The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria

Benjamin Thomas White

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2011

The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East

The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria

Benjamin Thomas White

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748647552

Overview
Contents

About this book

Why, in the years around 1920, did the concept of 'minority' suddenly spring to prominence in public affairs worldwide? Within a decade of World War One, the term became fundamental to public and academic understandings of national and international politics, law, and society: 'minorities', and 'majorities' with them, were taken to be an objective reality, both in the present and the past.

This book uses a study of Syria under the French mandate to show what historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'. Despite French attempts to create territorial, political, and legal divisions, the mandate period saw the consolidation of the nation-state form in Syria: a trend towards a coherent national territory with fixed borders, uniform state authority within them, and the struggle to control that state played out in the language of nationalism - developments in the post-Ottoman Levant that closely paralleled those in contemporary Europe, after the demise of the Austro-Hungarian and tsarist empires. Through close attention to what changed in French mandate Syria, and what those changes meant, the book argues for a careful rethinking of a term too often used as an objective description of reality.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Map 1 Syria c. 1936 Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Map 2 The far northeast of Syria in the 1930s Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Outline chronology of the French mandate, 1919–39 Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I
Chapter 1 Minorities, Majorities and the Nation-state Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
Chapter 2 ‘Minorities’ and the French Mandate Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
PART II
Chapter 3 Separatism and Autonomism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Chapter 4 The Border and the Kurds Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
PART III
Chapter 5 The Franco-Syrian Treaty and the Definition of ‘Minorities’ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
Chapter 6 Personal Status Law Reform Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
Conclusion Minorities, Majorities and the Writing of History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
Select Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Illustrations
- Other: 2 B/W illustrations 2 Maps
Keywords: Islamic Studies

eBook

Published: July 31, 2011
ISBN: 9780748647552