Khalidi Arab Nationalism
Khalidi Arab Nationalism
Khalidi Arab Nationalism
.
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WITH MANY ASPECTS OF MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY, the study of Arab nationalism has tended to remain isolated from broader trends in history and the social
sciences and specifically from the comparative study of nationalism. Similarly,
most writing on nationalism has drawn sparingly on Middle Eastern examples.
Thus, while a few of the early studies of nationalism in comparative perspective,
such as that of Hans Kohn, devoted some attention to the nascent nationalisms of
the Middle East including Arab nationalism, more recent writers, such as Eric
Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson, have touched on the Middle East only in
passing, if at all.'
Within the field of modern Middle Eastern history, beyond a general isolation
from current trends in history, including the comparative study of nationalism,
there has been a propensity toward compartmentalization along linguistic and
national lines.2 This has led to an unfortunate situation in which those studying
Arab and Turkish nationalism, for example, have often been unaware of the
relevance of one another's work, unfortunate because Middle Eastern nationalisms-such as Turkish and Arab nationalism before World War I or Zionism and
Palestinian nationalism more recently-have strongly influenced one another in
many ways and have served as the channels through which political concepts and
forms of organization originating in Europe entered the Middle East. Failure to
examine these reciprocal influences has at times led to an overemphasis on direct
European influences and to numerous other kinds of distortions, notably a
As
' As can be seen from the title of his first book, A Historyof Nationalismin theEast (New York, 1929),
Hans Kohn came to the comparative study of nationalism after examining its specific properties in
the Middle East and Asia, an examination that informs his book TheIdea of Nationalism:A Studyin Its
Originsand Background(New York, 1944). See also E. J. Hobsbawm,Nationsand Nationalismsince1780:
Programme,Myth,Reality(Cambridge, 1990); Benedict Anderson, ImaginedCommunities:
Reflectionson
the Originsand Spreadof Nationalism,rev. edn. (New York, 1991). Hobsbawm offers a list of recent
works on nationalism (p. 4), including Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (London, 1983),
Anderson's book, and the collection edited by Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of
Tradition (Cambridge, 1983). None of these books deals in any depth with Middle Eastern
nationalisms. One of the few authors on nationalism with expertise in the Middle East field is Elie
Kedourie, whose work is discussed below. See especially his Nationalism,4th rev. edn. (London, 1985)
and the edited work Nationalismin Asia and Africa (New York, 1970).
2 This compartmentalization may be due in part to the specialized language study necessary for
work on the historiography of Arab, Turkish, and Iranian nationalism, as well as Zionism. It is also
in part a function of the insidious influence of nationalist rhetoric on these different historiographies.
As a result of the heady impact of the subject studied on some of those studying it, much research
and writing on these topics has come to reflect in microcosm the antagonisms between Middle
Eastern nationalisms.
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old elites and new social forces at once desirous of seeing their society resist
control by outside forces and deeply influenced by the example and the challenge
of the West.
Arab nationalism represented both a revival of old traditions and loyalties and
a creation of new myths based on them, an invention of tradition, to use
Hobsbawm and Ranger's term. Thus, as Arab nationalism took hold, what had
been described for thirteen centuries as the glories of Islamic civilization came to
be called the glories of Arab civilization; the language and literature of the Arabs,
always revered and cherished, took on a new and heightened importance; and a
sense of pride in Arabism that had always existed but had long been dormant was
consciously revived and actively fostered.
By some time early in the twentieth century, at the end of this process of
synthesis (which in many respects closely followed the pattern laid down by other
national movements described by Anderson in ImaginedCommunities),
the idea was
widespread throughout the "Arabworld" (itself a concept born of the rise of Arab
nationalism) that anyone who spoke Arabic, looked back on the history of the
Arabs with pride, and considered himself or herself to be an Arab was one, and
that this sense of shared identity should in some measure find political expression.
Soon, with the power of the state propagating it through the educational system,
the media, and other avenues of access to cultural and political discourse in a
number of newly independent Arab countries, the Arab idea was strongly
entrenched.
It is important to stress the unevenness of this process, with some parts of the
Arab world coming earlier to Arabism-the term given to the early twentiethcentury precursor of fully developed Arab nationalism-and others much later,
with competing or complementary senses of identity stronger in some regions
than in others. These alternate senses of identity, which in many cases preceded
the rise of Arabism, included religious and sectarian affiliations as well as local
patriotism. The attachment to religion endured, and it has provided the basis for
a sustained challenge to nationalism in the Arab world in recent years. Local
loyalties ultimately became the basis for the nation-state nationalism of the
twenty-odd states that eventually made up the Arab world following the collapse
of the Ottoman empire and the European occupations and partitions of the
Middle East during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This competing
form of loyalty has also mounted a challenge to Arab nationalism in recent years,
although in many ways it has been a less public and more subtle one.
Contrary to the mistaken impression held by many, it is not the case that Arab
nationalism was or is necessarily synonymous with pan-Arabism, that is, with the
idea that all Arabs should live in a single great Arab nation-state. Indeed, despite
the inflated rhetoric of certain Arab nationalist parties such as the Baath (its
slogan is "one Arab nation with an eternal mission"), in most cases in which Arab
nationalists have had a chance to put their ideas into practice, they have not
favored the idea of a single Arab nation-state. It was certainly not the practical
objective envisioned by the earliest Arabists who, when they had a brief opportunity to deliberate on and implement some of their ideas after World War I,
worked through a Syrian and an Iraqi congress in Damascus for the establishment
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The crucial point, however, missed by those who focus obsessively on panArabism, is that powerful countervailing tendencies have been present since the
earliest days of Arabism, before and after World War I, that have balanced this
emotional drive in favor of unity. Notable among these is nation-state nationalism,
based on longstanding local loyalties, which has proven at least as tenacious as
pan-Arabism for most of this century, even if it does not have the legitimacy or
mass appeal of that ideology.5 Another is the ideology of Islam, which in its
3Robert W. Macdonald, TheLeagueof ArabStates:A Studyin theDynamicsof Regional Organization
(Princeton, N.J., 1965), though outdated, is still a useful source.
4For an illuminating discussion of the interaction between nation-state nationalism and panArabism analyzed in terms of raisond'e'tatand raisonde la nation, see Walid Khalidi, "Thinking the
Unthinkable," ForeignAffairs,56 (July 1978): 695-713.
sAmong the best studies of the emergence of specific nation-state nationalisms in the Arab world
are Muhammad Y. Muslih, The Originsof PalestinianNationalism(New York, 1988); Kamal Salibi, A
House of Many Mansions: The History of LebanonReconsidered(Berkeley, Calif., 1988); and Israel
Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam and the Arabs: The Searchfor EgyptianNationhood,
1900-1930 (New York, 1986); see also Gershoni's Emergenceof Pan-Arabismin Egypt(Tel Aviv, 1981).
Others are discussed below.
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pan-Islamic variety was strongly supported by the Ottoman state until its demise
after World War I. In the current form of radical activism, Islam has proven a
formidable rival to all forms of nationalism in many parts of the Arab world in
recent years. It is thus grossly inaccurate to depict pan-Arabism as the only form
of Arab nationalism, sweeping all before it in the Arab world, whether today or in
the past.
WHEN
beginning
NATIONALISM
through the 1960s, nation-state nationalism was less visible as a force in the Arab
world than it is today, and the Islamic resurgence that has affected the region so
strongly in recent years was not yet apparent to most observers. Through the
1960s, indeed, the intellectual and ideological ascendancy of Arabism in Arab
politics seemed assured, and writers on the subject took this as a given. Perhaps
the most useful way to classify the authors of these early works is on the basis of
how skeptically they approached Arab nationalism, with one group generally
positively inclined toward its subject and another highly critical, often to the point
of derisiveness.
The most notable book in the first, or positive, category is Antonius's Arab
Awakening,which, for all its many flaws, has had an enormous impact on both the
scholarly and political debate over the Arab world since its publication more than
half a century ago. Antonius's book is a seminal exposition of the theses of Arab
nationalism, as well as a detailed account of crucial episodes in its genesis and
development, much of it based on Antonius's access to both Arab and British
documents not before published, interviews with key participants in events, and
personal experience. Antonius, born in Egypt of Lebanese parents, was at
different times in his brief career between 1921 and his premature death in 1942
an official of the British mandate administration in Palestine, an intermediary in
negotiations between Britain and several Arab rulers, a negotiator on behalf of
the Palestinian leadership with the British, and an official of an American
foundation in the Middle East.7
Perhaps the best assessment of this complex book is that of the foremost
historian of the modern Middle East, Albert Hourani, who stated that The Arab
6 George Antonius, TheArabAwakening:The Storyof theArabNational Movement(London, 1938).
The American edition was published the following year in Philadelphia by J. B. Lippincott.
7 For more on Antonius and his impact, see Albert Hourani, "TheArab AwakeningForty Years
After," in Studiesin ArabHistory:TheAntoniusLectures,1978-87, Derek Hopwood, ed. (London, 1990),
21-40. Hourani's was the first of the Antonius lectures, which have been delivered at St. Antony's
College, Oxford, since 1978 and eleven of which are collected in this volume. For less charitable
assessments of Antonius, see Martin Kramer, "Ambitious Discontent: The Demise of George
Antonius," in The GreatPowersin the Middle East, 1919-1939, Uriel Dann, ed. (New York, 1988),
405-16; and Sylvia G. Haim, "TheArabAwakening:A Source for the Historian?"WeltdesIslams,n.s.
2 (1953). Bernard Wasserstein, TheBritishin Palestine,2d edn. (Oxford, 1991), 183-89, gives useful
biographical details, as does the essay by Thomas Hodgkin, "George Antonius, Palestine and the
1930s," 77-102, in Hopwood, Studiesin ArabHistory.A biography of Antonius by William Cleveland
is in preparation and will complement his useful biographies of Antonius's contemporaries, Sati'
al-Husri and Shakib Arslan: TheMaking of an ArabNationalist:Ottomanism
and Arabismin theLife and
Thoughtof Sati' al-Husri (Princeton, N.J., 1971); and Islam against the West: ShakibArslan and the
Campaignfor IslamicNationalism(Austin, Tex., 1985).
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Haim argued in the preface to a later edition of her book that "Arab
nationalism is now less a step toward unification, in spite of some outward signs in
that direction, than a belief with a particular aim, namely, the defeat of the State
of Israel."'3 While Haim's skepticism regarding the trend toward unification
seems well placed, and has been borne out by events, her main point is
questionable. Arab nationalism has indeed been linked to opposition to Zionism
since the earliest years of the two movements, but they have had a shifting
relationship, as is evidenced by a variety of attempts to arrive at a settlement
between them since the Faisal-Weizmann accord in 1919, and indeed even before
that.'4 Moreover, to reduce Arab nationalism to no more than opposition to the
state of Israel, as Haim seems to be doing, is surely unjustified given the differing
resonances of the ideology in different parts and in different social strata of the
Arab world over nearly a century, although it is highly revealing of her attitude
toward her subject.
Among the key historical questions raised by Haim, and even more forcefully
by Kedourie, is the crucial and complex linkage between Arab nationalism and
Islam. Haim sees a shift in recent decades toward a closer identification between
the two and adds: "By becoming acceptable to Muslims, Arab nationalism is no
longer merely a doctrine for the verbose and the gullible." In the less contemptuous words of Kedourie, "Islam and Arabism largely overlap; and where they do
not, they are not in opposition."'5 Such views are widely held, as can be seen from
the argument of Bernard Lewis, in the much-reprinted monograph The Arabs in
History, regarding the identity of Islam and nationalism for Muslim Arabs: "For
Muslims the two forms of expression were never really distinguished."''6
These assertions are worth considering carefully. Certainly, much evidence
exists to show that many Arabs have not drawn a sharp distinction between Islam
and Arabism; they were different but closely linked forms of expressions of
identity made all the more important by the encroachment of the West. This
attitude was particularly prevalent in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as in some
parts of North Africa, such as Algeria and Libya, where national resistance to
European colonialism very early took on a religious form. The idea of a near
identity between Islam and Arabism is much less satisfactory, however, when
applied to Egypt and the countries of the Fertile Crescent, which are the central
Arab lands and the sources of the most advanced syntheses of both nationalist and
Islamic revivalist doctrine, and which at the same time contain large ArabChristian populations.
In these central Arab regions, what we may call the Haim-Kedourie thesis
manifestly fails to take into account the full scope and complexity of the
pre-World War I interaction between early Islamic reformers and the young
Sylvia G. Haim, ed., ArabNationalism:An Anthology(Berkeley, Calif., 1976), ix.
For more on the earliest Arab opposition to Zionism, see Neville J. Mandel, TheArabsand Zionism
beforeWorldWarI (Berkeley, Calif., 1976); and R. Khalidi, "The Role of the Press in the Early Arab
Reaction to Zionism," Peuples mediterran&ens,
20 (juillet-septembre 1982): 105-23. On Arab-Zionist
negotiations, see Neil Caplan, Futile Diplomacy,2 vols. (London, 1983-86).
15 Haim, Arab Nationalism(1976), ix. Elie Kedourie, Islam in the Modern World,and OtherStudies
(London, 1980), 56.
16 Bernard Lewis, The Arabsin History,4th edn. (London, 1966), 173.
13
14
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20 Kedourie has put forward this argument repeatedly in his many writings, perhaps most notably
in his first book, England and the Middle East: The Destructionof the OttomanEmpire, 1914-1921
(London, 1956); and in the title essay in The ChathamHouse Version,and OtherMiddle-EasternStudies
(London, 1970), 351-94.
21 Rashid Khalidi, BritishPolicytowardsSyriaand Palestine,1906-1914: A Studyof theAntecedents
of the
Hussein-McMahonCorrespondence,
theSykes-PicotAgreement,and theBalfourDeclaration(London, 1980).
22 Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, Mass., 1991). The book reached
number 3 on the New YorkTimesbest-seller list after its publication, a remarkable feat for such a
scholarly work.
23 C. Ernest Dawn, FromOttomanism
toArabism:Essayson theOriginsof ArabNationalism(Urbana, Ill.,
1973); this volume brings together essays most of which were originally published between 1957 and
1962; see also the two more recent essays by Dawn cited above in n. 9.
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different ways in which Arabism has related to Islam in the Arab world. He has
shown with relation to Syria, the Hijaz, and Egypt in particular that a more
complex interaction took place than that depicted by either Antonius or Haim and
Kedourie, critiquing the views of the former and refining significantly those of the
latter. Moreover, in describing the early relations between Arab elites (notably the
Hashemites) and the British, Dawn has both followed lines laid down by Antonius
and Kedourie and developed his own insightful analysis, showing the Hashemites
to be dynasts for whom Arab nationalism was a useful instrument in some
circumstances and of little relevance in others. This analysis has been largely
borne out in monographs on the Hijaz and Jordan by William Ochsenwald and
Mary Wilson respectively, and in a book on Iraq by Hanna Batatu.24
Dawn's interpretation of the social basis of Arabism in Syria-that it was
essentially the vehicle of a minority faction of the traditional upper-class elite until
after World War I-has been very influential, although it has been challenged in
a number of respects.25 It nevertheless remains the first serious attempt to
elucidate an important aspect of Arab nationalism and one that has not yet
received the attention it deserves. It addresses the relationship between ideas and
society, specifically the way in which changes in the dominant ideology in the Arab
world, notably that from Ottomanism to Arabism in the first two decades of this
century, relate to simultaneous transformations in Arab society.
The paucity of work on this subject is attributable in part to the relative lack of
scholarly attention to the social history of the Arab world, with a few important
exceptions, such as those sections relating to Arab society in Haim Gerber's Social
Originsof theModernMiddleEast, in volumes such as TheRural MiddleEast: Peasant
Lives and Modesof Production,edited by Kathy Glavanis and Pandeli Glavanis, and
in the pioneering work of the late Gabriel Baer.26The situation is somewhat better
in the field of economic history, where the extensive writings of Charles Issawi
and Roger Owen have illuminated both the internal development of the Middle
Eastern economies and their relations with the expanding world economy in the
modern era.27Unfortunately, there has as yet been little impact from research in
24 William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society,and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz under OttomanControl,
1840-1908 (Columbus, Ohio, 1984); Mary C. Wilson, King Abdullah,Britainand theMaking ofJordan
(Cambridge, 1987); see also their respective essays in R. Khalidi, Originsof ArabNationalism,"Ironic
Origins: Arab Nationalism in the Hijaz, 1882-1914," and "The Hashemites, the Arab Revolt and
Arab Nationalism"; Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classesand the RevolutionaryMovementsof Iraq: A
Study of Iraq's Old Landed and CommercialClassesand of Its Communists,Ba'thists, and Free Officers
(Princeton, N.J., 1978.)
25 Dawn's thesis was put forward in its original form in his essay, "The Rise of Arabism in Syria,"
in FromOttomanismto Arabism,and expanded in his two articles cited in n. 9. For a critique of them,
see R. Khalidi, "Ottomanism and Arabism in Syria before 1914: A Reassessment," in R. Khalidi,
Origins of Arab Nationalism;and "Society and Ideology in Late Ottoman Syria: Class, Education,
Profession and Confession," in John Spagnolo, ed., Takingthe Long Viewon theModernMiddleEast:
Essaysin Honour of AlbertHourani (Oxford, 1991).
26 Haim Gerber, TheSocialOriginsof theModernMiddleEast (Boulder, Colo., 1987); Kathy Glavanis
and Pandeli Glavanis, eds., The Rural Middle East: Peasant Lives and Modes of Production(London,
1990). Gabriel Baer's most important works of social history include Studiesin the Social Historyof
ModernEgypt (Chicago, 1969); and Fellah and Townsmanin the Middle East: Studiesin Social History
(London, 1982). See also Edmund Burke III and Ira M. Lapidus, eds., Islam, Politics, and Social
Movements(Berkeley, Calif., 1988); and Tarif Khalidi, ed., Land Tenureand Social Transformation
in the
MiddleEast (Beirut, 1984).
27 Charles Issawi's writings on Egypt's economic history alone are impressive, encompassing three
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these areas on our understanding of ideology in the modern Arab world, whether
Ottomanism, Arabism, the different nation-state nationalisms, or Islamic radicalism.
DECEMBER 1991