Colonial Citizens

Under French control, Syria and Lebanon took shape during a period of anticolonial uprisings worldwide and the upheaval that followed the First World War. Elizabeth Thompson traces how people in the Mandate territories pressed to be granted the civic rights that French citizens held in mainland France. The bargaining between French authorities and Mandate residents determined the political rules that continued to operate for decades after both countries gained independence in 1946.

Thompson treats gender as the key arena where the duties of the state toward its people and the claims people made on the state were worked out. Her account includes not only educated nationalists and French officials but also emerging movements of women, laborers, young people, and religious populists. She looks closely at the contested struggles over French paternalist policy in public health, schooling, employment, and the press.

The book shows two lasting outcomes of these disputes. A colonial welfare state took form by the Second World War, recognizing citizens' social entitlements to healthcare, education, and labor protections. Alongside it, unspoken gender agreements were first set by the French and later upheld by the nationalist governments that followed. Under these arrangements, rival male leaders reached a compromise that kept women out of public life.

By bringing working people, lower-ranking clergy, and above all women into the story of the region, the study adds to scholarship on gender in nationalist and postcolonial thought. It will interest readers of Middle Eastern history, the interwar period, and the origins of statebuilding, nationalism, Islam, and gender roles since World War II.