Introduction

This extract from Robert de Beauplan's 1929 work Où va la Syrie? is fairly typical of French imperialist writings on Syria in the 1920s. Rejecting the notion of a territorially or socially unified Syria – ‘the Syrian nation is a myth’, Beauplan affirms elsewhere – it stresses the religious divisions within Syrian society and assumes a latent persecuting fanaticism on the part of Syria's Muslims. It justifies the French presence, and the administrative divisions France had imposed in the mandate territories, as the only thing standing between Syrian Christians and massacre. It cites the mandate in support of French rule. And, despite referring to the numerical inferiority of the Christians, it lacks any explicit reference to minorities.

This chapter places the emergence of ‘minorities’ in Syria in the context of the French mandate. It focuses on the interplay between two distinct factors: first, the policies the French put in place in Syria in order to structure, and exacerbate, the divisions between Syria’s diverse communities; and, second, and more profound in its effects, the transition to a nation-state form.