THE nationalist leaderships which directed the independence movements in the Arab countries between the two world wars cannot be thought of as progressive forces struggling for rapid or revolutionary political and economic change. Rather, their strategy, whether it be the Wafd in Egypt, the Arab Committee in Palestine, or the National Bloc in Syria, was to secure piecemeal gains by a combination of intermittent protest and diplomacy. In the short run, they wanted greater access to the European colonial authorities and to share power with them; in the long run, they wanted to control government outright. Their strategy was not to drive out the colonial powers by prolonged armed struggle, but rather to ease them out through the mechanisms of negotiation and international appeal. On the one hand, nationalist leaderships had to shift the balance of power away from the European colonialists and the political groups and economic classes which openly collaborated with them; on the other, they had to avoid the kind of continuous upheaval and instability which might upset their own comparatively privileged positions. In the interwar period, nationalist organizations spent most of their energy directing the nation toward the goal of political independence. Party programs purposely left vague all discussion of social and economic reform for the obvious reason that the implementation of such reform would inevitably undercut the very material interests from which nationalist leaders derived their political and social influence. The reality of foreign occupation focused the nation's attention on Britain or France or the Zionist movement; in this way, the nation was diverted, at least temporarily, from its basic internal economic and social conflicts. Although nationalist leaderships in the Arab countries had not assumed the fundamental characteristics of a 'national bourgeoisie', devoted to uncompromising political and economic independence,' they were not oblivious to ideas of economic nationalism. In each country, there could be found a faction of nationalist leaders working to break the alliance of European capital and compradors which dominated the economy. The development of national enterprises, in particular moder industries, became their objective. Because Egypt's economy was far and away the most industrialized in the Arab world, it is not surprising that economic nationalism was most advanced there. Two recent studies have detailed with great precision Egypt's economic challenge to British imperialism in the interwar period.2 However,much less is known about the other Arab countries. This article, therefore, will examine the growth of economic nationalism in Syria. Special attention will be paid to the role of Damascus in the development of national enterprises and moder industry, not because Damascus was the most important economic center in