Scandal in Fin-de-Siècle Beirut: Gender, Morality, and Imperial Prestige between France and Lebanon*

This article analyzes two purported "scandals" that arose in early twentieth-century Beirut: one between a Lebanese woman accused of theft and her employer, and the other involving a young Frenchwoman who left her fiancé and aroused the suspicions of France's General Consul. It situates these episodes within the context of a unique imperial relationship between France and Lebanon, premised on informal structures of influence as well as discourses of mutual affection and esteem. Through a microhistorical approach toward on-the-ground disputes over comportment and reputation, it argues that intimate sites of contact in a not-quite-colonial context of affective empire provide a revealing perspective into imperial frameworks of gender, morality, and prestige. It also demonstrates how ordinary men and women were able to deploy colonial discourses to expose the unstable functioning and formation of imperial ideologies.