A comparative view of French native policy in Morocco and Syria, 1912–1925

Abstract

The present paper seeks to trace the origin of French native policy in Syria, as a case study in the changing style of European imperialism in the Mediterranean in the twentieth century.' It will deal with the little-understood impact of North Africa upon French policy in Syria and Lebanon during the early mandate period, 1920-25, especially the Gouraud years, 1920-23. Specifically, it will be argued that French policy in Syria was very strongly marked by the example of Lyautey's administration of Morocco, 1912-25, and sought in numerous ways to model itself upon this precedent. Unfortunately, as we shall see, the paternalistic methods characteristic of the Lyautey tradition of handling indigenous populations were ill-suited to the realities of the politically sophisticated and strongly nationalistic Syrian people. Syria thus provides an interesting case study in the limitations of the indirect rule methods of the great imperial proconsuls of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Finally, the approach here adopted seeks to present the impact of North African experience upon the French presence in the Levant as broadly similar to the kind of influence which the Indian imperial experience exercised upon the development of British rule in Egypt under Cromer, 1883-1907.2 The question of North African influence on the Syrian mandates has occasionally been noted in the historical literature, but no systematic attempt has been made to examine the precise ways in which this influence was played out.3 While no careful study of French native administration in the mandates has yet been made owing to the continued inaccessibility of the relevant archives, it is already possible to see, from the published materials which are available, something of the direction which research will take in the exploration of this question. In this paper I would like to examine some of this published material as a start towards a more comprehensive study. French interest in Syria was dictated by the long-standing French vocation to a position of power in the Mediterranean.4 The acquisition of the North African empire was one aspect of this policy, and as soon as the scramble for Africa had ended it was natural that French ambitions should tend to focus on securing a position at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. President Poincare made the first public and official statement of French ambition with regard to Syria in 1912, at the very moment when the solution of the Moroccan question was freeing the French to look elsewhere.5 French interest in Syria became clearer in the years which followed. In large measure such interest evolved out of French concern for the security of their North African empire, the crucial importance of