France’s Imperial Ambitions and The Establishment of the French Mandate in Syria

Year 2018, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 1 - 9, 30.06.2018

Ayse Tekdal Fıldıs

Abstract

When the Allied powers advanced into Syria, the
political divisions of the country followed the lines of the provincial
administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire, and in the late Ottoman period
territorial borders of Syria were virtually nonexistent. British
troops under Marshal Edmund Henry Allenby entered Damascus in 1918 accompanied
by troops of the Arab Revolt led by Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca.
General Allenby, and in accordance with the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement
between Britain and France, assigned to the Arab administration only the
interior regions of Syria (the eastern zone). Palestine (the southern zone) was
reserved for the British, and on October 8, French troops disembarked in Beirut
and occupied all the Lebanese coastal region until Naqoura (the western zone)
replacing British troops there. The French immediately dissolved the local Arab
governments in the region. The French demanded full implementation of the
Sykes–Picot Agreement and the placement of Syria under their influence. On
November 26, 1919, the British withdrew from Damascus to avoid confrontation
with the French, leaving the Arab government face to face with the French.

Soon after the Allied Power’s occupation the southern
part, Palestine, was assigned to the British Mandate, and the other, Syria and
the Lebanon, was assigned to the France Mandate. The process of political
radicalization was initiated during the era of the French Mandate; the French
legacy to Syria was almost a guarantee of political instability. The creation
of Greater Lebanon destined the Lebanese to an unstable political system which
is based on sectarian rivalries. The purpose of this study is to examine
France’s imperial objectives and the fragmentation of Greater Syria; at the
same time examining France’s implementation of colonial tradition of ruling by
division policy in 1920s which has planted the seeds of today’s problems in
Syria.

Keywords

French Imperialism, Colonial Tradition, World War I, Syria, Mandate

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