Paper Title and Abstract:
“Make Them Hated in All the Arab Countries”: France, Famine and the Making of Lebanon
This chapter elucidates the international aspect of the famine that befell Lebanon during World War I. The autonomous Ottoman province of Mount Lebanon became an unintended casualty of France and Britain’s wartime blockade policy. In per-capita terms, the Lebanese suffered more deaths than any other belligerent nation involved in the war. The blockade exposed Lebanon’s existential dependence on global markets. In turn, hunger and disease epidemics afflicted Lebanon more severely than any other Ottoman province. Crucially, the crisis abetted the demise of Ottoman legitimacy meanwhile enabling the French colonial project in Lebanon. Although human in origin, and not a ‘natural’ disaster, the famine’s environmental dimensions are key to a full understanding of the creation of Greater Lebanon in 1920.
Participant Bio:
Originally from North Carolina, Graham Auman Pitts is completing a dissertation on the environmental history of Lebanon in Georgetown University’s History department . He has lived and studied in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Turkey.