Contesting the Colonial Narrative's Claims to Progress: A Nationalist's Proposal for Agrarian Reform

In: Review of Middle East studies, Band 44, Heft 2, S. 187-195

Abstract

In the years immediately following the imposition of mandatory rule in Syria in July 1920, French administrators declared their intention to develop the region in accordance with the ideals of progress and scientific rationality. Among the areas targeted for special attention and improvement was the field of agriculture. The first French agricultural counselor for the mandate, E. Achard, emphasized that attention to the mise en valeur (enhancement and development) of this sector could not only serve France's need for specific commodities but would also make French mandatory rule a vehicle through which progress and scientific rationality would be imparted to what he depicted as an underdeveloped Syria. However, fifteen years later, it seems, little had changed. In 1935, Mohammed Sarrage, a Syrian student at Toulouse University, wrote a dissertation that soundly criticized the mandate government for its failure to institute the reforms necessary to advance or significantly increase Syria's agricultural production. A closer examination of Sarrage's critique and his proposed program for reform not only reveals the incoherence between French official discourse and actual policy, but suggests an alternative narrative to that of French officials regarding the sources of progress and modernity.