Kais Firro
Inventing Lebanon: Nationalism and the State under the Mandate
I. B. Taurus, London, 2003, pp. 274, ISBN 1-86064-857-6 (Hardback)

Reviewed By Paul Kingston

Kais Firro’s book on the history of the French Mandate in Lebanon is an examination of the disjuncture between nationalist thought and patterns of political development in Lebanon. To do so, he plots the development of what Sami Zubaida calls, borrowing from Bourdieu, ‘the political field’, a concept that is broader and more open-ended than that of the Western model of the nation-state. Despite the ‘precarious’ character and disputed nature of its modern state, for example, Lebanon has nonetheless witnessed the emergence of a functioning political arena complete with its own recurring political patterns and dynamics. By using the more open-ended concept of ‘the political field’, Firro can both write about the emergence of these particular patterns of political activity yet, at the same time, not imply that they resemble the more integrated patterns of nation-state formation in the West.

Indeed, most of Firro’s book is taken up explaining the fragmented as opposed to integrated nature of Lebanon’s polity, be it through an examination of social class formation (Chapter Three), the disparate and self-interested nature of the emerging political elite (Chapter Four), the contradictory nature of cross-community political alliances (Chapter Five), or the growing power and salience of communal as opposed to national institutions (Chapter Six). Hence, while Lebanon may have witnessed the emergence of a political field in the mandate period rooted in “a heightened consciousness of the national dimension of politics” (p. 170, Zubaida, 1989), the political dynamics of confessional competition and elite fragmentation that characterized that field did not provide a basis for stable integration at the national level.

Firro, however, has tried to go beyond simply writing a narrative account of the mandate period in Lebanese history. Indeed, this is what makes his book more interesting. In his account of how present narratives of Lebanese nationalism are influenced by past ones, Firro begins to move into the world of ‘historical institutionalism’, interpreting the mandate as a formative period where the more salient and lasting structural characteristics of the Lebanese ‘political field’ were established. It is a process that Firro calls “the entrenchment of the Lebanese system” (p. 150), one which established “for better and for worse, the road along which Lebanon’s society and polity have since traveled” (p. 98). In short, while Firro both titles and begins the book with a discussion of the competing trends of nationalist discourse under the mandate and beyond, this is ultimately a book about resilient colonial legacies. What follows is an analytic summary of Firro’s main arguments, followed in the conclusion by comparison of Firro’s book with two other recent ones on the mandate period in Lebanon.

The Establishment of the Lebanese ‘Political Field’

The mandate period in Lebanon witnessed the development of many of the features of a unified political field at the national level. A flag, a constitution, the establishment of parliamentary institutions, the development of social and physical infrastructure such as ports and roads – all provided some of the basic prerequisites of a modern state.

This was joined by an increasingly active political life – focused on debates over such issues as the territorial borders of Lebanon, French economic policies of austerity in the wake of the depression, French interference in political life symbolized by the suspension of the Lebanese constitution in 1932, and Lebanon’s relations with Syria sparked by the signing of the Franco-Syrian and Franco-Lebanese treaties of 1936. In response to these issues, one began to witness the emergence of an increasing if swiftly changing series of alliances across communal divides. These rapprochements between Maronite factions and Sunni Muslim ‘nationalists’, as Firro wrote, seemed to show “that Muslim as well as Christian elites could work together and find a formula for cooperation” (p. 207). Indeed, in his historiographic survey of writing on Lebanese politics (Chapter 2), Firro refers to the conclusions of Iliya Harik who argues that the mandate period fostered the emergence of a more unified and modern social and political elite, what he called al-nukhba al-siyasiyya, whose political outlook was more realistic and pragmatic and whose education, business, and personal skills successfully competed with the ‘patrician’ pedigree of the traditional elites (p. 95).

Finally, Firro also critically examines the possibility that the mandate period witnessed the emergence of compromise positions on the hitherto incompatible nationalist goals of Lebanism, Arabism, and Syrianism, something that could provide this emerging national political field with ideological legitimacy. Certainly, this was the hope of those such as the wealthy and influential Roman Catholic merchant, Michel Chiha, whose ideas of creating “unity in diversity” through the adoption of both a modern parliamentary system based upon communal power-sharing and an open economy that could foster the emergence of a “merchant republic” captured the imagination of the French mandate authorities and became the underlying nation-building vision of the Lebanese Constitution of 1926. Indeed, as the 1930s progressed, Sunni Muslims did begin to consider the idea of a separate Lebanese entity, even if they still believed that it would eventually become part of a larger Arab nation; and this was paralleled by the increasing use of Arabist discourse by Maronite politicians such as Bishara al-Khuri, a dynamic which some referred to as “Lebanizing Muslims and Arabizing Christians” (p. 208). With the agreement to the National Pact of 1943, it appeared that this “meshing” of Arabist and Lebanist ideas had reached its successful culmination (p. 209).

Yet, there is a huge difference between the emergence of a political field with its own parameters and rules at the national level and the notion that that political field was evolving in an integrated manner as implied by the hopeful analysis of those such as Chiha and Harik. Firro, for example, implicitly rejects such teleological and, in the end, “invented” notions of Lebanon’s history. Indeed, by delving into an historical analysis of the mandate period, Firro presents a dramatically different reality of what the Lebanese ‘political field’ became and what the National Pact represented. Debates about Lebanon’s national identity did not transcend the Lebanism, Arabism, and Syrianism divide according to Firro. Moreover, the source of that continuing chasm is found in the consolidation during the mandate period of what he calls “the Lebanese system”, one characterised not by national integration but by institutionalized sectarianism and factionalism. It is to Firro’s analysis of these two features of “the Lebanese political system” that we turn to now.

The Zu’ama and the Entrenchment of Factionalism in the Lebanese ‘Political Field’

Chiha’s vision of Lebanese nation-state formation was based upon an expectation that a politically dominant and cosmopolitan merchant and professional class would develop. Certainly, social and economic developments under the mandate period saw “shifts in elite formation” (p. 91), much of which was brought about by the expansion of the mandate state itself that sparked the growth of an administrative and profession strata. Firro, however, presents a more complex and hybrid interpretation of the effects of the mandate period on social class formation and elite political practice, writing of “the preservation of traditional patterns within modern socio-economic structures” and of “the coalescence of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’” (p. 98).

Unable in the early 1920s to find willing collaborators among the Sunni urban elites, French mandate policy deliberately worked to consolidate more traditional and rural based social forces as an alternative. They devised an electoral system based upon regional rather than national constituencies that served to privilege candidates and electoral alliances of a local tribal/clan nature. When combined with French readiness to regularly interfere and ‘manage’ electoral results, one had a recipe that guaranteed the consolidation of the traditional rural tribal and clan elite. Moreover, the French mandatory authorities also promoted land tenure and agricultural development policies that served to reward these traditional rural social forces further. The result was a consolidation of large latifundias in the ‘Akkar, the Biqa’ and South Lebanon.

Perhaps the most profound effect on social transformation, however, was brought about by the emergence of the mandate state and its expanding administrative apparatus. As a way of enhancing their traditional status, rural social elites took advantage of the resources of the state in their delivery of patronage to local areas, transforming the nature of patron-client relations into something “more bureaucratic than feudal” (p. 96). Indeed, the emergence of “this new form of patrimonialism” (p. 98) was to become an enduring pattern amongst rural and urban elites alike, eventually pulling Sunni urban notables into the ‘political field’ as a way of preserving their local zu’ama status. In short, rather than promoting the emergence of modern social forces as envisioned by Chiha, Firro concludes that French mandate policies, while transformative, had the far less positive yet lasting effect on the emergent Lebanese political field of strengthening the “oligarchic and dynastic characteristics of the Lebanese elite” (p. 97).

The effects of this neo-patrimonial transformation in patron-client relations were to entrench hierarchically-organized families as fundamental, and factional, units in Lebanese society and politics. While searching for new forms of legitimacy spewed up by modern political discourse on communal or national rights, the zu’ama’s main concern was to maintain their local political advantage over rival families. The result was often a high degree of fluidity and volatility in broader political platforms and discourse, especially with respect to the composition of lists during elections. Firro remarks that during the mandate period, “the alliances that leaders formed were almost exclusively motivated by the chances that their list would give them to become elected” (p. 208). Even the National Pact, often interpreted within a ‘nationalist’ framework, is described by Firro as only coming about “thanks to the confessional and factional dimension of the game played out….between the elites of Lebanon’s different communities among themselves and between them and the Mandatory powers” (p. 209).  Hence, fuelled by the patronage provided by the French mandate state and protected by an electoral system that privileged the local over the national, zu’ama politics together with its factional consequences became an institutionally embedded feature of the emerging modern Lebanese ‘political field’.

Mandate Policy and the Ethnicization of the Lebanese ‘Political Field’

The second structural consequence of the French mandate period was the entrenchment of confessional/sectarian politics. Rather than merely being a recognition of the existing communal dimensions of society and politics, Firro stresses the instrumentalist nature of this entrenchment, arguing that French mandate policies forced communities to “redirect” their ways of organization, mobilization, agitation, and struggle in communal directions and in ways that had “a clear hand in pre-empting attempts at nation-building” (p. 151-52).

This communal entrenchment was facilitated in several ways. First, French mandate authorities followed classic policies of divide and rule, playing the leaders of one community off against another and selectively co-opting certain communal elites. Firro documents well, for example, the successful targeting of the traditional Shi’a community leaders by the French in the 1920s as a way of preventing the emergence of a common political front with Sunni Muslim leaders, approaches that these leaders proved only too willing to accept as a way of taking advantage of the new opportunities provided by the imposition of the French mandate (p. 160). Second, the French mandate authorities also saw advantage in promoting the institutional separation of the various communities. In the 1926, for example, the French created separate Shi’a councils and courts (the Supreme Jafari Court), all of which not only contributed to the growth of Shi’a “particularism” (p. 161), it also fuelled and energized factionalism within the Shi’a community over the right to represent and defend its interests. In 1936, the French took this policy further by a series of decrees that gave separate legal status to Lebanon’s religious entities, both with respect to themselves as well as with respect to their relationship to the Lebanese state.

The cumulative and crucial effect of the French policy was the further institutionalization of the communal dimension of Lebanese social and political life and the rise in use of the discourse of ‘communal rights’ and ‘communal equality’. Indeed, Firro at one point refers to it “as the only true basis of legitimacy” (p. 115) and subsequently argues that “although they continued to adhere to a ‘nationalist’ discourse, the elites almost always acted and reacted as ‘representatives’ of their respective communities. In this sense their ‘nationalist’ discourse and ideology served as a cloak for their ‘confessionalism’, forming the only way in which elites could continue to represent the masses of their respective communities” (p. 149). In short, communal legitimacy increasingly proved to be vital in the factional battles for hegemony within communities. In a description that could be more universally applied to all communal elites, Firro notes how the more recalcitrant Sunni political leaders quickly took “to the political game” after 1936 (the year that the Franco-Syrian and Franco- Lebanese treaties were signed), using the pretext of defending their community’s rights and interests “in order to promote advantages for themselves, their clans and their clients” (p. 158). Indeed,  the signing of these two treaties in 1936 seems to have been a watershed in Lebanese history, leading to what some at the time referred to as “la vague de confessionalisme” (p. 175), characterized by a heightened competition for a fair distribution of political and administrative posts as well as a noticeable surge in the creation of confessionally-based social and political institutions, the most significant being the two paramilitary organizations within the Maronite and Sunni communities respectively, al-Kata’ib and al-Najada.

Conclusion

Firro’s book is the third to come out on the history of the mandate period in Lebanon in recent years - the other two being Zamir’s Lebanon ‘s Quest: The Road to Statehood 1926-39 (1997) and Thompson’s Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (2000) - and it might be useful to conclude by comparing the contributions of each.

Firro’s book is a more interpretative and less comprehensive account of the French mandate period than that of Zamir but both tend to reach many of the same conclusions about the weak nature of the emerging Lebanese state, fractured as it is by the confessional and factional nature of elite activity, the latter called ‘political feudalism’ by Zamir. Indeed, like Firro, Zamir sees factionalism as underlying all national and sectarian conflict in the country. Hence, Lebanon is not only a ‘corporation of communities’; it is also a ‘corporation of beys’ (p. 245). However, whereas Firro focuses on the consequences of these developments for the emergence of a unified Lebanese ‘nation-state’, Zamir’s focus is more on the degree to which mandate state-building processes militated against the emergence of  a Lebanese ‘civil society’ (p. 241, Zamir).  Whereas Firro’s lament is the lack of a unified sentiment of nationalism, Zamir’s is the absence of the true application of liberalism.

Thompson’s book remains the most interesting and innovative of the three and one of the principle reasons for this is the more nuanced picture of the effects of French colonial policy that emerges. Certainly, it is clear in all three accounts that the French structured politics in such a way that not only served their geo-strategic interests in preserving stability and solvency, it also left lasting structural legacies on the nature of the Lebanese state. Thompson points to the reinvigorated power of what she calls ‘mediating elites’, be they rural patrons, urban bosses, or religious patriarchs (who were chosen by the French as their principal collaborators), as being the root consequence of mandate policies, one that put in place “a paternalistic pact that promoted a fundamental inequality of rights”, especially for women (p. 56).

Yet, while all these authors provide a powerful argument about the obstacles to social and political progress in Lebanon, Thompson moves past this negative preoccupation to ask interesting questions about the nature of the “civic order” that remained, one that embodied what she termed a “rights-privilege tension” (p. 7). Rather than implicitly writing off the significance, if even possibility, of civic-minded politics, Thompson recognized the ambiguous legacies of French policy in Lebanon (and of Ottoman policy before it), ones that not only served to entrench sectarian and family interests but also ones that left a constitutional tradition of republican rights. While the French rarely chose to use their political power to enforce these republican rights in ways that could restructure the nature of the emerging Lebanese ‘political field’, symbolically evidenced by their backing away from an attempt to legislate the right to an optional of civil marriage in 1938, their very existence nonetheless provided resources, if only discursive ones, for those (such as the subaltern groups that Thompson investigates) who wished to restructure the “civic order” away from its confessional and factional tendencies. Given the entrenchment of these rights in the Lebanese Constitution, colonial, post-colonial and post-Ta’if, this tradition must also be counted as a legacy, albeit a much weaker one, of the French mandate in Lebanon.

This also raises questions about “stickiness” of colonial legacies. Zubaida, for example, is very cautious about discussions of “path dependencies”, preferring to emphasize historical specificity over historical essentialism (p. 130, 1989). Likewise, in their seminal volume on historical institutionalism, Thelen and Steinmo argue that while “institutions constrain and refract politics, they are never the sole ‘cause’ of outcomes” (p. 3, 1992); they do not represent “permanent, immutable characteristics of a political system” (p. 7). At a minimum, as suggested by the work of Thompson on the “civic order”, institutional legacies of the mandate period in Lebanon may be numerous and contradictory. Hence, while Firro has offered an interesting and well-researched book, his account of “the Lebanese system” would have benefited from a more significant recognition of the contradictions of ‘the political field’ that emerged and, hence that despite the entrenched and conflictual nature of the discourses on Lebanese political identity, the possibility nonetheless exists that these divides could be transcended.

Paul Kingston is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Department of Political Science and International Development Studies, University of Toronto at Scarborough.