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

White, Benjamin Thomas

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0748685405 ISBN 13: 9780748685400

Casa editrice: Edinburgh Univ Pr, 2012

Riassunto

Shows which historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'Through close attention to what changed in French-mandate Syria, and what those changes entailed, Benjamin White argues for a careful reappraisal of the term 'minority'. Within a few years of World War I, the term had become fundamental to public understandings of national and international politics, law and society. Minorities (and majorities) were taken to be an objective reality, both in the present and the past. In Syria, the mandate period saw the consolidation of the nation-state form, despite French attempts to create territorial, political and legal divisions. There was a trend towards a coherent national territory with fixed borders and uniform state authority within them, while the struggle to control the state was played out in the language of nationalism - developments in the post-Ottoman Levant that closely paralleled events in Europe at the same time, following 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.

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Recensione:

We often think that modern nation-states suppress other collective identities identities, but this thought-provoking book turns that assumption on its head, showing how fluid regional and religious identities were constituted as minorities through the very process of state-building. Scholars interested in the relationship between collective mobilization and political institutions will want to read this book. --Susan Pedersen, Professor of History, Columbia University

L'autore:

Benjamin Thomas White is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Edinburgh Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0748685405
• ISBN 13: 9780748685400
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 239