New money in old Tripoli

Abstract

This article seeks to describe the ways in which municipal administration and informal networks among political elites during the French mandate contributed to the poor state of public health in North Lebanon, in general, as well as an outbreak of typhoid in Tripoli by the late 1930s. This study largely stems from archival research in France and Lebanon. By examining state-building efforts within what came to be known as the annexed territories of Lebanon, this article will highlight the ways in which public health, as a function of colonial state formation, reproduced political and socio-spatial inequality. In turn, the effects of this inequality can be seen in the crumbling infrastructure and spread of infectious disease in North Lebanon. In these ways, the article will show how the mandate institutions and practices designed to centralize authority ultimately reproduced neo-patrimonialism and rather than create a new relation of power that bound residents to the metropole, further divided the population, widened inequality and set the precedent whereby control of public infrastructure became a political object to exploit while public infrastructure itself was left to erode overtime amid the contests for the spoils of office.