Colonial States in the Middle East
Let's Talk About European Colonial States in and Around Palestine
I previously looked at the notion of Israel being a “white European colonial” state. Let’s take a deeper dive into “colonialism” in the Middle East and just which countries are the products of actual colonialism.
All the cool kids chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” have been indoctrinated to think that Israel is a project of European colonialism, a “settler colonial state.” Considering that the state of Israel is yet the third Jewish commonwealth established in the Jewish homeland, and that a majority of Israeli Jews have Sephardi ancestry, meaning their families lived in the Arab world, not Europe, that’s beyond ironic. Still, the concept of European colonialism has gotten me thinking about just what countries in the Middle East are indeed colonial states.
If the discussion about Israel includes the concept of a colonial state, I think it’s fair to discuss that concept in relation to Israel’s bordering countries. If Israel is the result of European colonialism (which I believe it is not), how about Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan?
Yes, I know what you’re thinking. How can countries as ancient as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan be considered the products of colonialism? That’s because they aren’t, in fact, ancient nations and indeed were the creations of European colonialism. At the San Remo Conference in 1920, the allied powers of WWI divided up the territories of the defeated Ottoman empire between Britain and France. Ignoring natural boundaries, they literally drew lines on a map - look at the borders between Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.
I understand that there is some overlap in nomenclature when it comes to place names, countries, and nations. Is America a country, a geographic location, or an idea? Still, the fact that a place may have a commonly used name is not to be confused with the historical existence a nation or state, a political entity. The fact that a place may have a name may not mean that it’s a country/state/nation. As we have seen with the former Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, both of them political fictions, the fact that there is even a named political entity, also doesn’t really mean it’s a nation in the original meaning of that word, a unified people with shared backgrounds and values. France is a nation (or was before importing a bunch of folks who aren’t French), Yugoslavia never was.
Since we’re talking about the cool kids, whose sources of information tend towards Tik Tok rather than actual history, I’ll be using Wikipedia as a source and the emphasis has been added.
The name "Syria" historically referred to a wider region, broadly synonymous with the Levant, and known in Arabic as al-Sham. The modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC. In the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The modern Syrian state was established in the mid-20th century after centuries of Ottoman rule. After a period as a French mandate (1923–1946), the newly-created state represented the largest Arab state to emerge from the formerly Ottoman-ruled Syrian provinces. It gained de jure independence as a democratic parliamentary republic on 24 October 1945 when the Republic of Syria became a founding member of the United Nations, an act which legally ended the former French mandate (although French troops did not leave the country until April 1946).
Modern-day Jordan has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic period. Three kingdoms emerged there at the end of the Bronze Age: Ammon, Moab and Edom. In the third century BC, the Arab Nabataeans established their Kingdom with Petra as the capital. Later rulers of the Transjordan region include the Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, Byzantine, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, and the Ottoman empires. After the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in 1916 during World War I, the Greater Syria region was partitioned by Britain and France. The Emirate of Transjordan was established in 1921 by the Hashemite, then Emir, Abdullah I, and the emirate became a British protectorate. In 1946, Jordan gained independence and became officially known in Arabic as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Note: The term Transjordan was the term for the 3/4ths of mandate era Palestine east of the Jordan river. Before 1946, there was neither a political country nor a region known as “Jordan”.
Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government.[15] Egypt's long and rich cultural heritage is an integral part of its national identity, which reflects its unique transcontinental location being simultaneously Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African.[16] Egypt was an early and important centre of Christianity, but was largely Islamised in the seventh century. Modern Egypt dates back to 1922, when it gained independence from the British Empire as a monarchy.
The earliest evidence of human civilization in Lebanon dates back to 5000 BCE.[19] From 3200 to 539 BC, Lebanon was home to Phoenicia, a maritime empire that stretched the Mediterranean Basin.[20] In 64 BC, the Roman Empire conquered the region, and Lebanon soon became a major center for Christianity under the aegis of the Byzantine Empire. In the 7th century, the Muslim conquest of the Levant brought the region under the control of the Rashidun Caliphate. The 11th century saw the beginning of the Crusades and the establishment of Crusader states, though these later fell to the Ayyubids and the Mamluks, who in turn ceded the territory to the Ottoman Turks in the aftermath of the Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517. Under Ottoman ruler Abdulmejid I, the first Lebanese proto-state was established in the form of the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, created in the 19th century as a home for Maronite Christians under the Ottoman "Tanzimat" period.
After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire around World War I, the five Ottoman provinces constituting modern-day Lebanon came under the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, to be administered by France. Under the Mandate administration, France established Greater Lebanon as the predecessor state to today's independent Lebanon.
It appears that while the names of Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria are ancient, those modern nations, as well as Iraq, are the product of colonialism, Turkish, British, and French, at least as much as the modern state of Israel is. France established modern Syria and Lebanon, Britain created Jordan out of historic Palestine as well as establishing the modern state of Egypt. Unlike the Turks, Brits, and French, however, who were not native to those regions, the Jews at least have a claim to being indigenous to Israel.