Continuity and Change in Syrian Political Life: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

HISTORIANS HAVE DEMONSTRATED a penchant for tracking the forces of change stemming from the political and socioeconomic upheavals that have punctuated the history of the Middle East in the past two hundred years. The effects of the Ottoman reformation (or Tanzimat), the European industrial revolution, World War I, and the collapse of four centuries of Ottoman rule followed by the imposition of European control over much of the Arab Middle East have steered historians in this direction. As a consequence, they have shown considerably less interest in looking for elements of continuity and stability among the many transformations experienced by the region. This benign neglect holds true for historians of the Middle East regardless of the methodologies and frameworks of analysis they apply to their subjects. Indeed, the social and economic historian is no different from today's less-fashionable political historian and the liberal historian no different from the conservative. The study of urban political culture in Syria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is a case in point. I will argue that political culture in Syria did not change abruptly with the break-up of the Ottoman empire and the imposition of European rule at the end of World War I. Rather, the exercise of political power followed what can be called the Ottoman model for nearly four decades after the demise of the empire. In order to support this contention, three periods of modern Syrian history need to be examined. In the first period, from the mid-nineteenth century until the early twentieth, a political culture in the towns of Syria arose that was intimately tied to the emergence of a single political elite. During this time, the urban elites developed a distinct social character and political role. The second period begins with the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the introduction of French rule and ends with World War II and France's abandonment of Syria. A remarkable degree of continuity in Syrian urban political culture and in the character of the Syrian elite's political role distinguished this era, despite the major upheavals that foreshadowed and characterized the interwar years. The third period corresponds to the early years of Syrian independence. Only then did Syrian political culture begin to assume radically new forms and dimensions, but even this process took nearly two decades to unfold.