Building the Economy of Mount Lebanon Through Bargaining

Timothy Boudoumit

Timothy is a Master’s student at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto and a recipient of the Canada Graduate Scholarship for 2022-2023. His research focuses on identity formation and the growth of intellectual activities in the late-Ottoman Levant.

This article is part of the series “Capital, Technology and Utopia”, which is a collaborative project between Henna Platform and the department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilization at The University of Toronto. You can read in this series also: Taming the Egyptian Monster by Mosab Alnomire, The Jaffa Orange, Haunted by Hayley Birss, Muslim Surveillance in China and Japan by Zannatul S. Isaque and The Rebellious Gaze of Abbas Kiarostami by Nora Mezo-Willingham.

Read the Arabic article here.

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The waning years of the Ottoman Empire produced some of the most influential yet understudied effects on the development of political identities in the Levant. The present-day politicization of ethnoreligious groups, even of economic development, find their roots in the late-Ottoman period. The history we read on this period is often the history of the political elites – how the leaders reacted or made decisions. National histories are divided into periods of rulers’ tenures. Yet, such political projects both require and mobilize popular support. This popular element to ideology may clarify certain factors influencing political stagnation in each country that was formerly a part of Ottoman Syria.

This article sheds light on the people’s role in the development of political identities during the late-Ottoman Levant. It also traces the changes in norms relating to identity among the region’s people. As this is a broad topic, this paper will examine norms relating to sectarian and capitalist identities in one of the more politically volatile parts of Ottoman Syria, namely Mount Lebanon, and trace how popular understandings of sectarianism and capitalism shaped how political leaders crafted their various political projects.

Mount Lebanon has been one of the more volatile regions of Ottoman Syria, since it experienced a so-called “civil war” in 1860. This was fought between the two dominant communities of the mountain and forced major changes in the local political governance. (Fawaz 1994, 209-217) The political settlement produced a reality that modern scholars label ‘sectarianism,’ where political elites legitimize their rule by claiming to represent the political interests of their ethnoreligious group. Such ethnoreligious diversity is not unique to Mount Lebanon. Similar diversity could be found in both Ottoman Bilad al-Sham and Iraq around the same time. Moreover, sectarian systems would be implemented across these territories with European intervention. What worried Ottoman officials most was that Maronite elites, who represented a clear majority in 1860, were generally not allies of the Ottoman government.

To counter this majoritarian ideology, the first Ottoman governor of Lebanon, Dawud Pasha, mobilized capitalism as a method to legitimize Ottoman governance on the mountain. Capitalist ideologies became increasingly prevalent among the mountain’s emerging middle class, largely due to the growth of silk monoculture and increasing connection to European markets. (Holt 2017, 122; Trablousi 2012, 41-51) The Ottoman Empire as a whole began legitimizing its rule by establishing railways and telegraph lines, as well as renovating ports to accommodate larger ships, among many other developments accommodating capitalist development. These infrastructural projects facilitated the growth of capitalism in the empire by guiding Ottoman elites into capitalist competition with European projects, including the Suez Canal.

[S. N.] “The Isthmus of Suez Maritime Canal: Dredgers And Elevators At Work (colourized),” Hulton Archive, 1869. 45.72cm x 60.96. Digitized by GettyImages.

Dawud’s attempt to legitimize Ottoman rule through capitalist ideologies emerged during a clash between Ottomanist and localist political elites on Mount Lebanon between 1861-1868. The Ottomanist elites, led by Dawud Pasha, attempted to re-establish Ottoman authority following the sectarian clashes of 1860 against the Maronite elites, led by Yusuf Karam, who sought to continue the expansion of their political rights. (Spagnolo 1977, 101-113)

The clash in question lasted from 1861 to 1868 with various levels of intensity, and both Dawud and Karam sought to legitimize their pursuits among the mountain’s population. Karam’s pursuit of power was legitimized by sociocultural notions of kinship, arguing that he represented the political interests of the largest ethnoreligious group. This majoritarian logic was reconfirmed by an international commission, led by France, sent to investigate the civil war of 1860, which deemed that Maronite rights had been neglected. (Farah 2000, 603-608) Karam used this sense of ‘being wronged’ along with an emerging sociocultural sense of imagined community to legitimize his bid to govern Mount Lebanon. 

[S. N.] “Daoud Paşa,” Wikimedia Commons, Unknown date. 10.58cm x 15.24 cm.

[S. N.] “Young Youssef Bey Karam,” Wikimedia Commons, Unknown Date. 10.58cm x 14.55.

In a petition sent to the French delegate of the international commission in order to resolve the “civil war” of 1860, the signatories sought the “restoration of their ethnocultural rights” given to them by the “Egyptian government” that occupied Bilad al-Sham between 1830-1840. (Soueid 1998, 556) The letter was undersigned by “the Christians” of over 15 villages and towns and is accompanied by over 30 similar petitions from different villages discussing their desire to preserve the “rights and privileges” of “Christians” on Mount Lebanon. Yusuf Karam, the ruler of the small northern-Lebanese town of Ehden, seized on this political will to preserve the rights of Christians and formed a resistance to the restoration of Ottoman restore authority on the mountain. 

To this end, Karam launched a small-scale rebellion in 1861 that threatened to rapidly transform into widespread conflict, though it was quickly quelled by the international and Ottoman armies present. He launched a second rebellion in 1864. This required intervention from the governor of Damascus to quell. Karam led a final rebellion from 1866-1867, after which a military dispatch from the central government successfully captured him and sent him to exile in Algeria. 

The strength of Karam’s sociocultural ideology forced the Ottoman officials of Lebanon to consider new ways of legitimizing Ottoman authority. Dawud opted to legitimize Ottoman authority on non-ethnic grounds and was inspired by the spirit of the Ottoman modernization reforms underway since 1839, called the Tanzimat. Rather than define political power in Lebanon as the representation of the mountain’s ethnic groups, Dawud began posing as the representative of Lebanon as one economic unit. French consular documents revealed that Dawud’s notion of ‘economic unit’ meant that “Lebanon” should be “economically sufficient” both in terms of its expenses and income, but also in the means for its subsistence. (Spagnolo 1977, 112)

Ottoman priorities following the calamities of the Crimean War (1853-1856) were centred around infrastructural development, including most famously the Suez Canal, and Dawud’s economic rationale for Lebanon aligned neatly with these priorities. (Davison 1976, 234; Abu-Manneh 2015, 133) As a member of the Academy of Sciences of Prussia and educated as an Ottoman Tanzimat official, Dawud sought to modernize his district and make it a model province whose sectarian and economic diversity could be reproduced in other parts of the Ottoman Empire. (Spagnolo 1977, 104-105; Hakim 2013, 106-108) The post-1860 economy of Lebanon, with a burgeoning middle class, was tending towards integration into the world market through the production of silk and Dawud was keen to capitalize on this venture to secure his authority. (Quataert 1993, 84)

Dawud introduced his economic definition of Lebanon as early as 1863, when he expressed that “the centre of gravity for [the mountain’s] commercial and agricultural prosperity fell outside its [political] borders.” (Spagnolo 1977, 112) In the summer of 1865, Dawud successfully acquired the right to administer the western half of the plateau immediately bordering his district to the west, also called the Western Beqaa Valley. While it was not a part of his district, he was given the right to administer its economic activities. He hoped to acquire similar privileges for Beirut, which he called “the key to Lebanon [that would] give this country the good it so badly needs.” (Chehab and Ismail 1975, no.13, 23) His economic policies were so popular that a contemporary chronicler, Antun Dahir al-Aqiqi, considered Dawud “one of the most generous to all people. No one who has come to Lebanon [as governor] has equalled his munificence and zeal.” (Aqiqi, 1867-1868, 77) 

Riding on this popularity, Dawud circulated petitions in 1867 to the Western Beqaa and the major coastal cities bordering his district, notably Sidon and Tripoli along with these cities’ hinterlands, sounding popular opinions on whether they desired annexations. (Chehab and Ismail 1975, no.13, 21-22) In fact, Dawud was so confident in his policies that he claimed “a single word from me would bring all the people of the Mountain to ask for these annexations, and, before such a purpose, all sectarian differences would disappear” (Chehab and Ismail 1975, no.13, 24).

“The Governorate of Mount Lebanon, 1861-1920.” Available in Engin Deniz Akarlı, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 32.

The Ottoman petition system was developed during the Tanzimat to produce administrative arrangements that reflected local priorities. (Hanssen 2005, 8, 25-26, 33) Dawud’s innovation lay in using this technique to challenge Ottoman administrative arrangements, which relied on the idea that popular opinion provided a basis of legitimacy for his political projects.

By 1868, the competing visions for Lebanon, personified by Yusuf Karam and Dawud Pasha, both lost the great power support they required to continue in their popularity. Karam and Dawud were both exiled by the Ottoman authorities – Karam to Algeria and Dawud to Switzerland – fearing that both leaders were acquiring too much personal authority in the country at the expense of Ottoman governance. The new Ottoman governor, Franco Pasha, carefully balanced both the economic and sectarian interests of the mountain without prioritizing either. Yet, while the political elites no longer pushed for these ideologies formally, the public conscience had been awakened, through the rise of the middle class in Lebanon, to the economic and sectarian rationales that are still with us today in the forms of a “Sectarian Republic” and a “Merchant Republic.” (Safieddine 2019, 5) 

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