A Jesuit-Lyonnais Project in Nineteenth-Century Beirut: Multiplicities of the Local and Global at the Université Saint-Joseph

Abstract

This paper examines the establishment of the Jesuit Université Saint-Joseph from 1875 in Beirut and explores the Jesuits’ dual allegiance to France and Rome. Countering the prevailing notion that the University was a French project in this period, I contend that the Jesuit Mission was much more reliant on its supranational Jesuit network than on French imperial support. Questioning precisely how the Jesuits were able to construct such an imposing urban complex in a city under Ottoman rule, I show that “empire” and “nation” were not bounded notions in the nineteenth century. Rather, the Jesuit project was simultaneously inscribed within multiple localities and spheres of influence that allowed the Jesuits to navigate various oppositions and to ensure the survival of their project in the city. By operating at the fringes of what constituted “foreign” or “colonial” power, they were able to consolidate their urban position; their constructions became the basis for their later integration with French colonial interests. Thus, the case study of the Université Saint-Joseph opens up the possibility of understanding colonial architecture not as an extension of colonial power but as a precondition for it.