Greater Lebanon: The Problems of Integrating a Religiously and Ethnically Diverse Population

Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 42, No.4, Summer 2019 Greater Lebanon: The Problems of Integrating a Religiously and Ethnically Diverse Population Kail C. Ellis* Background The State of Greater Lebanon was declared on 1 September 1920. It became the Lebanese Republic in May 1926, and is the predecessor of modern Lebanon. The state had its antecedents in the violence of the civil of war of 1860 and the subsequent formation of an autonomous Ottoman province or mustasarrifiyya that ushered in a new, peaceful stage for Lebanon. By design, the areas included in the mustasarrifiyya did not include the coastal towns of Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre and their respective hinterlands and the administrative divisions of Baalbek, the Beqaa, Rashaya and Hasbaya. The mustasarrifiyya ushered in what was appropriately called “the long peace.” Mount Lebanon experienced unprecedented political stability for fifty years during which it was able to develop culturally, politically and economically, especially in the areas of public works, utilities, public schooling, agriculture and industry. The feudal economy declined, as members of the old feudal class entered government service, while commercialization and urbanization grew. Culturally, several newspapers and journals appeared and a literate and a mobile middle class emerged. Predominately Maronite in religious 1 *Kail C. Ellis is an associate professor in the department of Political Science at Villanova University. He received his PhD from the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. His area of interest is Lebanon and the Middle East. In his area of specialization Ellis published three edited volumes: The Vatican, Islam and the Middle East, (Syracuse, 1987); Lebanon’s Second Republic, Prospects for the Twenty-First Century, (University Press of Florida, 2002) and Secular Nationalism and Citizenship in Muslim Countires: Arab Christians in the Levant (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 2 affiliation, intellectuals and writers in the mustasarrifiyya began to expand the concept of “the Maronite nation,” putting forward the theory of Lebanon as an essentially Christian country, destined to govern itself under the perpetual protection of Christian Europe. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the intellectual centers of the province, regardless of religious affiliation, were affected by the currents of nationalism that appeared shortly after the Young Turk revolution of 1908. The Young Turks introduced programs that imposed the modernization of the Ottoman Empire and a new spirit of Turkish nationalism. The Turcification (the process of turning culturally, linguistically, or ethnically non-Turkish areas into a cultural, linguistic, or Turkish area), and centralizing policies of the Ottomans alienated their Muslim subjects and contributed to the rise to the Arab nationalist movement. Significantly, the nationalist movement was initially inspired and led by Christian secularists who regarded Arab nationalism as a way to relieve their marginalized status. However, as Muslims began to assume the leadership of the movement, it became increasingly difficult to disassociate Arabism from Islam. Despite its initial secular predispositions, Arabism triggered the suspicions of the Maronite and Greek Catholic nationalists who wanted to preserve the autonomy and special privileges they had come to enjoy under the Christian mustasarrifiyya. However, with the outbreak of World War I, the Ottomans dissolved the mustasarrifiyya in 1914 and imposed a brutal domination that had disastrous consequences for the people. Foreign nationals of the belligerent powers, Great Britain and France, especially the religious orders and missionaries who had opened schools and other social welfare institutions, were expelled or forced into internal exile, their buildings confiscated by the Turks to be used for military purposes. At the same time, the Ottoman’s imposed their own blockade on Lebanon, forbidding crops from entering the country from other regions of the Empire. Adding to the disaster was the arrival of a swarm of locusts to the region in 1915 that lasted for three months, resulting in widespread starvation and destitution. A third catastrophe occurred in 1918 when the Great Influenza pandemic struck Lebanon. Throughout this tragic period, 200,000 Lebanese, half of the population of Mount Lebanon perished. Greater Lebanon—1920 As a result of the natural and man-made disasters that afflicted Lebanon, in 1916 the focus of Arab nationalism shifted temporarily to the Arabian Peninsula and British support for the Arab Revolt of the Hashemites...