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E-book
Author White, Benjamin Thomas, author.

Title The emergence of minorities in the Middle East : the politics of community in French mandate Syria / Benjamin Thomas White
Published Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, ©2011

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 239 pages) : illustrations, maps
Contents Map 1. Syria c.1936 -- Map 2. The far Northeast of Syria in the 1930s -- Outline chronology of the French Mandate, 1919-39 -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- pt. I. Minorities, majorities and the nation-state -- 'Minorities' and the French Mandate -- pt. II. Separatism and autonomism -- The border and the Kurds -- pt. III. The Franco-Syrian Treaty and the definition of 'minorities' -- Personal status law reform -- Conclusion : minorities, majorities and the writing of history
Summary This text uses a study of Syria under the French mandate to show what historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'. 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-231) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject National characteristics, Syrian.
Ethnicity -- Syria -- 20th century
Minorities -- Syria -- History -- 20th century
Nation-building -- Syria -- History -- 20th century
Syrians.
History -- Middle East -- General.
Syrians
Ethnicity
Minorities
Nation-building
National characteristics, Syrian
Minderheitenpolitik
SUBJECT Syria -- History -- French occupation, 1918-1946. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh98005519
Subject Syria
Frankreich
Syrien
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780748647552
0748647554
9780748688937
0748688935
1283252805
9781283252805
0748653287
9780748653287
9786613252807
6613252808