Occupying Syria under the French Mandate Insurgency, Space and State Formation Cambridge Middle East Studies Series

What role does military force play during a colonial occupation? The answer seems obvious: coercion crushes local resistance, quashes political dissent and consolidates the dominance of the occupying power. However, as this discerning and theoretically rigorous study suggests, violence can have much more ambiguous consequences. Set in Syria during the French Mandate from 1920 to 1946, the book explores a turbulent period in which conflict between armed Syrian insurgents and French military forces not only determined the strategic objectives of the colonial state, but also transformed how the colonial state organised, controlled and understood Syrian society, geography and population. In addition to the coercive techniques, the book shows how civilian technologies such as urban planning and engineering were also commandeered in the effort to undermine rebel advances. Colonial violence had a lasting effect in Syria, shaping a peculiar form of social order that endured well after the French occupation.

1. Rethinking violence; 2. The architecture of the colonial state; 3. Political rationalities of violence; 4. Time, science and space; 5. Rebel movements and the great revolt; 6. Urban planning, hygiene and counter-insurgency; 7. Nomad space: securing the desert.

Dr Daniel Neep is a lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter and Research Director (Syria) at the Council for British Research in the Levant.