Scout’s Honour: Contending for Loyalty among the Youth

This chapter tackles features shared by scouting in both Syria and Lebanon. These include the main foreign influences from French, British, Italian, and German sources, as well as local political, religious, and military components. The parallel national movements shared a number of features, namely their appropriation of different European models of youth organization, their implication in politics, their intermingling of religion and scouting, as well as their association with fascism and militarism. The foreign influences, which are explored here first, comprised an unlikely mix of French and Anglo–Saxon scouting models alongside Italian and German fascist youth organization. Overall, local scout movements demonstrate the extensive cross-pollination between foreign imports and local innovations, the implication of scouting in politics, and the fluid philosophical underpinnings of the movement as a whole.

Rivalries Redoubled: Americans in the Levant

This chapter considers American involvement during the war years. Unlike Britain, the USA had a sizeable social and cultural network in Syria and Lebanon, owing mainly to the work of American Protestant missions. This strong educational presence provided the American government with an institutional framework around which to develop stable long-term cultural networks. Moreover, the USA's reputation for political disinterestedness and anti-imperialism endeared it to much of the local population. Where the British used direct contact between their military officials and the French teaching establishments to hinder French cultural activities, American influence on education took place through grass-roots activism and diplomatic intervention. The ties that American educators had fostered with the local population for decades provided a foundation for powerful bilateral exchanges during the Second World War.

The Axis Factor: Fascist Overtures

This chapter focuses on the Italian and German presence in the Levant in the pre-war period. It examines how German and Italian cultural activities became a forum in which links were forged and fashioned between French, foreign, and local cultural players. After providing an overview of German and Italian interests in the Middle East, the Italian and German networks are dealt with individually. Although Italy and Germany shared the desire to diminish Franco–British influence in the Middle East, they both faced obstacles to implementing a programme of active penetration. As political or military avenues of agitation were not feasible, cultural projects took on greater significance than would otherwise have been the case. Both nations wanted to encourage anti-French agitation without provoking direct international confrontation or appearing politically power-hungry in the eyes of the local population.

An Enduring Dilemma: Teaching National Identity in Lebanon

The situation in Lebanon shared many features with that in Syria. Education and language were symbolic pillars of political power and collective identity in both countries. That said, there were marked differences between the educational systems in Syria and Lebanon. In spite of the occasional threat of violence, schools in Lebanon did not become targets for popular aggression as they did in Syria. Struggles over education were confined to the political sphere where the debates were sometimes intense. The actual practice of politics was dominated by intra-sectarian conflict in which Christians and Muslims formed cross-confessional allegiances to further their interests within their own communities. The discussion also considers how educational provision affected the network of relationships between the French government, the French missionaries, the Maronite Patriarchy, and the Maqāsid Islamic Charitable Association.

Treating with the ‘Infidel’: Education and Negotiation in Syria

This chapter brings in the local Syrian participants. The student demonstrations in the late 1930s targeted a wide variety of issues, including Syrian government policies, the status of religious minorities, the teaching of religion in the Christian schools, the moral standards of teachers in state schools, and the Mandate administration. As a result of their activism, students became a threat to the French administration and the Syrian National Bloc alike, and the local authorities periodically suspended classes in an effort to suppress the agitation. Notwithstanding the Syrian concern for maintaining order, Syrian leaders exploited the student disturbances to oppose the French. In spite of the troubles surrounding the closure of schools at the war's end, there nevertheless remained a perception that French culture was a valuable commodity.

Fractured Messages in a Common Tongue: France’s Educational Emissaries

This chapter discusses the French cultural networks, addressing various conflicts and contrary agendas among players who were all ostensibly united in their goal to provide a French education for local children. French culture in the Levant during the 1930s and 1940s is inseparable from the person of Gabriel Bounoure. He combined a single-minded devotion to promoting French culture with flexibility and sophistication in his approach to both Syro-Lebanese and French political struggles. The discussion also addresses the effects of the successive Vichy and Free French administrations on the status of three specific groups of private educators: the Catholic missions, the secular Mission laïque française, and the Jewish Alliance israélite universelle.

Artists and Educators at War: Franco-British Competition for the Limelight

This chapter considers British involvement in the war years. Although the French had worried about the Italians and the Germans before the war, the British and American governments ultimately emerged as a more daunting foe. The USA did not become a significant force until during the war, but already in 1936 the American press judged the British to be more dangerous to the French than the Italians, in spite of the latter's educational investment. The interaction of French and local actors with British cultural networks is visible in the arenas of cinema, publishing, and education. Each of these ventures involved multiple actors, including the Allied partners, foreign intermediaries, and local Levantine interlocutors. The French and the British generally managed to cooperate over the dissemination and censorship of cinema, yet reports by local mobile cinema team leaders display films as pawns in political struggles within the Syrian and Lebanese populations.

Conclusion

The last decade of French Mandate rule in Syria and Lebanon bears witness to the prominence of culture in a politically contested region. Flanking the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, these two states proved a crucible of international strategic interests, attracting French, Anglo–Saxon, Italian, and German notice. The participants in the cultural networks that operated in Syria and Lebanon belonged to many different nations. They shared the conviction that cultural institutions could serve a variety of political ends by shaping people's language, values, and identity. Despite what often amounted to a dearth of measurable political results, the confidence in culture as a sphere of political action perpetuated itself with remarkable momentum. Once culture became an accepted means with which to fight one's political rivals, no established or ascendant authority could afford to ignore it.