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The City and the Mountain: Beirut's Political Radius in the Nineteenth Century as Revealed in the Crisis of 1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Leila Fawaz
Leila Fawaz
Affiliation:
Tufts University
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Extract

In the course of the nineteenth century, the relationship between Beirut and Mount Lebanon underwent important changes that have affected Lebanon's political life up to the present day. The city and the countryside had always been to some extent mutually dependent. They became more closely tied in response to the economic and political transformation of the region in the age of European penetration. This growing interdependence increasingly took the form of Beirut's ascendancy over the Mountain. While in earlier centuries it was the Mountain which had extended its sway over the city, in the nineteenth century the process was reversed. But Beirut's triumph as the dominant partner in the relationship was not an unmixed blessing: While bringing prosperity to the city, it also transferred to Beirut many of the unresolved tensions of the Mountain, preparing the way for the city's sectarian rivalries and tensions in more recent times.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , November 1984 , pp. 489 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

Author's note: I would like to take this opportunity to thank Albert Hourani, without whom Migrants and Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut would not have been written. He has been infinitely kind, helpful, and inspiring. My debt to him cannot be repaid.Google Scholar

1 Fawaz, Leila Tarazi, Migrants and Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Chevallier, Dominique, La société du Mont Liban à l'époque de Ia révolution industrielle en Europe (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1971), p. 185, etc.;Google ScholarSalibi, Kamal S., The Modern History of Lebanon (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1965).Google Scholar

3 Smiliyanskaya, I. M., “Razlohenie fedalnikh otonoshenii v Sirii i Livane v Seredine XIXV.” (The Disintegration of Feudal Relations in Syria and Lebanon in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century), trans. in Issawi, Charles, ed., Economic History of the Middle East. 1800–1914: A Book of Readings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 227–247;Google ScholarSmiliyanskaya, I. M., al-Harakāt al-fallāhiyya fī Lubnān, trans. Jāmūs, Adnān, ed. Yūsuf, Salīm (Beirut: Dār al-Farābī, 1972);Google ScholarSaba, Paul, “The Creation of the Lebanese Economy: Economic Growth in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon, ed. Owen, Roger (London: Ithaca Press, 1976), pp. 1–22.Google Scholar

4 For example, F.O. 226/96, Rose-Cowley, 30–7–1847.Google Scholar

5 Hourani, Albert, “Lebanon: the Development of a Political Society,” The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1981), pp. 124–141;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hourani, “Lebanon from Feudalism to Nation-State,” ibid., pp. 142–148; Hourani, “Ideologies of the Mountain and the City: Reflections on the Lebanese Civil War,” ibid., pp. 17–178.

6 I am in the process of researching the civil war of 1860 and until I finish, can only offer my conclusions as tentative.Google Scholar

7 Fawaz, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-century Beirut. p. 171, n. 26.Google Scholar

8 F.O. 195/655, Moore-Russell, No. 9, 24–5–1860;Google Scholaribid., no. 23, 30–5–1860; F.O. 195/658, inclosure in Dufferin-Bulwer, no. 130, 7–3–1861.Google Scholar

9 University of Jordan, Center for Documents and Manuscripts. Abro-Cabouly, 24–3–1861. I would like to thank Dr. Adnan Bakhit for generously putting at my disposal the Center's collection from the Ottoman archives in Istanbul.Google Scholar

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11 University of Jordan, Center for Documents and Manuscripts. Abro-Cabouly, 19–3–1861; ibid., Abro-Cabouly, 24–3–1861.

12 On the mutual fear of Beiruti Christians and Muslims in 1860, consult, for example, F.O.195/655, Moore-Bulwer, no. 33, 9–6–1860; ibid., Moore-Bulwer, no. 19, 5–7–1860; ibid., Moore-Bulwer, no. 41, 26–6–1860; ibid., Moore-Russell, no. 35, 22–7–1860; ibid., Moore-Russell, no. 20,13–7–1860; U.S. Consul in Beirut. 1836–1906, vol. 3, Johnson-Grass, 8–6–1860; ibid., Johnson-Secretary of State. no. 2, 7–6–1860 and inclosure; ibid., Johnson-Secretary of State, 9–6–1860; ibid., Johnson-Cass. 14–7–1860.