The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria

White, Benjamin

ISBN 10: 0748685405 / ISBN 13: 9780748685400

Published by Edinburgh University Press, 2012

Book may have some writing and or underlining inside, and is in overall good condition. Cover may have some cosmetic wear. Book has dust jacket if applicable. Seller Inventory # 5ALWH0000CLV_ns

Synopsis:

Honorable Mention from the 2012 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize

Why, in the years around 1920, did the concept of 'minority' suddenly spring to prominence in public affairs worldwide? Within a decade of World War One, the term became fundamental to public and academic understandings of national and international politics, law, and society: 'minorities', and 'majorities' with them, were taken to be an objective reality, both in the present and the past.

This book uses a study of Syria under the French mandate to show what historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'. Despite French attempts to create territorial, political, and legal divisions, the mandate period saw the consolidation of the nation-state form in Syria: a trend towards a coherent national territory with fixed borders, uniform state authority within them, and the struggle to control that state played out in the language of nationalism - developments in the post-Ottoman Levant that closely paralleled those in contemporary Europe, after the demise of the Austro-Hungarian and tsarist empires. Through close attention to what changed in French mandate Syria, and what those changes meant, the book argues for a careful rethinking of a term too often used as an objective description of reality.

About the Author: Benjamin Thomas White is a Senior Lecturer of History at the University of Glasgow. He is author of The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh University Press). He has published the following chapters: “Animals, people and places in displacement.” in: Adey, P., Bowstead, J., Brickell, K., Desai, V., Dolton, M., Pinkerton, A. and Siddiqi, A. (eds.) The Handbook of Displacement (Palgrave Macmillan) and “Protection or isolation? Humanitarian evacuees in Australian quarantine stations,” in: Scott-Smith, T. and Breeze, M. E. (eds.) Structures of Protection: Rethinking Refugee Shelter (Berghahn Books). He has also been published in the Journal of Global History, Humanity, Fiction and Film for Scholars of France: A Cultural Bulletin, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, British Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle ...
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication Date: 2012
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: good