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

ISBN-13: 9780748685400 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 256 str.

University of G Benjamin Thomas (Senior Lecturer of History

Opis

Shows which historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'Through close attention to what changed in French-mandate Syria, and what those changes entailed, Benjamin White argues for a careful reappraisal of the term 'minority'. Within a few years of World War I, the term had become fundamental to public understandings of national and international politics, law and society. Minorities (and majorities) were taken to be an objective reality, both in the present and the past. In Syria, the mandate period saw the consolidation of the nation-state form, despite French attempts to create territorial, political and legal divisions. There was a trend towards a coherent national territory with fixed borders and uniform state authority within them, while the struggle to control the state was played out in the language of nationalism - developments in the post-Ottoman Levant that closely paralleled events in Europe at the same time, following 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.

Spis treści

Map 1. Syria c.1936; Map 2. The Far Northeast of Syria in the 1930s; Outline Chronology of the French Mandate, 1919-39; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I; 1. Minorities, Majorities and the Nation-state; 2. 'Minorities' and the French Mandate; Part II; 3. Separatism and Autonomism; 4. The border and the Kurds; Part III; 5. The Franco-Syrian Treaty and the Definition of 'Minorities'; 6. Personal Status Law Reform; Conclusion: Minorities, Majorities and the Writing of History; Select Bibliography; Index.