“Statesmen Without a State: Social and Economic Theory in Syrian Nationalist Thought”

Nader Atassi, University of California Berkeley

On July 24, 1920, the French Army of the Levant defeated Arab military forces in Syria at the Battle of Maysalun, bringing an end to the short-lived independent Arab Kingdom of Syria. This defeat initiated the occupation of Syria by the French Mandate that lasted until 1946. In the wake of French rule, a Syrian nationalist movement emerged that contested the terms of the French occupation throughout the period of the mandate. Existing studies of the Syrian nationalist movement have failed to adequately examine the content of Syrian nationalist thought. By adopting a functionalist understanding of Syrian politicians, scholars have portrayed Syrian nationalists as elites whose primary concern was returning to power after being outcast by the French. Syrian nationalist politics and discourse have in turn been cast as populist smokescreens that sought to obscure the self-serving motives of a Syrian elite class. When scholars have considered the content of Syrian nationalist thought, research has often been limited to ideas of competing identities and nationalisms, such as the enduring appeal of pan-Arabism compared to a more narrow Syrianism. This paper departs from these approaches and considers the social and economic theory members of the Syrian nationalist movement mobilized against the French Mandate. It shows how members of the Syrian nationalist movement developed elaborate critiques of French rule premised on the idea that French policy was detrimental to social and economic life in Syria. Syrian nationalist thinkers such as Fakhri al-Barudi, Faris al-Khouri, and Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar advocated for the establishment of institutions that were more suited to Syrian society and its historical economic geography. By publishing writings that detailed their social and economic research, they attacked one of the main foundations of French rule—its mandate to develop Syria economically.

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 Presented in Session 192. Critical Social Theory from the Global South