Russian policy in the Patriarchate of Antioch from the 1840s to 1914: ‘soft power’ in Syria and Lebanon

Abstract

ABSTRACT Syria and Lebanon occupied a special place in the competition of the nineteenth-century Great Powers in the Eastern Question. Having entered this struggle, the Russian state used its accustomed routes of influence through the Orthodox Church. This article argues that the traditional practice of sending donations without asking for reports on their usage did not work in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Diplomatic pressure combined with control over the money sent worked better. Confessional instruments of policy thus found new patterns in the age of nationalism. After the Crimean War, Russian imperialism was opposed to the Greek Great Idea in the Balkans and the Middle East; in Syria and Palestine Russian church policy was based on support for the Arabs. All methods of ‘soft power’ (the foundation of schools for the Arab population, attempts to (re)convert the Melkites to Orthodoxy, and gradual Arabisation of the high clergy of the Patriarchate of Antioch) were aimed at putting Syria and Lebanon under Russian control. Unlike in Palestine or Alexandria, this policy was successful: in the first decades of the nineteenth century the Arab Patriarchate of Antioch was completely financed by the Russian government. This article investigates whether the policy of Arabisation could have brought about stability in the region, and whether it really contributed to the realisation of the idea of Orthodox unification under Russian control.