Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945
Philip S. Khoury
I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd
A major contribution to our knowledge of an important but neglected subject. Dr. Khoury has made full use of essential archival sources in France and Syria which were not opened to public use until the 1970s. Drawing additionally on British and American archives, and on interviews conducted personally with some forty Syrians and others with light to cast, his book is important in more than one way. It is a lively narrative history, a contribution to our understanding of the fate of Arab nationalism in the country in which it was born, and a study in political sociology. It will take its place as one of the small number of indispensable works on the history of the Middle East in the twentieth century.”
Philip S. Khoury is Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is author of the highly regarded Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860-1920.
Contents
List of Illustrations and Maps / ix List of Tables / X Foreword by Albert Hourani / xi Preface / xiii Acknowledgments / xvii Note on Transcription / xxi List of Special Abbreviations / xxi
Four. Patterns of Early Resistance / 97 Five. Tinkering with the Political System / 127
Part III The Great Revolt, 1925-1927
Six. Origins: The Druze Connection / 151 Seven. From Local to National Revolt / 168 Eight. Class and Nationalism / 205 Nine. Factionalism during the Early Mandate / 219
Part IV The National Bloc and Urban Leadership
Ten. Alliance of Equals / 245 Eleven. Patrons, Clients, and Quarters / 285
Part V Honorable Cooperation, 1928-1933
Twelve. Constitutional Experiments / 327 Thirteen. The Rocky Road to Parliament / 346 Fourteen. Failure of Diplomacy / 375
Part VI New Approaches, 1933-1936
Fifteen. Radicalization / 397 Sixteen. Crises before the Storm / 434 Seventeen. Ascent to Power / 457
Part VII Nationalists in Government, 1937-1939
Eighteen. The Treaty That Never Was / 485 Nineteen. The Loss of the Sanjak / 494 Twenty. Druzes, Alawites, and Other Challengers / 515 Twenty-One. Rebellion in Palestine / 535 Twenty-Two. Factionalism during the Later Mandate / 563
Part VIII War and Independence, 1939-1945
Twenty-Three. Playing One against the Other / 583
Conclusion / 619
Appendix. Sources / for Tables 10-1,10-2,10-3,15-1,15-2,15-3 / 631
Glossary / 635
Bibliography / 639
Index / 673
List of Illustrations and Maps
Illustrations
British Minister Major-General Spears presenting his credentials to the Syrian government, Damascus, 1941 (Spears Collection: Album 4/14, Middle East Centre, Oxford) / 318 President Shukri al-Quwwatli and party listening to Syrian gendarmerie playing Syrian National Anthem, Damascus, 1944 (Spears Collection: P.A. 7/13/14, Middle East Centre, Oxford) / 319 Ceremony of thanksgiving for the return to health of the Syrian President, Shukri al-Quwwatli; Quwwatli addressing his well- wishers from the balcony of the Serail, Damascus, June 1944 (Spears Collection: Album 12/33, Middle East Centre, Oxford) 320 American Minister Wadsworth presenting his credentials to President Shukri al-Quwwatli and Jamil Mardam, Damascus, 1943 (Courtesy of Mrs. Salma Mardam) / 321 Official Syrian visit to Egypt in 1943 (Courtesy of Mrs. Salma Mardam) / 322 Jamil Mardam (Courtesy of Mrs. Salma Mardam) / 323 Syrian Parliament in Damascus after it was shelled by the French in May 1945 (Sir T. Shone Collection: P.A. 7/7/21, Middle East Centre, Oxford) / 324
Maps
Syria and Lebanon during the French Mandate, circa 1936 / 2 Damascus during the French Mandate, circa 1936 / 290
List of Tables
1-1 Population of Important Cities and Towns in Syria during the French Mandate / 11 1-2 Breakdown of Urban and Rural Population in Syria by Muhafaza (1943) / 12 1-3 Percentage Distribution of Syria's Religious and Ethnic Minorities by Muhafaza (1945) / 15 1-4 Populations of Damascus and Aleppo by Religious Community / 16 2-1 France's Commerce with Her Empire, / 1933 / 49 3-1 Syrian Workers in Traditional and Modern Industries, 1913 and 1937 / 92 10-1 Characteristics of the National Bloc Leadership Compared with Characteristics of Syrian Government Ministers and Moderate or Pro-French Deputies who did not belong to another Nationalist Organization during the French Mandate / 252 10-2 Biographical Data: The National Bloc Leadership / 254 10-3 Biographical Data: Moderate and Pro-French Politicians and Bureaucrats / 258 11-1 The Quarters of Damascus and Their Population by Religious Community, circa 1936 / 288 15-1 Characteristics of the Leadership of the League of National Action ('Usbat al-'amal al-qawmi) and the Nationalist Youth (al-Shabab al-watani) / 416 15-2 Biographical Data: League of National Action ('Usbat al-'amal al-qawmi) / 417 15-3 Biographical Data: The Nationalist Youth (al-Shabab al-watani) / 420
FOREWORD
Philip Khoury's book makes a major contribution to our knowledge of an important but neglected subject. During the last twenty years a number of significant works have been published on the history of Syria during the last period of Ottoman rule, among them Ernest Dawn's essays collected in From Ottomanism to Arabism, Linda Schatkowski Schilcher's Families in Politics, and Dr. Khoury's own previous book, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism. There have also been some good studies of the political history of Syria since it became independent; Patrick Seale's The Struggle for Syria is outstanding among them. Little interest, however, has been shown in the period during which France ruled Syria under Mandate from the League of Nations, apart from S. H. Longrigg's Syria and Lebanon under French Mandate.
The reasons for this neglect are not difficult to find. The essential ar-chival sources were not available until recently. As Dr. Khoury points out, relevant documents in France and Syria were not open to public use until the 1970s. Moreover, Syrian historians have tended to show greater interest in earlier periods of history, when the great cities of their country played a more important role as centers of trade, culture, and power: French historians for their part could find little to attract them in an episode of their imperial history that could not, like that of the British in India, be regarded as one of fulfillment and voluntary transfer of power. It is only in the last few years that a change has begun to take place. A recent book, La Syrie d'aujourd'hui, edited by Andre Raymond, shows what important work is now being done by French scholars, and a number of valuable memoirs have been published by Syrians who played a part in the political life of the time.
Dr. Khoury has made full use of the sources that are now available. His bibliography shows how wide his inquiries have been: into Syrian, French, British, and American archives, collections of private papers, and a great variety of printed sources. He has also interviewed some forty Syrians and others who shed light upon the story he narrates. He gives the reader full information, but—more important—he also provides a key to understanding it. His main theme is the fate of a local ruling elite who, both individually and as a group, found their lives cut in two by the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire. As Dr. Khoury showed in his previous book, by the end of the nineteenth century there had emerged, in Damascus and the other large Syrian cities, a more or less unified group of powerful families, de-riving wealth and social position from ownership of land, having access to the Ottoman government, and able to maintain a "delicate balance be-tween central authority and provincial influence." To an increasing extent they were educated in Ottoman schools and held office in the admin-istration or army, and, being for the most part Sunni Muslims, they could regard themselves as forming part, even if a subordinate part, of the ruling institution. For a brief moment after the withdrawal of Ottoman forces in 1918, they could hope to become the rulers of a new Syrian state, but after the French occupation of Damascus they found themselves subjects of a foreign government with which it would be difficult to reestablish the "delicate balance."
After a failure in the years 1936-39, when an accommodation reached with the French broke down, partly because of their own administrative failures but mainly because of opposition in France, the new circumstances created by the Second World War made it possible for the Syrian elite to achieve more than they could have hoped for previously, the total withdrawal of French forces and complete independence unfettered by a treaty of alliance. Their triumph was short-lived, however, for their control of Syrian political life was already being challenged. New political ideas—of radical nationalism, social reform, and Islamic reassertion— were becoming important and provided the channels through which other social groups could pursue their interests: the growing middle class of the cities, teachers and students, and the army officers, many of them of rural origin and destined in the end to destroy the basis of the social power of the old elite, their control of the land. The space of Syrian politics also changed, as the center of economic and social life moved from the old cities to the new quarters that had grown up around them.
Philip Khoury's book is important in more than one way: it is a lively narrative history, a contribution to our understanding of the fate of Arab nationalism in the country in which it was born, and a study in political sociology. It will take its place as one of the small number of indispensable works on the history of the Middle East in the twentieth century.
Albert Hourani
Preface
This study is the sequel to my first book, Urban Notables and Arab Na-tionalism. The Politics of Damascus 1860-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 1983). That work explored the birth of Arab nationalism within the social fabric of Damascus. In particular, it explained how Ottoman reformation and agrarian commercialization acted together in the nineteenth century to produce a fairly cohesive and stable social class of landowners and bureaucrats. Out of this class emerged the elite which shaped the new ideology of Arab nationalism. It is this elite and its use of Arab nationalism within the spectrum of Syrian political, social, and economic relationships that is the subject of the present book. This book investigates in detail the development of Arab nationalism in Syria during the French Mandate, considering in particular the political needs of the elite which led the nationalist movement. In a sense it is the story of a certain continuity of political form and of political need. The form was the "politics of notables," so aptly described by Albert Hourani, whereby a local elite mediated between a distant overlord, whether Istanbul or Paris, and local society. The need of this elite was to maintain a unique position of power within local society. Yet, within this continuity the seeds of change germinated, for the story of Arab nationalism in Syria is not simply the story of struggle against the overweening French overlord, it is also the story of conflict between bourgeois and radical nationalism.
In my view, the interwar years are a period of transition between two political cultures. The old framework of urban notable politics which I de-scribed in my first book remained in place as Syria approached independ-ence in 1945, but the cracks in the framework had become clearly visible by the late 1930s. By independence, nascent radical forces had begun to challenge the old political leadership. This challenge, emerging at the same time that independence had broken the old framework of the politics of notables, eventually brought about the demise of the veteran nationalist elite.
Although I concentrate on the Syrian nationalist elite and its struggle for power in the interwar period, no elite can or should be discussed in isolation from the society and political culture which produce it and which it, in turn, tries to shape or lead to its own advantage. Hence, I have included a significant portion of material on other groups and classes within Syrian society insofar as they touch on the elite's ability to maintain its position through the use of the ideology of Arab nationalism. I also, for obvious reasons, discuss French attitudes and policy toward Syria. I owe a debt of gratitude to those scholars who have written about Syria during the interwar period such as Albert Hourani and Stephen H. Longrigg. But, they are few. Indeed, it is surprising that while Palestine under Mandate has been written about exhaustively and Iraq, if not exhaustively at least penetratingly, Syria has yet to receive anywhere near such attention. It is surprising, for Syria was the cradle of Arab nationalism. It was to Syria that nationalists throughout the Arab world looked for guid-ance and moral support during the Mandate period, and it was out of Syria that emerged the most systematic, far-reaching, and lasting ideological expression of Arab nationalism, the radical Arabism of the Ba'th Party.
In part, this reticence on the topic of Syria can be laid at the door of the two major protagonists, the Syrians and the French, who have failed to address the interwar period satisfactorily. Syrian historians have written voluminously on the subject, but not, with rare exception, analytically. Some have displayed too great an emotional involvement in the subject. French historians have almost completely ignored the period which they regard as a blemish on their imperial past because French rule produced little that was beneficial either to France or to Syria. But this noticeable neglect of Syria has also been due to archival restrictions: only since 1975 has it been possible to have full access to Mandate materials in the Syrian state archives in Damascus, while the archives of the French Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense for the entire Mandate period have been open to scholars only since 1979.
This study is offered in an attempt to remedy that neglect. It is primarily narrative in form because national independence movements are, by their very nature, heroic movements, and therefore lend themselves particularly well to narrative history. My intention, however, has been to weave the narrative around several interlocking themes while maintaining some sense of chronological sequence. These major themes are four: First, the process by which a society, ordered primarily according to relations of personal interdependence, begins to undergo changes that permit the birth of conscious competitive social classes. Second, how this process transforms habitual political mechanisms; specifically, how in Syria the locus of urban politics shifts from ancient institutions and spaces, such as mosques and quarters, to new ones, such as secondary schools, political parties, and modern places of business. Third, how the veteran nationalist elite adjusts to the new and wider base of political life in order to remain at the summit of interwar politics alongside the French. Fourth, how the power and influence of the elite are gradually eroded by those lower down the social scale who have developed new, more vigorous, and more complex ideologies that address not only independence per se, but the broader, related issues of social change and economic development.
To address these questions and others, I have drawn on a variety of source materials. Apart from the archival sources in Damascus and Paris, I have depended on the unpublished papers of Syrian politicians in Da-mascus, Beirut, and Oxford; British and American consular archives in London and Washington; a wide range of Arabic political memoirs and histories; political pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines from Syria, Lebanon, France, Italy, and Britain; and extensive interviews and conversations with Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, French, and British officials and leaders of the interwar period.
Introduction
"IN AN ERA of upheaval, it is continuity and stability that need explana-tion."1 The end of 400 years of Ottoman rule, the vast destruction of world war, the imposition of European, of Christian rule, the sting of a thousand injuries, and the discovery, out of these injuries, of the common bond of Arab nationalism were all momentous events in the lives of the men and women of the Middle East. By 1920 the familiar outlines of Middle Eastern life appeared to have dissolved. Alien governments imposed from distant capitals set up in serails and government houses. New mores, both social and political, and foreign languages restricted local comprehension and participation. The fabric of daily life was stretched taut. Riots and revolts broke out across the Middle East. And yet, for all the outward appearance of cataclysmic upheaval and for all the inward sense of grievance and rage, there was no sharp break in the political life of Syria, in the forms and aims of political action, or in the actors themselves during the French Mandate.
In the first generation after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the major political movements in Syria were led by members of urban upper class families and former officials of the Sultan who brought a certain style of political action and a common way of looking at the world to the new political circumstances. Indeed, there was a remarkable degree of continuity in the exercise of local political power in Syria which was not disrupted by the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. For the most part, men important in local affairs under the Ottomans were the same men, or their sons, who wielded political influence under the French. Political leaders organized their personal support systems in interwar Syria as they had in Ottoman Syria. In Ottoman times, political power was based in the city and then extended from there to the settled countryside and eventually into the semi-nomadic tribal areas. Under the French, political power likewise emanated from the city. Moreover, the methods urban leaders used to acquire political power and their aims remained consis¬tent. Whatever the projected scope of power and whoever the political overlord, the basic building block of political influence in Syria was the same: urban leadership. Within the city, the political and social influence of local leaders was …
1 Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe. Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War / (Princeton, 1975), p. 3.
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Philip S. Khoury
Syria and the French Mandate The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945
I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd
I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd Syria and the French Mandate The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945 Philip S. Khoury
Foreword by Albert Hourani
I.B.Tauris & Co LTD Publishers London
Published by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 3 Henrietta Street Covent Garden London WC2E 8PW
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Khoury, Philip S. Syria and the French mandate: the politics of Arab nationalism, 1920-1945. 1. Syria—Politics and government I. Title 320.95691 / DS98
