of both events, and in tandem with one another. Whereas the literature has discussed these instances of revolt separately, this paper considers the ways in which the contemporaries of the time viewed their activities as part of a broader and more global anti-colonial moment. Using sources of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as Syrian journals and periodicals, this paper will examine the ways in which Syrians wrote about the Rif Rebellion in light of their own ongoing anti-colonial struggle. It analyzes the modes of nationalist discourse—Islamic or otherwise—that intellectuals and activists used to describe the events underway. At the heart of many of these debates was the legitimacy of not only French Empire, but also the Eurocentrism of the postwar system of nation-states. The paper argues that nationalist imaginations were formed not only vis-à-vis the colonial other but also in relationship to such cross-border solidarities as present in the Arab press. By employing a transnational lens, this paper seeks to better understand the ways in which the Rif Revolt fueled nationalist imaginaries across the Arab world.

There were four global climate events (El Niño and La Niña) between 1925 and 1934. This period of time encompasses the Rif War, “Pacification,” the protests against the Berber Dahir, and the anti-French riots that occurred in Fez in 1934. This talk will examine the overlooked impact of climate on the development of French modes of imperial governance and Moroccan responses to them. The “Pacification” of Morocco, generally understood as the murderous campaign to put down tribes that refused to bow to French authority, is less well studied for being the result of consecutive years of crop failures and livestock deaths. That social and political upheaval follows drought and famine was borne throughout Morocco (and North Africa in general) in the interwar years. There could be no lasting “peace” so long as Moroccans died of starvation or disease. This was a reality that French intelligence officers confronted when they realized they needed to shift from being an occupying force to an administrative one. There were thus efforts to limit the use of military force by building a pastoral society in the hinterlands. Violence always suffused interactions between French and Moroccans during these efforts, but the efforts of the military to build new markets and encourage new agricultural techniques that limited the economic effects of climate on the livelihood of tribes also offered spaces of negotiation for Moroccans to influence the terms under which they accepted French rule. Nevertheless, while the French encountered some success, consecutive climate events compounded by the devastation of “Pacification” did not end the trend of pauperization of Moroccans who found themselves leaving the countryside to struggle in cities, where their discontent was harnessed by nationalists.

This paper addresses how Arab nationalism—identity and movement based on the shared sentiment of affiliation with the Arab world—was expressed in the Maghrib region. This case study contributes to the poorly explored history of Maghrib-Mashriq relations, by analyzing the migration of approximately 2,700 Tunisian volunteer soldiers who left their country in 1948 to fight in the Arab-Israeli war. Moreover, by revealing the spontaneous and grassroots nature of the movement, the study provides a useful corrective to the dominant narrative of the modern Maghribian history, which is based on the dichotomist opposition between the colonial authorities and the native resistance. The analysis of the paper is based on French archival sources and original Arabic sources—especially Tunisian newspapers. Tunisian involvement in the Palestinian issue under the banner of Arab solidarity resulted in conflict between two different directions of nationalism in Tunisia. On the one hand, the nationalist leader Habib Bourguiba and his party, Néo-Destour, tried to use the Tunisian volunteers to achieve their own goal of pressing the question of the Maghribian independence among fellow Arab countries. On the other hand, young leaders of the Zaytuna mosque in Tunis advocated Arab and Islamic identities of the Tunisian nation, which led to their incitement of boycotting Tunisian Jewish merchants. Thus, in Tunisia, Arab nationalism carried two different meanings: the political understanding of Arab nationalism to counter the European colonial powers, and the religious conception of an Arab nation based on Islam and the shared language. The paper also examines the gap between nationalist leaders and the grassroots volunteers who were ideologically and socioeconomically heterogeneous. The paper reveals that the volunteer movement started spontaneously and, in many ways, independently from the nationalist leaders’ intentions. Although nationalist leaders tried to coopt the movement by mobilizing volunteers selectively, the scale of the volunteer movement went beyond their control. The mobilization of the volunteers without sufficient control ended up allowing the British army to deport the majority of the Tunisian volunteers from Egypt. The paper argues that, besides the colonial authorities, the nationalist leaders’ disregard for the aspirations of the grassroots elements disturbed the Arab nationalist solidarity.