‘Open your eyes onto these unexploited treasures’ – The Société d’Encouragement au Tourisme and the making of a Lebanese nation in the 1930s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is an historical study of tourism development in mandate era Lebanon (1920–1943). Based on organisational papers as well as governmental and contemporary press records, it examines the efforts of the Société d’Encouragement au Tourisme (S.E.T.), established in 1935, to develop tourist infrastructure and promulgate a nation called Lebanon. Tourist development, including the building of roads, the making of centres d’estivage, and the preservation of natural features, this article argues, consolidated a hierarchical conception of a Lebanese nation within its colonial boundaries. While tourism development integrated Beirut and Mount Lebanon alongside selected ruins such as Baalbek, it excluded other regions such as Jabal ‘Amil in the South and ‘Akkar in the North. Furthermore, this article argues, that advocates deemed tourism a practice of citizenship. Tourism development not only sought to create symbols of national identity, but to instil national sentiments in Lebanese citizens. Under the banner of tourism development, its advocates mobilised several registers to enact social and cultural reform, including through the organisation of spectacles, educational programmes, and legal stipulations that conceptualised a strong nation-state to regulate, control, and reprimand its citizens.