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Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, by Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, editors
1. Rethinking the Formation of Arab Nationalism in the Middle East,
1920-1945
Old and New Narratives
Israel Gershoni
Benedict Anderson's characterization of nationalism as "an imagined political community" certainly applies to the Arab Middle East.
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Various forms of "imagined community" have competed for Arab loyalties in the modern era: territorial nationalism, nation-state nationalism, and a broad range of Islamic or religious identities.
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None of these imaginings, however, seems to have been so successful in proselytizing Arab communities as a nationalism based on the cultural-linguistic dimension of Arabness, crÊossing geographic and religious boundaries. This "Arab nationalism" [al-qawmiyya al-'arabiyya] remains a crucial form of identity and ideology even if it has become fashionable since the end of the 1970s to speak about "the end of pan-Arab nationalism,"
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and even if its "pan-movement" impulses have faded considerably.
Historically, Arab nationalism emerged and evolved as a theoretical and operative system in the period between the two world wars. It reached maturity at the end of World War II with the founding of the Arab League in 1945. It did not arise ex nihilo in the aftermath of World War I, however. In the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth, it emerged as an opposition movement in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, for the most part seeking cultural autonomy within the framework of the Ottoman state. 5 An early minority trend espousing Arab national separatism "became the overwhelmingly dominant movement in these [Arab] territories" 6 after World War I, following the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Despite the milestone of 1945, the movement's ideological impact and political influence peaked only in the 1950s and 1960s. With Nasserism and Ba'thism, Arab nationalism was transformed into a revolutionary movement, appealing to broad masses by means of a socialist program, populist rhetoric, and a deeper commitment to the idea of establishing a single Arab state.
This essay is concerned neither with that later, revolutionary stage nor with the early, seminal period. Rather, it deals with the interim period of the development of Arab nationalism from 1920 to 1945. This was the era in which it moved from the intellectual periphery to the cultural and political center, being accepted by ruling elites as official ideology and policy. For research on nationalism in the Arab world, this may well be the most interesting period, for it provides an outstanding case-study in processes of intellectual formation, ideological dissemination, social reception, and political institutionalization of an idea.
The focus of this essay is the successive historiographic narratives dealing with Arab nationalism from 1920 to 1945. The study of Arab nationalism can be said to have gone through three stages. The first consisted of contemporary accounts of the aspiration for Arab unity that emerged in the Arab world in the late 1930s and in the 1940s. The sporadic surveys and reports of this stage were a mixture of journalism and scholarship on the state of the pan-Arab movement.
In the second stage, the 1950s and 1960s, the study of Arab nationalism became a scholarly pursuit and achieved academic standing. Serious historical works systematically reconstructed the formation of Arab nationalism in the interwar period and beyond, until the 1950s. These researches into the ideological origins of Arab nationalism constituted a comprehensive narrative that became the canonical framework for further study. In the present essay, the scholarly literature of this stage is termed the "early narrative" or "old narrative."
The main thesis of this essay is the contention that in the early 1970s a new stage emerged in the study of Arab nationalism. This third stage constitutes a distinct narrative that may be defined as the "later narrative" or "new narrative." Its thrust is a systematic reassessment of the formative processes of Arab nationalism in the period from 1920 to 1945. By treating previously unresearched topics, citing new evidence, and employing innovative methodologies, this narrative enables a thorough rethinking of the history of Arab nationalism. Rethinking, however, does not entail revisionism; the new narrative evolved out of the old, refining and supplementing it. Whatever the gradient of change, little if any notice has been paid to the very real transition in historiographic paradigms.
This essay, then, is more concerned with metahistory than history. No "direct" discussion of Arab nationalism itself is offered, though there is an analysis of the modes through which it is represented in both narratives, the old and the new. Our purpose will be to define and characterize the two narratives, to examine the internal discourse unique to each--what Hayden White terms "constituent tropological strategies [that] account for the generation of the different interpretations of history" 9 --and to underline their specific contributions to the study of nationalism in the Arab Middle East. Although our main concern is with "metahistorical" representations relating to the development of Arab nationalism, it is hoped that such a treatment will also shed new light on its "actual history" during its formative period from 1920 to 1945, assuming, optimistically, the tenability of such a notion as "actual history."
The early narrative was formulated in the 1950s and 1960s as Arab nationalism reached its zenith. In large measure, that narrative was an attempt by scholars to trace, from the present to the recent past, the reasons for the success of Arab nationalism and to explain how it became the premier ideological and political force in the Arab world. To a certain extent, this early narrative is already present in the works of Hazem Zaki Nuseibeh and Fayez Sayegh. 10 However, it was only with the appearance of the influential studies by Elie Kedourie, Albert Hourani, and Sylvia G. Haim that this narrative was fully shaped. 11 Others who contributed to the emergence of the old narrative were Majid Khadduri, Hans TŸtsch, Leonard Binder, Anwar Chejne, Bernard Lewis, W. C. Smith, Patrick Seale, Nissim Rejwan, Hisham Sharabi, and Eliezer Be'eri. 12
Despite individual differences, the scholarship of this era exhibited key commonalities in its approach to fundamental issues. When did Arab nationalism began to flourish as an idea and as a framework for action? In the periodization of the early narrative, the end of World War I, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of separate Arab states under British and French Mandatory rule form the context for the transition to Arabism. Moreover, most of the studies that represent this narrative contain the claim that only in the second half of the interwar period, and more specifically in the decade of the 1930s, did a mature ideology of Arab nationalism take shape. " It was not until the 1930s that a serious attempt was made to define the meaning of Arab nationalism and what constitutes the Arab Nation," notes Haim. 13 Hourani likewise states that primarily in the 1930s, there "began to grow up a new sort of [Arab] nationalism, more thoroughgoing than that of the older generation." 14
What is the essence of Arab nationalism as represented by the old narrative? The studies of this narrative perceived nationalism above all as an idea. The general paradigm that guided its approach to the study of nationalism was that of the "history of ideas." This was a popular discipline in the study of history in the 1950s and early 1960s, propounded most influentially by Arthur Lovejoy and ramifying into derivative modes of intellectual history. 15 The major project of this form of the history of ideas was to reconstruct "unit-ideas" and "mind," individual or collective. In more ambitious cases it assumed that "the largest distinctive aim of the intellectual historian . . . is to describe and explain the spirit of an age." 16 The underlying supposition was that besides the "theoretical" or "philosophical" interest inherent in the ideas in themselves, they were also the expression of whole cultures or societies, constituting the primary force in shaping their historical evolution and in stimulating processes of social and political change.
More specific influences are also discernible. Elie Kedourie's Nationalism, itself distinctly a product of the history of ideas and directly influenced by Lovejoy, 17 had an impact on some of the studies of the early narrative. A greater effect was perhaps that had by the Orientalist, textual-philological tradition and the type of cultural-intellectual history written in its light in this period by G. E. von Grunebaum, W. C. Smith, and especially by H. A. R. Gibb. 18 Thus Nuseibeh's aim in his The Ideas of Arab Nationalism, "to explore the genesis, ideas, attitudes, and orientations of Arab nationalism;" 19 Hourani's endeavor in Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, emphasizing "those movements of Arabic thought which accepted the dominant ideas of modern Europe;" 20 Haim's anthology Arab Nationalism, focusing on its intellectual history; 21 and, more radically, Sayegh's argument in his Arab Unity--Hope and Fulfillment that "ideas have a life of their own" and that "the evolution of an idea is in some measure autonomous" 22 --all furnish clear proof of the impact of the "history of ideas" on the old narrative.
A close analysis of the texts produced by Arab nationalist writers constitutes the major part of the old narrative. Some of these early studies, notably Sayegh, make do with a general, somewhat abstract presentation of "the idea of Arab unity." 23 But for the most part the studies deal with specific texts by leading intellectuals, published in the second half of the 1930s and in the early 1940s. Nuseibeh discusses the thought of seven "theoreticians of the Arab national philosophy" (Qustantin Zurayq, 'Abdallah al-'Alayili, Raif Khouri, Sati' al-Husri, Niqula Ziyada, Yusuf Haykal, and Nabih Faris); 24 Haim, in what is perhaps the most extensive and detailed analysis, elucidates the writings of eleven prominent "nationalist writers" (Amin al-Rihani, Sami Shawkat, Muhammad Jamil Baihum, Edmond Rabbath, 'Abd al-Latif Sharara, 'Abdallah al-'Alayili, Sati' al-Husri, 'Abd al-Rahman 'Azzam, 'Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, Qustantin Zurayq, and Khalil Iskandar Qubrusi) and many other "secondary writers"; 25 Hourani analyzes the thought of four "shapers of Arab nationalist doctrine" ('Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, Qustantin Zurayq, Edmond Rabbath and Sati' al-Husri); 26 while Khadduri considers the ideas of five "nationalist thinkers" (Sami Shawkat, Edmond Rabbath, Qustantin Zurayq, 'Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz and Sati' al-Husri). 27 Thus Rabbath, Zurayq, al-Bazzaz, and especially al-Husri are identified by this narrative as the major theoreticians, those who contributed most significantly to the articulation of the new Arab nationalist doctrine.
According to the early narrative, the central feature of the Arab nationalist ideology of this era was the conviction that the Arabic language was the chief element in forging the Arab nation. "A nation has an objective basis, and in the last analysis this is nothing except language. The Arab nation consists of all who speak Arabic as their mother-tongue, no more, no less." 28 The Arab nation is therefore a linguistic entity, whose spiritual and physical boundaries are those of its tongue. 29
The adjunct of language is history. The old narrative examines how the nationalist thinkers posited history as the second most important element in the formation of a nation. Arab nationalist theoreticians perceived Arab history as an inexhaustible store of communal heroes, events, periods, traditions, and symbols to be collated in order "to produce a single unified 'past' which gives a convincing and emotionally satisfying account of the present situation of their ethnic kinsmen." 30 Arab nationalist writers went in quest of an erstwhile "golden age" of communal splendor to serve as model for the nation. Reviving classical Arab glory was indispensable for national rebirth. This entailed a systematic historical rehabilitation of the pre-Islamic era, of traditions and civilizations of the ancient Near East, such as those of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Pharaohs, the Phoenicians, and sometimes even of Judaism and Christianity. Early Islam was no longer the exclusive primeval golden era, but merely one stage, albeit an important one, in the evolution of the Arab nation. 31
Although language and history were the primary elements constituting the Arab nation, there were others. Some nationalist writers also noted "religion," "geographical environment," "racial stock," and "common national interests" as "components" of the national community. 32 The precise place and significance of these secondary constituents of nationalism was debated: whereas some writers accepted them as legitimate forces that reinforced language and history in crystallizing the Arab nation, others rejected their role (especially the allegiance to a specific race or territory), arguing that they were at odds with the nation's linguistic-cultural-historical essence and were liable to dissolve it. 33
Based on this classification of "nationalist components" into legitimate and illegitimate, the nationalist thinkers conventionalized nationalist terminology. The early narrative paid special attention to the creation of "a new vocabulary . . . that took into account, and that would be helpful in coping with, the divergence between the ideal and the reality." 34 At its core, the new vocabulary established the distinction between an affinity for the Arab nation and Arab nationalism [qawm, qawmiyya] and a patriotic affiliation with one's specific homeland [watan, wataniyya]. This distinction was meant to regulate the relations between these two loyalties within one legitimate framework consistent with the aspiration for cultural and political Arab unity [wahda 'arabiyya]. 35 In contrast, other terms were coined--iqlimiyya (regionalism, provincialism), shu'ubiyya ("narrow chauvinistic loyalty" to Egyptian-Pharaonic, Lebanese-Phoenician, Iraqi-Mesopotamian nationalisms, etc.)--"to denote a reprehensible feeling of loyalty toward a part rather than toward the whole." 36
Another aspect of the new nationalist theory that was extensively treated by the early narrative concerned the modes in which its proponents portrayed relations between Arab nationalism and Islam. The early studies detail the way in which Arabist writers secularized, modernized, and nationalized Islam so as to make it comport with the postreligious nature of Arab nationalism. They stripped away its universal transcendental and legal dimensions, undermining its status as the supreme arbiter of communal identity. It was relegated to the status of a tool, another "component" to help erect the edifice of Arab national identity. Hourani succinctly describes the metamorphosis that Arab nationalism brought about in the status of Islam:
| The centre of gravity was shifted from Islam as divine law to Islam as a culture; in other words, instead of Arab nationalism being regarded as an indispensable step towards the revival of Islam, Islam was regarded as the creator of the Arab nation, the content of its culture or the object of its collective pride. 37 |
External intellectual influences that shaped Arab nationalism were also addressed by the old narrative. In general, most studies of the narrative adopt a diffusionist model whereby nationalism radiated from a European center to a Middle Eastern periphery. They point to a congeries of influences from European philosophies and ideologies absorbed by Arab nationalist thought: German Idealist philosophy from the school of Herder and Fichte; cultural Romanticism of nineteenth-century Germany; the "pan"-nationalist movements of Central and Eastern Europe; the unification of Germany and of Italy, which provided models for founding a single broad nation-state eliminating artificial political entities; the "integral" and historicist nationalist doctrine propounded by French nationalism of the late nineteenth century (notably by Barres and Maurras); and, more immediately, European fascism and Nazism of the 1930s. The impact of liberal nationalism, in its Anglo-Saxon or French form, was, according to the old narrative, overshadowed by the powerful influences originating in Central and Eastern Europe.
In the view of the old narrative, these influences were an important and generally negative contribution to the emergence of the totalitarian, organic, and utopian tendencies in Arab nationalism. Arab ideologists considered nationalism to be a total and exclusive framework for human existence. As a modern substitute for religion, it was to furnish a complete and rounded Lebenswelt. Haim remarks on the strong influence that totalitarian conceptions exercised on Arab nationalist ideology, especially in al-Husri's version, in which the nation is consecrated as the natural, total, and sole framework for existence. 38 Khadduri points to the irredentist, integralist, Romantic and populist elements that Arab nationalist doctrine took from Europe. 39 Sayegh is critical of the pan-Arab utopia that aims for an all-embracing Arab unity by refusing to recognize "the real, objective, and stubborn elements of diversity in the Arab world." In his view, "the Arab mind had adopted uncritically the European political philosophy of nationalism, and applied it to the Arab situation without adaptation or adjustment." 40 Nuseibeh, for his part, dwells on the great similarity between the use of "historical traditions" by integralist French nationalism and its use by Arab nationalist ideologists. 41
The old narrative's strength lies in the internal textualist presentation of ideas; it is weak in its external contextualist analysis. Since nationalism was predicated primarily as "ideology," it followed that less, if any, importance should be attached to an examination of external forces that were instrumental in its formation and change. The old narrative rarely offers more than a schematic description of some of the historical developments that stimulated the emergence of Arab nationalism in the interwar period. Arab nationalism, the skimpy historical argument goes, is the response of the Arab elites to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the death of the Old Order. It is a quest for a new cultural and political identity to supersede the nonviable traditional one. 42 It was also depicted as a reaction to European colonial domination in the post-Ottoman Arab world, a protest against its arbitrary division into atomized, artificial states. 43 Culturally and psychologically, Arab nationalism was portrayed as an expression of deep-rooted Arab yearning for renewal via a restoration of the splendid Arab past and classical heritage. 44
Only on the fringes does the old narrative deal with other factors such as the connections between the growth of nationalism and social change, or between nationalist ideology and specific political interests. Hourani gives an account of the radicalization of "a younger generation" in the 1930s based on its social origins, 45 while Kedourie provides a political etiology of the Hashimite regime in Iraq that gave the "pan-Arabist" current of the post-1930 period its "political base." 46 Such sociopolitical explanations are exceptional in the old narrative.
Even less attention is devoted by the early narrative to the processes of dissemination and reception of the Arab nationalist idea at the different levels of culture and society. The old narrative pays scant attention to whether, in those societies in which Arab nationalism predominated (particularly in the Fertile Crescent), it prevailed among non-elites as well. It typically is content to draw conclusions about the nature and influence of nationalist ideology by perusing "high," "formal" texts produced by a handful of "representative" intellectuals, usually ignoring "nonformal" expressions such as can be found in the press or periodicals. In this respect as well Kedourie is exceptional, as evinced by his pioneering examination of how the Iraqi educational system, set up by the Faysal government and directed by al-Husri, functioned as a primary medium for institutionalizing and transmitting Arab nationalism. 47 Kedourie argues that al-Husri's network of schools was effectively a collection of "seminars for political indoctrination," with a mission "to spread faith in the unity of the Arab nation and to disseminate consciousness of its past glories." 48
Where the old narrative does attend to the political influence exercised by Arab nationalism, it does not always establish historical connections between idea and praxis. While generally linking the growing strength of pan-Arab ideas and sentiments in the 1930s and 1940s to the increasing interest shown by Arab politicians in forms of Arab unity that generated the inter-Arab system, crowned by the foundation of the Arab League in 1945, 49 the old narrative does not apprise us of how deeply Arab nationalist ideology penetrated the official political mind and to what extent it affected Arab governments and policy-makers. In some cases the studies create the impression that the Arab League was not a culmination of that ideology but either the product of British imperial scheming aimed at consolidating Britain's postwar position in the Middle East or a purely political mechanism intended to alleviate tensions and rivalries among Arab states. 50 Sayegh is perhaps the lone old narrative representative to discern in the League's founding any causality immanent to Arab nationalist ideology: "[i]nter-Arab cooperation and coordination, of policies and actions, [were] already enjoying the wholehearted support of the peoples and intellectuals dedicated to the idea of Arab unity." 51
A dismissive evaluation of Egypt's position vis-á-vis emergent Arab nationalism is another feature of the old narrative. Virtually all the early studies agree that Egypt played almost no role in the evolution of Arab nationalism from 1920-1945. Arab nationalism, it was argued, pertained only to the Fertile Crescent, as Egypt was then in the throes of a territorial and Pharaonic-Mediterranean nationalism with radically isolationist tendencies. 52 According to this interpretation, Egypt's transition to Arab nationalism and to the adoption of a pan-Arab ideology and policy, occurred only with the Free Officers revolution in 1952, and definitively only with the emergence of Nasserism in the mid-1950s. 53 For the old narrative, the cynical manipulations of pan-Arabist ideology by Egyptian politicians were not accompanied by a process of ideological change within the Egyptian public. Egypt remained Egyptian and Arabism remained decidedly foreign.
The new narrative evolved in the 1970s and 1980s when Arab nationalism was in retreat. Just as the old narrative had developed in the glow of Arab nationalism's political heyday, contemporary events on the ground again impinged on historians' reflections on the past. A more generous view of historians' integrity would attribute the change to the greater distance from the formative period of Arab nationalism, as well as to the benefits of a quieter atmosphere enabling a less charged and possibly more neutral discussion of the subject. In addition, new research sources were available with the opening of archives in Britain, France, the United States, Germany, and Israel. These studies also made far more systematic use of contemporary Arab newspapers and periodicals, political and social pamphlets, memoirs, belles-lettres, and other published materials.
A prominent aspect of the rethinking that characterized the later narrative studies was its decentering of Arab nationalism. It is a viewpoint that is distinctly "from the periphery to the center," examining the centripetal momentum of pan-Arabism from the perspective of the particular Arab state or society. The old narrative proceeded in large measure ahistorically, "from the center to the periphery," placing Arab nationalism at the hub of the historical discussion. The separate Arab countries and regimes were then examined from this telescoped all-Arab angle. The fact that the old narrative was composed under the powerful impression of rising Arab nationalism, while the new narrative was composed during its decline and the reassertion of state particularism, may have played a part in promoting a change of perspective.
Rather than leap directly from the eclipse of Ottomanism to the rise of Arabism, as studies of the old narrative had generally done, the "peripheralist" approach lingers over the postwar political entities and local allegiances, treating them as a discrete transitional phase--"the decade of the 1920s"--between Ottomanism and pan-Arabism. 54 Studies of Syria, Palestine, and especially Egypt explore the particularist tendencies that emerged in this decade, such as the National Bloc's policy in Syria of "honorable cooperation" with French authorities so as to win local independence, 55 the introverted Palestinian preoccupation with its double struggle against the British and the Zionists, 56 and Egypt's pronounced territorialist nationalism and explicit rejection of Arabism as alien and reactionary. 57
Iraq is exceptional in that Faysal's Sunni Arab elite had begun institutionalizing Arab nationalism and transmitting it via official state bodies already by the mid-1920s. 58 In Syria the currents of Arab nationalism circulating beneath the regnant ideologies did not gain the upper hand until 1933-1936; 59 Palestinian Arabs resorted increasingly to pan-Arabism and pan-Islam in the 1930s as their leaders realized that they could not defeat their foes without outside help; 60 and Arabism triumphed in Egypt only in the early 1940s when a generation of middle-stratum professionals who had been alienated from the ruling elites and hence from the established ideologies had matured and occupied positions of power and influence. 61 The new narrative seems to achieve a breakthrough by tracking Arab nationalism's rise from its competition with aspirations to local national independence in the 1920s, rather than deeming it as the direct fallout of Ottoman debility.
This "peripheralism" was closely interwoven with the new narrative's methodological insights. Nationalism was no longer defined as merely an "idea" or a "consciousness." Hence, the historian of nationalism could not confine himself or herself solely to the study of the history of the ideas and the dynamics underlying the evolution of a collective consciousness. Nationalism, rather, was posited as a multidimensional historical movement closely connected with social and economic changes, political and institutional developments, and the specific sociopolitical context of each Arab society individually and all of them together as a cultural unit. Nationalism came to be regarded as no less a political movement, a cultural system, a social phenomenon, and sometimes an economic force as an ideology. Even when studies in the new narrative address the issue of nationalism as a movement for national liberation from colonial rule, they do so within the social, cultural, and political context of each Arab state separately, and of each country as it relates to the all-Arab system.
Consequently, the protagonists of the new narrative are not bodies of ideas or their proponents, a handful of representative writers or intellectuals; they are, rather, national movements subsuming elite and non-elite groups, official and unofficial parties and organizations, as well as economic forces, systems, and institutions. When the new narrative deals with intellectuals as producers and disseminators of a national discourse, it is likely to view them as "secondary intellectuals," a broad "professional intelligentsia," individuals operating in the print media of newspapers, magazines, and books that shape public opinion.
The formal, methodological frameworks that supplanted the "history of ideas" approach included the "new" social history of the Annales school, together with the "political economy" and "world-system" theories. These focused on the study of the "deep" structures of society and the economy, on "the relationships between power and wealth" and "how each of them affects the other." 62 Also influential, albeit to a lesser degree, were the social history of ideas, which endeavors to locate the social basis for ideological change, the contextualist method placing text in sociopolitical context, and anthropological approaches dealing with the study of systems of meaning and collective consciousness. 63 The transition from "idea" to "society" also meant that sociological theories of nationalism and ethnosocial models of "nation formation" became increasingly significant. The earlier work of Karl Deutsch and the more recent studies by Ernest Gellner, Anthony Smith, and Benedict Anderson, although not always tapped directly, provided a general theoretical background for rethinking the sources of Arab nationalism.
Guided by these novel methodological frameworks, scholars now treated Arab nationalism as an agent of modernization and development, as an outgrowth and motor of social mobility, as the product of mass education and acculturation by the new media of "print language," and as a function of the rapid growth of literate consumer publics for that culture. Nationalism was also perceived as an outcome of the disintegration of rural communities, of urbanization and industrialization, the dissemination of modern technology and science, and the expansion of the professional middle classes.
Culturally, the content of the new communal identity was studied not as a purely intellectual construct but as a sociocultural artifact that creates an ethnolinguistic community imagining itself to be homogeneous. The new community was described as "inventing" and "reinventing" its traditions and renovating its collective ethnie to comport with modernity. In like manner, the creation of the state or of the nation-state was portrayed not only in terms of political power struggles between the narrow interests of rulers or elite groups but also as an effort to forge a political culture and new patterns of political behavior to meet the needs of the nation. Even when nationalism was studied as an anticolonial movement, it was not grasped solely as a simple mechanical political reaction to the imperialist challenge; it was, rather, understood as a complex national response generated by extensive processes of sociopolitical change that were inherent in the specific cultural context of a Muslim-Arab society.
Thus, the diffusionist model in which nationalism is transmitted as an idea from Europe to the Middle East by individual thinkers (the old narrative) gives way to a more nuanced and comprehensive model. While acknowledging nationalism's external (i.e., European) sources, the new narrative emphasizes the particular cultural-historical experience of the Middle East, with its specific modes of appropriation and reproduction of nationalism that recreate it in "Arab" form. In this regard, nationalism is understood as both a program for modern innovation and an indigenous culture of invented tradition.
Two important works, both published in 1971, on the formation of Arab nationalism as reflected in the life and work of Sati' al-Husri, mark a watershed in the transition from the old to the new narrative. The first, William Cleveland's The Making of an Arab Nationalist, remains the most comprehensive biography of al-Husri. 64 The second, Arab Nationalism: A Critical Enquiry, by Bassam Tibi, reexamines the development of Arab nationalism since 1920 with a special emphasis on the work of al-Husri as its leading proponent. 65 The two works seem to exhaust the possibilities latent in the old history of ideas paradigm in their detailed analysis of the inner conceptual structure of the ideology of Arab nationalism produced by al-Husri. Yet both depart from the old narrative by placing the nationalist text not only within its own discursive context but also in its broad, sociopolitical context. While Cleveland notes that his "study is primarily concerned with al-Husri's intellectual role in the development of an ideology," nevertheless al-Husri's life and thought are discussed "within the context of the conditions prevailing in the eastern Arab world between the fall of Faysal's kingdom in Syria in 1920 and the emergence of Nasser in 1952." 66 Cleveland also points to the influence of al-Husri's ideas on broad reading publics in Iraq and the Arab world. The systematic analysis of his role in the "institutionalization of Arab nationalism" in Iraq from 1921 to 1941--a theme extensively developed in the new narrative--is especially noteworthy in this connection. 67
Bassam Tibi, for his part, borrows methodology extensively from the social sciences to stage a critical discussion of the social and political functions of nationalist ideology generally, whereby he can compare the Arab case with that of Europe and the Third World. Tibi's "attempt [at] a definition of nationalism from the point of view of the social sciences" 68 adumbrates the later narrative's methodological axiom that internal textual analysis of Arab nationalist ideology "must be complemented by an analysis of the social structures in which this ideology has emerged." 69
The rethinking initiated in the work of Cleveland and of Tibi became a full-blown trend since the mid-1970s. The new narrative's reassessment of Arab nationalism encompassed four main areas. First, the causes of its emergence and consolidation; second, the founding "community of discourse" with its media of dissemination and to some extent its modes of reception and consumption; third, the route by which it became politically important; and fourth, a new view of Egypt as integral in all these processes.
The revision begins in periodization. The old narrative dated the mid-1930s as the onset of the intellectual crystallization of Arab nationalism. The new narrative pushed periodization back. It placed the embryonic stage of a meaningful Arab nationalist discourse in the la-ter 1920s and early 1930s. Dawn shows that history textbooks used in the new state-controlled educational system in Iraq in the later 1920s and early 1930s, which were produced in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine as well as in Iraq, already contained "important expressions of pan-Arab thought." Their nationalist themes and their relatively large circulation provide Dawn solid evidence that "[b]y the end of the 1920s, a more or less standard formulation of the Arab self-view had appeared and received comprehensive statement." 70 Simon, in her studies on education in Iraq as primary medium for the dissemination of Arab nationalism; Hurvitz, in a pioneering work on Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib's early (i.e., 1920s) theories on Arab nationalism; Gershoni, who presents incipient intellectual manifestations of Arabist identification in early 1930s Egypt; and more generally Marr and Cleveland in their works, all reinforce the new periodization. 71
As to the political sphere, the new narrative showed that even though "a system of inter-Arab relations" had "become fully developed [only] after 1945, its major attributes had been adumbrated during the preceding two decades." 72 Gomaa and Porath, in comprehensive discussions of "Hashimite attempts at Fertile Crescent unity" beginning as early as the late 1920s and early 1930s, Rabinovich in his study of political ambitions to the "Syrian throne" in the 1920s and 1930s as a prism through which the emergence of the inter-Arab system "can be most clearly examined," and Khaldun S. Husry in his discussion of King Faysal I's plans for Arab unity in the period from 1930 to 1933, clearly specify the early 1930s as the birthdate of the formation of pan-Arabist political designs. 73
The new narrative largely followed the old in describing and analyzing the crucial formative forces underlying Arab nationalism. Among these were the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the recognition that only a new communal identity based on Arabic language, culture, and history would be viable in the post-Ottoman world; the common Arab struggle against Western imperialism fostering political solidarity and boosting of indigenous, non-Western national culture; the reaction against "regionalism" (the European-imposed fragmentation of the Arab nation into artificial territorial entities following World War I); Hashimite political ambitions as a catalyst to strategies for Arab unity, and in counterpoint the attempt by Syria and Egypt to frustrate them via their own plans for promoting unity; the influence of fascism and Nazism as a model for a unifying nationalism based on a "community of strength"; Islamic revivalism in various parts of the Arab world that also advanced identification with the idea of Arab unity; and the exacerbation of the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine that fueled powerful sentiments of Islamic and Arabist loyalty. Although these factors had been studied previously, the later narrative drew on abundant new primary sources, enabling a sweeping elaboration and refinement of the old narrative. 74
One major difference between the two narratives is the new narrative's stress on the socioeconomic engines of Arab nationalism, especially the emergence of new middle-class strata in the large urban centers. This was explained by the rapid urbanization that eroded and uprooted traditional rural and tribal communities; the high social mobility of evolving urban society; and the acculturation of new publics to modern urban life in state schools, the print media, and professional training. In time, the urban, educated middle class, defined as effendiyya, became the dominant social force in urban culture and politics. The generational profile of the effendiyya was quite young, as it acted as a magnet for pupils and students. The effendiyya embraced Arab nationalism partly as a side effect of their alienation from the higher elite groups, as the new professional intelligentsia grasped its socioeconomic power and aspired to political and cultural hegemony. The professional intelligentsia sought a new ideology and political strategy to pursue its interests. They found it in Arab nationalism and in the idea of Arab unity. The new professional intelligentsia did not receive and assimilate Arab nationalism passively, however, but rather imbued it with a far more radical, populist, and politicized hue. 75
How was the link between the effendi professional intelligentsia and Arab nationalism established? The new narrative, although not unaware of this connection, does not always elucidate it. Here recent theoretical work on nationalism is helpful. Ernest Gellner's model emphasizing modern industrial society, massive urbanization, and the new centrality of a uniform culture based on and disseminated through mass literacy, as well as Benedict Anderson's complementary model stressing the nation-building effects of "print-capitalism" in forging linguistic uniformity and a common sense of identity, enhance our understanding of the connection between the Arab professional intelligentsia and Arab nationalism. More than any other group or social stratum in Middle Eastern society, the professional intelligentsia were creatures of the urban print culture, groomed in the state schools to look to it as its fount of information and, in turn, overseeing its content and distribution. In the process, Arabic language and the literate Arab culture became the professional intelligentsia's focus of communal identification. "New media of expression," Hourani notes, "were creating a universe of discourse which united educated Arabs more fully." 76
Another crucial process, not discussed in the old narrative, is what Anthony Smith has termed "radicalising the intelligentsia." 77 Smith argues that as the professional intelligentsia climb the social ladder en route to power, they are blocked or delayed by certain forces in the society. In their effort to overcome or circumvent these obstacles, they are radicalized in the form of commitment to a nationalist ideology that is particularly nativist, populist and militant. 78
Three main obstructions engender the professional intelligentsia's radicalization. The first is the educational overproduction of professionals and a paucity of jobs, inducing the intelligentsia to turn to politics in order to initiate policies ensuring their class full employment. The second is the hostility shown the emergent professional intelligentsia by the "old hierarchical bureaucrats," drawn mainly from the established landed elite, which furthered their interests by collaborating with colonial rule. The third hindrance to the professional intelligentsia's rise is competition and conflict with foreign professionals, thought by the "natives" to benefit from preferential employment and the promotional policies of the colonial rulers.
In the Arab case, the professional intelligentsia's struggle against these various obstacles entailed fashioning a political counterculture based on populist nationalism combined with socialist elements as an alternative to the established conservative political culture with its constitutional parliamentary orientation and its links with the West. To foster its cause, the professional intelligentsia sought an alliance with lower social strata, employing nativist rhetoric and presenting themselves as the authentic voice of the aspirations of "the people." Their protest was vented in ethnic and nationalistic forms: as the struggle of the autochthonous (Arab-Muslim) ethnic community against ethnic interlopers (Greeks, Italians, French, British, and in some cases Christians or Jews). In Smith's pungent phrase, the surging radicalization of the new professional intelligentsia is channeled toward an "ethnic solution" in ethnic nationalism. 79 This ethnic solution serves a double function, providing "not only the basis of an alternative status system and power center for an excluded stratum, but a resolution of their identity crisis through a revaluation of their function and purpose." 80
The new narrative devoted considerable attention to the mediational role of the new professional classes in the dissemination and popularization of their brand of nationalism among broad sectors of literate society. In Iraq, as shown by Cleveland, Marr, Porath, Eppel, and mainly Simon, the state educational system was a prime agent of socialization and acculturation to Arab nationalist culture. The state-controlled system produced, in the 1920s and still more in the 1930s, generations of new professionals (more broadly, urban middle-class effendiyya) who soon served in central positions in the state bureaucracy, as young officers in the army, in municipal public life (particularly in Baghdad), in political parties, and as founders and managers of literary and journalistic enterprises. In the 1930s, in an effort to translate their rising social strength into immediate political power, the professionals began accelerating processes of ideological and political radicalization that were channeled primarily into the promotion of ardent pan-Arabism. 81 The Iraqi state-run system also "exported the revolution" happenstantially, for it solved its manpower problem by recruiting educators from abroad, who absorbed the penchant for Arab nationalist instruction during their stints in Iraq and who later dispensed the doctrine upon returning to teaching posts or other positions of cultural influence in their countries of origin. 82
Pan-Arab radicalism was expressed in diverse forms in 1930s Iraq. In 1935 the "Muthanna Club" was established in Baghdad and rapidly became a forum for the educated from all parts of the Arab world and a center for the dissemination of Arab nationalist propaganda. 83 Nationalist radicalization was also evident in the formation, in the late 1930s, of a paramilitary youth movement [al-futuwwa] modeled on fascist and Nazi youth organizations, sponsored by the government and officially instituted in Iraqi schools. Students were indoctrinated to believe that "the youth represented the [Arab] nationalist ideal, the heroic qualities of the Arab, and [that] they were to restore past glory." 84 From 1938 to 1940 the futuwwa inculcated a particularly militaristic Arab nationalism into an entire generation of young Iraqis, advocating violent means to realize Arab unity and British withdrawal from the Middle East. The anti-British coup of Rashid 'Ali al-Kaylani in 1941, a pro-German and violent expression of Arab nationalism, was the culmination of the process of ideological ferment and political radicalization in Iraq; it was a process generated, primarily, by the new urban middle-class effendiyya in their role as shapers of public opinion through state education and the print media. 85
Similar developments took place in interwar Syria. In the 1930s a new, urban, educated middle class containing a significant professional component sprang up in the expanded cities, particularly Damascus. It constituted the chief social reservoir of a new Syrian political class and culture. Philip Khoury provides a systematic analysis of the social formation of the Syrian middle-class professionals and their entrance as an active opposition force into the political arena; he defines the entire process as "radicalization," and the new forces as "radicalized movements [that) left their mark on the politics of nationalism." 86 These new elements, representing primarily the new, modern middle class of students, bureaucrats, and professionals, entered the political arena "armed with European educations and new, sophisticated methods of political organization acquired abroad." 87 Their political parties, "based on more systematic and rigorous systems of ideas," sought a reformulation of nationalism "that corresponded to and accommodated the structural changes" then underway in Syria. "The language of nationalism itself was refined and altered; these ascendant forces placed more emphasis on social and economic justice for the masses, [and] on pan-Arab unity" as an alternative to "the old nationalist ideas of constitutionalism, liberal parliamentary forms and personal freedoms." The new populist, radical nationalism was designed to bridge the gap between "the nationalism of the upper classes and the nationalism of popular sentiments." 88
The most important of the radicalized organizations to emerge in Syria in the 1930s was the League of National Action ['Usbat al-'Amal al-Qawmi]. Established in 1933 and operating throughout the remainder of the decade, the League was the mouthpiece of militant, anti-imperialist pan-Arabism. It rejected the National Bloc's opportunist strategy of "honorable cooperation" with the Mandatory authorities, calling instead for mass mobilization and direct action to obtain Syr-ian independence. Its membership was primarily composed of Syrian youth who had graduated from the state-run school system and entered middle-class professions. 89
Khoury's view is comprehensive--a rarity among the composers of the new narrative--in plotting Syrian developments in the broader Middle East context:
| In terms of its class and educational background, political style, and ideological orientation, this new generation of nationalists in Syria displayed characteristics that were remarkably similar to those of an emerging second generation of nationalists in Palestine, Iraq and Egypt. In fact, the politically active members of this new generation were able to forge a panoply of ties across the Arab world. 90 |
Palestine in the 1930s also witnessed a "process of radicalization" and "the rise of radical organizations" among the nationalist public. 91 The unique experience of the simultaneous struggle against Zionism and British rule, together with the new middle class's characteristic alienation from the traditional forces and leaders whose conservatism was blamed for all political setbacks, bred ideological and political radicalization among new, educated, urban middle-class groups in the Palestinian Arab society. Porath and Lesch address this process, demonstrating the analogy with other Arab societies of the 1930s. Porath stresses that the radicalization first appeared in urban centers, leavened by the younger and better educated generation that functioned "as an independent and more radical political force." 92 These young, educated forces established their own political bodies in the early 1930s, such as the "Young Men's Muslim Association," the "Arab Young Men's Association," the "National Congress of the Arab Youth," the "Patriotic Arab Association" and the "Arab Boy Scouts Association." 93 The party al-Istiqlal became the leading pan-Arab nationalist organization of the period. The founding of al-Istiqlal, Porath writes, "was an outcome of the growth of an educated class of young radicals who saw in Pan-Arabism the panacea for all the illnesses of Arab society." Porath shows that the party's leading activists came from the Palestinian "professional intelligentsia," among them physicians, bank managers and financial experts, journalists and schoolteachers. 94 Lesch also contends that the party's support "came primarily from young professionals and government officials." 95 In addition, Porath and Lesch note that the "new professionals" founded and staffed the new nationalist press, of which the leading papers were al-Jami'a al-Islamiyya, al-Wahda al-'Arabiyya, al-'Arab, al-Difa', and al-Liwa', and impelled the radicalization and more frequent publication of veteran papers such as Filastin, al-Jami'a al-'Arabiyya, and Mir'at al-Sharq. The print media's success in popularizing Arab nationalism in Palestinian society was reflected in the press becoming a significant force in the political struggle against Zionism and imperialism in the 1930s. 96
In Egypt the rise of the indigenous professional intelligentsia in the interwar years would prove even more consequential. More than any other Arab society, the Egyptian professional stratum was quantitatively far larger and qualitatively more diversified. In addition, because it sprang up against the background of a serious economic crisis that sharply curtailed employment opportunities for high-school and university graduates, it had to wage a more intensive struggle against the established landed elites, their Westernized political culture, and the fierce competition with the "foreign" professionals. The radicalization of Egypt's "new effendiyya" was thus bound to leave a deeper impression on Egyptian national life in the 1930s and 1940s. 97
The professional intelligentsia in Egypt played a pivotal role in steering the country away from territorial nationalism focused on the Land of the Nile, to a supra-Egyptian, Arab-Islamic nationalism assuming Arabic language and culture and Islamic heritage as the primary registers of Egyptian identity. The radicalization of the young, new effendis and the transformation they wrought in Egypt's communal identity have been treated extensively by Mitchell, Jankowski, and Gershoni. Their studies have shown that in the Egyptian case, too, the radicalization of the effendiyya originated in the unemployment crisis of the educated, overurbanization, disruptions of the parliamentary system, the intensification of the struggle against colonialism, and a creeping fascist influence. This prompted their alienation from the Wafd, the Liberals, the Palace, and the other parliamentary parties. They saw themselves
as an "angry young generation" fighting "the corrupt establishment," against whose Westernized, political culture they counterposited nativism, Arabism, Islam, and Easternism. 98
Organizationally, the familiar pattern of other Arab countries reappears in Egypt. The new social forces established their own political bodies in the 1930s, such as the "Young Men's Muslim Association," "Young Egypt," the "Muslim Brothers," as well as radical student organizations and various intellectual and literary movements, constituting an entire new counterculture. As with its sister movements elsewhere in the Middle East, the Arabism and Islam of Egypt's effendis waxed nativist, populist, and militant, endorsing violence against the British occupation and the "foreign" communities allegedly enjoying British protection. 99
The new narrative also takes note of the Egyptian intelligentsia's distinctive role in the mass dissemination of their radicalized Arab-Islamic nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s. Cairo-based publishing houses owned and operated by effendiyya churned out works of philosophy, history, poetry, belles lettres, textbooks, and the popular Islamiyyat literature, while new effendi periodicals such as al-Risala, al-Thaqafa, al-Rabita al-'Arabiyya and the "official" journals of the new radical organizations such as the YMMA's al-Fath, Young Egypt's Jaridat Misr al-Fatah and the Muslim Brothers' Jaridat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin appealed to a less highbrow readership. 100
The new narrative also documents the Arabist cultural activity conducted across political borders. The new professional groups created a pan-Arabist atmosphere with the mushrooming of inter-Arab cultural associations, especially in the capital cities Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad. The associations increased literary cooperation among Arab countries by institutionalizing inter-Arab professional meetings, workshops, and congresses of teachers, university lecturers, students, physicians, engineers, lawyers, journalists, poets, writers, and artists. Other inter-Arab cultural activity included an Arabist press addressed to reading publics across the Arab world (such as al-Hadith in Aleppo, al-Makshuf and al-Adib in Beirut, al-'Arab in Jerusalem, al-Risala, al-Thaqafa and al-Rabita al-'Arabiyya in Cairo), and cultural exchange delegations comprised of students, journalists, writers, poets, teachers, university lecturers, politicians, businessmen, and financiers. All these created a new common universe of Arabist discourse based on a shared culture and print language. A solid foundation was forged for what contemporaries called the "unity of Arab culture." 101
No less significant is the contribution of the new narrative to the rethinking of the political history of Arab nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s. In a number of spheres at least, its reassessment of political processes and events has led to a thorough revision of the old political narrative. A prime case in point is the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine and its impact on the political consolidation of Arab nationalism not only in Palestine (on this specific point the new narrative presented a completely new historical portrait) but throughout the Arab world. A prevalent theme of the new narrative is that
| no event in the 1930s captured the attention of the Arab world as did the Arab Revolt in Palestine. Its progress was eagerly followed in the daily press of Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, and in the capitals of North Africa. It was also carefully monitored by Arab leaders and regimes. On the one hand, the revolt aroused Arab nationalist sentiments . . .; on the other, it alarmed Arab rulers who feared its repercussions on domestic political life in their respective countries. 102 |
Simon and Eppel show that in Iraq the issue of Palestine in general, and the Arab Revolt in particular, significantly strengthened pan-Arabist forces within the Iraqi ruling elite and aroused Arab nationalist sentiments among broad educated segments of the young middle class effendiyya. The frequent pro-Palestinian articles that appeared in the press, and a series of sympathy protests reinforced the radical political parties that demanded greater Iraqi involvement in Arab affairs and mobilized Iraqi public opinion for pan-Arab causes. 103 In Syria as well the Palestinian Arab Revolt inspired the new urban middle class to maneuver Syrian foreign policy closer to engagement in the Palestinian cause and broader Arab affairs. As Khoury shows, the general public expressed solidarity and offered material aid for the uprising in Palestine. Toward the end of the 1930s the intensification of this unofficial activity, together with the support given the revolt by pan-Arabist politicians, forced the Bloc's government to step up its official support for the Palestinian struggle and beyond that to lay the basis for a continuing Syrian activist policy in Arab affairs. 104
In Egypt, as shown by Coury, Mayer, Gershoni, Gomaa, and Jankowski, the Arab Revolt rapidly eroded Egypt's traditional isolation from Arab affairs. Even more dramatically than in Iraq and Syria, the radical nationalist urban effendiyya of Egypt aroused public support the Palestinian struggle, and skillfully exploited it as an argument for Arab-Islamic unity. By the end of the 1930s radical forces induced the political establishment--the Wafd, the Palace, and the parliamentary parties--to adopt Arabist policies and heighten official Egyptian involvement in the Arab world. 105
The Palestinian Arab Revolt also spawned a number of inter-Arab congresses and meetings. These were mostly of an unofficial character and demonstrated that Arab nationalism had filtered down to relatively broad popular levels. The general Arab congress in Bludan (Syria) in September 1937, and more tellingly the "Inter-Parliamentary Congress of the Arab and Islamic Countries for the Defense of Palestine," convened in Cairo in October 1938--to cite only two prominent examples--reverberated throughout the Arab world. Hundreds of representatives from various Arab countries participated in the discussions and drafting of resolutions. They clearly reveal how extensive popular support for pan-Arabism had become by the late 1930s, and they augmented this support in turn, so much so that Porath concludes that "the developments in Palestine during the 1936-9 years stand as perhaps the single most important factor which contributed to the growth of pan-Arab ideology, to the feeling of solidarity among the Arab peoples and to the attempt at shaping a unified general Arab position and policy." 106
There was another central political issue that the new narrative thoroughly revised: the developments from 1941-1945 that culminated in the formation of the Arab League. Where the old narrative found no necessary connection between the Arab nationalist idea that developed in the 1930s and 1940s and the establishment of the Arab League in 1945, the new narrative hypothesized and then proved the connection to be both necessary and immediate. In the latter narrative, the gestation stage of the Arab League, 1941 to 1945, was umbilically linked to the formative years of Arab nationalism in the late 1920s and early 1930s and to the period of its more advanced development after 1936. Thus, according to this narrative, a series of "internal processes"--the Hashimites' repeated efforts to unify the Fertile Crescent; the prolonged crisis in Palestine and the enlistment of broad support for the struggle; and, perhaps above all, "the rise of political pan-Arabism" in the 1930s and 1940s, which soon rallied around Egyptian leadership in the form of Mustafa al-Nahhas' Wafd government--cumulatively led to the establishment of the Arab League. 107
The role of the British in this process did not escape the attention of the new narrative studies. However, as Porath concludes, "Britain did not create the Arab League, nor did it deliberately encourage its formation; at best it may have indirectly contributed to the process of its formation." 108 According to this version of events, Britain's sole aim from 1943 to 1945 was to further inter-Arab economic and cultural cooperation. This goal was secondary for the Arab leaders headed by al-Nahhas, whose priority lay in realizing inter-Arab political coordination. Hence the bemused reaction of British officials to the formation of the Arab League in March 1945: "a surprising achievement for the Arabs," specifically given its "surprisingly practical" dimensions. 109
As the above implies, the new narrative depicts Egypt as an integral, often central player in the intellectual and political formation of Arab nationalism. Gomaa, Mayer, Jankowski, Coury, Gershoni, and Porath demur from the earlier view that "politically opportunistic pan-Arabism" had motivated Egyptian politicians rather than "ideological pan-Arabism." Their studies show how Arab nationalism replaced Egypt's territorialist, Mediterranean, Pharaonic, and isolationist orientations, as Egypt evolved from its 1920s self-exclusion from the Arab sphere into deep cultural and political involvement in Arab affairs. 110 Indeed, the consensus of the new narrative holds that Egyptian participation in and ultimate leadership of Arab nationalism was the key to a new phase in its historical evolution. 111
The new narrative advances a set of novel representations and interpretations of the formation of Arab nationalism from 1920 to 1945. Nevertheless, the new narrative has not yet reached full maturity as
a paradigm for research and a new agenda for understanding the roots of modern Arab nationalism. Three weaknesses are particularly noteworthy. First, the new narrative is characterized more by monographs than by synthesis. Its greatest strength seems to lie in case studies that deal with one country, a particular society or individual group of Arab thinkers, but rarely does it endeavor to construct a comprehensive and integrated picture of the region's history of nationalism. The new narrative still awaits the generalizing historians who will take the pieces of the puzzle researched to date with such meticulous scholarship and put them together, producing an overall synthesis of the sources of Arab nationalism. Porath and certain chapters of Hourani's recent book point to possible directions.
Second, the narrative suffers from its inattention to the reception of Arab nationalism among women as well as among subaltern socioeconomic strata such as the lower-middle classes, the working classes, and various levels of the peasantry. Although its discussion of the role played by the new effendiyya <a name="24"> enormously improves on the old narrative's fixation on a handful of elite intellectuals, the reader is still relatively uninformed as to the modes in which women, the poor, and the illiterate--constituting the overwhelming majority of the societies in question--reacted to the radicalized upper middle stratum's struggle against the Westernized "ancien régime." The new narrative needs further decentering from the already enlarged portrait of effendiyya alongside and often supplanting luminary intellectuals in the propagation of the Arab national idea; the narrative must encompass the strains of nationalism from below percolating upward as a supplement to the research on effendi- driven nationalism trickling downward.
Third, in overreacting to the reductionist "history of ideas" schema, the new narrative all too often avoids a systematic discussion of ideology and often neglects the intellectual-textual dimension. In many of its studies, nationalism is treated solely as a social and political phenomenon. Nationalist ideas are actually depicted as mere rationalizations for social structures, economic forces, and political processes. There is insufficient appreciation of the integrity of nationalist texts and artifacts at all levels of society. The new narrative has focused on the "history of nationalist experience" and neglected the "history of nationalist meaning." 112 It needs historians who will study the two dimensions both as autonomous and irreducible spheres and as operating through interaction and mutual feedback. 113 The history of nationalism is undoubtedly the history of the national experience; but that experience, to be sure, is "burdened, limited, and shaped by the already constituted, inherited world of meanings in which, and from which, it was constructed." 114
Notes
Note 1: Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6. Back.
Note 2: For recent discussions of competing national allegiances in the modern Middle East, see Rashid Khalidi, "Arab Nationalism: Historical Problems in the Literature," American Historical Review 96 (1991): 1363-1373; Roger Owen, State, Power, and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (London, 1992), 81-107; James Piscatori, Islam in a World of Nation-States (Cambridge, 1986); Amatzia Baram, "Territorial Nationalism in the Middle East," Middle Eastern Studies 26 (1990): 425-448. Back.
Note 3: Fouad Ajami, "The End of Pan-Arabism," Foreign Affairs 57 (Winter 1978-79): 355-373; Tawfic E. Farah (ed.), Pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism: The Continuing Debate (Boulder, 1987). Back.
Note 4: For representative literature on this, see Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament (Cambridge, MA, 1981); Tawfic E. Farah (ed.), Political Behavior in the Arab States (Boulder, 1983); B. Korany and A. E. Hilal Dessouki (eds.), The Foreign Policies of Arab States: The Challenge of Change (2d. ed.; Boulder, 1991), in particular the article by Paul C. Noble, "The Arab System: Pressures, Constraints, Opportunities," 49-102; Martin Kramer, "Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity," Daedalus 122 (Summer 1993): 171-206; Emmanuel Sivan, "The Arab Nation-State: In Search of a Usable Past," Middle East Review (Spring 1987): 21-30; Menahem Klein, "Arab Unity: A Nonexistent Entity," The Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 12 (1990): 28-44; Issa J. Boullata, Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (New York, 1990); Asad Abukhalil, "A New Arab Ideology? The Rejuvenation of Arab Nationalism," Middle East Journal 46 (1992): 22-36. Back.
Note 5: On early Arab nationalism see the collection of articles in Rashid Khalidi et al., Origins, and Frank Clements, The Emergence of Arab Nationalism From the Nineteenth Century to 1921, A Bibliography (Wilmington, 1976). Back.
Note 6: Dawn, "Formation," 67. Back.
Note 7: See, for example, Robert G. Woolbert, "Pan-Arabism and the Palestine Problem," Foreign Affairs 16 (January 1938): 309-322; H. A. R. Gibb, "Toward Arab Unity," Foreign Affairs 24 (1945-1946): 119-129; Costi K. Zurayk, "The Essence of Arab Civilization," Middle East Journal 3 (1949): 125-139; Nicola A. Ziadeh, "Recent Arab Literature on Arabism," ibid. 6 (1952): 468-473. Back.
Note 8: This paper deals only with works and studies on Arab nationalism written in Western languages, mainly English. Studies written in Arabic by Arab historians and scholars constitute a topic for further discussion. Back.
Note 9: White, Metahistory, 430. Back.
Note 10: Nuseibeh, Ideas; Sayegh, Arab Unity. Back.
Note 11: Kedourie's articles on the subject of the 1950s and 1960s were later published in his The Chatham House Version and Other Middle-Eastern Studies (London, 1970); Hourani, Arabic Thought; Haim, Arab Nationalism. Back.
Note 12: Khadduri, Political Trends; Hans E. TŸtsch, Facets of Arab Nationalism (Detroit, 1965); Leonard Binder, The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (New York, 1964); Anwar G. Chejne, "Egyptian Attitudes Toward Pan-Arabism," Middle East Journal 11 (1957): 253-268; idem, "The Use of History by Modern Arab Writers," ibid. 14 (1960): 387-398; Bernard Lewis, The Middle East and the West (New York, 1964); W. C. Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, 1957); Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria (Oxford, 1965); Nissim Rejwan, "Arab Nationalism: In Search of an Ideology," in Walter Z. Laqueur (ed.), The Middle East in Transition (New York, 1958), 145-165; Hisham B. Sharabi, Nationalism and Revolution in the Arab World (Toronto, 1966); Eliezer Be'eri, Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society (London, 1970). Back.
Note 13: Haim, Arab Nationalism, 35. Back.
Note 14: Hourani, Arabic Thought, 307. Back.
Note 15: For approaches to intellectual history, see Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, 1936); John Higham, "American Intellectual History: A Critical Appraisal," in Robert Merideth (ed.), American Studies: Essays on Theory and Method (Columbus, Ohio, 1968), 218-235; Rush Welter, "The History of Ideas in America: An Essay in Redefinition," ibid., 236-253; John Higham and Paul K. Conkin (eds.), New Directions in American Intellectual History (Baltimore, 1979); Preston King (ed.) The History of Ideas: An Introduction to Method (London, 1983); and the special issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas devoted to "The History of Ideas," no. 48 (April/June 1987). Many classic analyses of nationalism such as those of Carlton Hayes, Hans Kohn, and Jacob Talmon also approach the topic primarily as Ideengeschichte. The intellectual perspective prevalent in early studies of nationalism unquestionably influenced the old narrative on Arab nationalism. Back.
Note 16: Higham, "American Intellectual History," 220. Back.
Note 17: Kedourie, Nationalism. Kedourie acknowledges the influence of Lovejoy in his preface. Back.
Note 18: We refer mainly to their scholarly works published in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Back.
Note 9: Nuseibeh, Ideas, v. Back.
Note 20: Hourani, Arabic Thought (paperback ed., 1983), viii. Back.
Note 21: Haim, Arab Nationalism, 3-72. Back.
Note 22: Sayegh, Arab Unity, 63, 97. Back.
Note 24: . Nuseibeh, Ideas, 57-97. Back.
Note 25: Haim, Arab Nationalism, 35-61. Back.
Note 26: Hourani, Arabic Thought, 308-316. Back.
Note 27: Khadduri, Political Trends, 177-205. Back.
Note 28: Hourani, Arabic Thought, 313. Back.
Note 29: Haim, Arab Nationalism, 40-55; Nuseibeh, Ideas, 68-77; Khadduri, Political Trends, 179-205; Sayegh, Arab Unity, 74-75. Back.
Note 30: Smith, Ethnic Origins, 191. Back.
Note 31: For the Arab nationalist approach to history see Chejne, "History;" Nuseibeh, Ideas, 77-88; Haim, Arab Nationalism, 35-61; Hourani, Arabic Thought, 308-315. Back.
Note 32: Nuseibeh, Ideas, 65-97; Haim, Arab Nationalism, 35-61; Hourani, Arabic Thought, 308-316; Khadduri, Political Trends, 179-205. Back.
Note 33: Nuseibeh, Ideas, 88-97; Haim, Arab Nationalism, 35-49, 52-61. Back.
Note 36: Ibid., 39. See also Nuseibeh, Ideas, 65-97; Hourani, Arabic Thought, 308-313. Back.
Note3 7: Ibid., 308. For other interpretations of the Arab nationalist treatment of Islam, see Haim, Arab Nationalism, 43-45, 53-56; Khadduri, Political Trends, 199-205; Smith, Islam, 93-160; Anwar G. Chejne, "Some Aspects of Islamic Nationalism," Islamic Literature 8 (1956): 434-445; Sylvia G. Haim, "Islam and the Theory of Arab Nationalism," in Laqueur, Transition, 280-307; G. E. von Grunebaum, Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity (New York, 1964), 276-334; E. I. J. Rosenthal, Islam in the Modern National State (Cambridge, 1965), 103-124. Back.
Note 38: Haim, Arab Nationalism, 43-45. Back.
Note 39: Khadduri, Political Trends, 177-209. Back.
Note 40: Sayegh, Arab Unity, 85. Back.
Note 41: Nuseibeh, Ideas, 77-84. Back.
Note 42: Ibid., 42-97; Sayegh, Arab Unity, 44-141; Haim, Arab Nationalism, 35-61; Hourani, Arabic Thought, 291-323; Khadduri, Political Trends, 176-211; Elie Kedourie, "Pan-Arabism and British Policy," in Laqueur, Transition, 100-128, and later republished in his Chatham House Version, 213-235; TŸtsch, Facets, 77-90. Back.
Note 43: Haim, Arab Nationalism, 39-55; Kedourie, Chatham House Version, 213-219; Nuseibeh, Ideas, 52-97. Back.
Note 44: Sayegh, Arab Unity, 44-80; Hourani, Arabic Thought, 307-316; Smith, Islam, 73-85, 113-122. Back.
Note 45: Hourani, Arabic Thought, 308. Back.
Note 46: Kedourie, Chatham House Version, 213-214. Back.
Note 47: Kedourie, "The Kingdom of Iraq: Retrospect," in his Chatham House Version, 236-285. Back.
Note 48: Ibid., 273-275. Back.
Note 49: Kedourie, "Pan-Arabism," in his Chatham House Version, 213-215; Haim, Arab Nationalism, 51-52; Nuseibeh, Ideas, 45-50. Back.
Note 50: 5 See Khadduri, Political Trends, 264; Kedourie, Chatham House Version, 227-228; Haim, Arab Nationalism, 51. Back.
Note 51: Sayegh, Arab Unity, 111, 115-116. Back.
Note 52: See Kedourie, Chatham House Version, 215; Haim, Arab Nationalism, 52; Chejne, "Egyptian Attitudes;" 253; Binder, Ideological Revolution, 90; Be'eri, Army Officers, 375-379. Back.
Note 53: Be'eri, Army Officers, 373-387; Haim, Arab Nationalism, 51-53. Back.
Note 54: For example, see Dawn, "Formation," 68-80; Simon, Iraq, 75-114; Phebe Marr, "The Development of a Nationalist Ideology in Iraq, 1920-1941," Muslim World 75 (April 1985): 85-101. Back.
Note 55: Khoury, Syria, 535-562. See also Philip S. Khoury, "Divided Loyalties: Syria and the Question of Palestine, 1919-1939," Middle Eastern Studies 21 (1985): 324-348. Back.
Note 56: Porath, 1918-1929; Muslih, Origins, 131-210. Back.
Note 57: Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt. Back.
Note 58: See Simon, Iraq, 67-73, 107-165; Marr, "Development," 92-101; Michael Eppel, "The Hikmat Sulayman-Bakir Sidqi Government in Iraq, 1936-1937, and the Palestine Question," Middle Eastern Studies 24 (1988): 25-41. Back.
Note 59: Khoury, Syria, 539-566, 626-630. Back.
Note 60: Porath, 1929-1939, 109-139, 274-303; Ann Mosely Lesch, Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917-1939: The Frustration of a National Movement (Ithaca, 1979), 102-154. Back.
Note 61: Gershoni, Emergence, 35-88; James Jankowski, "Egyptian Responses to the Palestine Problem in the Interwar Period," International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980): 1-38. Back.
Note 62: Albert Hourani, "How Should We Write the History of the Middle East?" International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991): 135. Back.
Note 63: For a discussion of these influences see Israel Gershoni, "Egyptian Intellectual History and Egyptian Intellectuals in the Interwar Period," Asian and African Studies 19 (1985): 333-364. Back.
Note 64: Cleveland, Making. Back.
Note 65: Tibi, Arab Nationalism. Back.
Note 66: . Cleveland, Making, ix-xiii. Back.
Note 68: Tibi, Arab Nationalism, x. Back.
Note 70: Dawn, "Formation," 68. Back.
Note 71: Simon, Iraq, 75-114. See also Reeva S. Simon, "The Teaching of History in Iraq Before the Rashid Ali Coup of 1941," Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1986): 37-51; Nimrod Hurvitz, "Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib's Semitic Wave Theory and the Emergence of Pan-Arab Ideology in the Interwar Period," ibid. 29 (1993): 118-134. Back.
Note 72: . Itamar Rabinovich, "Inter-Arab Relations Foreshadowed: The Question of the Syrian Throne in the 1920s and 1930s," in Festschrift in Honor of Dr. George S. Wise (Tel Aviv, 1981), 237. Back.
Note 73: Ahmed M. Gomaa, The Foundation of the League of Arab States: Wartime Diplomacy and Inter-Arab Politics, 1941 to 1945 (London, 1977), 3-56; Yehoshua Porath, In Search of Arab Unity, 1930-1945 (London, 1986), 1-57; Rabinovich, "Inter-Arab Relations," 237-250; Khaldun S. Husry, "King Faysal I and Arab Unity, 1930-1933," Journal of Contemporary History, 10 (1975): 323-340. Back.
Note 74: See Dawn, "Formation," 67-80; Simon, Iraq, 1-73; Porath, Arab Unity, 1-57, 149-196; Gomaa, Foundation, 1-97; Khoury, Syria, 27-70, 397-433, 535-562, 619-630; Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 315-400. Back.
Note 75: The concept of a "professional intelligentsia" is developed in Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World (Cambridge, 1981), 108-133. The concept of a "new class" of professionals is mainly taken from Alvin Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (New York, 1979). For examples of the use of the latter in the study of the Middle East, see Vernon Egger, A Fabian in Egypt: Salamah Musa and the Rise of the Professional Classes in Egypt, 1909-1939 (New York, 1986), especially ix-xvi, and David Commins, "Religious Reformers and Arabists in Damascus, 1885-1914," International Journal of Middle East Studies 18 (1986): 405-425. Back.
Note 76: Hourani, Arab Peoples, 338. Back.
Note 77: Smith, Ethnic Revival, 116. Back.
Note 78: Ibid., 116-133; see also Smith, Ethnic Origins, 153-173. Back.
Note 79: Smith, Ethnic Revival, 117-119. Back.
Note 80: Ibid., 119-122. Back.
Note 82: See Simon, Iraq, 75-169; Eppel, "Hikmat Sulayman," 25-38; Porath, Arab Unity, 159-161. Back.
Note 82: Dawn, "Formation," 67-85; Cleveland, Making, 59-77; Marr, "Development," 89-101; Simon, Iraq, 75-169. Back.
Note 83: Simon, Iraq, 75-114; Porath, Arab Unity, 161-164, 169, 176. Back.
Note 84: Simon, Iraq, 110. Back.
Note 85: Ibid., 15-165; Cleveland, Making, 74-77; Porath, Arab Unity, 192-193. Back.
Note 86: Khoury, Syria, 397-433, 622-630; quotation from 626. Back.
Note 88: Ibid., 626-627. Back.
Note 89: Ibid., 400-433. Back.
Note 91: Porath, 1929-1939, 109-139 (quotation from 118); Lesch, 105-115. Back.
Note 92: Porath, 1929-1939, 118-119. Back.
Note 93: Ibid., 118-139; Lesch, Arab Politics, 102-121. Back.
Note 94: Porath, 1929-1939, 125. Back.
Note 95: Lesch, Arab Politics, 105-106. Back.
Note 96: Ibid., 102-141, 198-238; Porath, 1929-1939, 109-199. Back.
Note 97: Gershoni and Jankowski, Egyptian Nation, 1-31. Back.
Note 98: Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York, 1969), 1-34, 209-294, 328-331; James P. Jankowski, Egypt's Young Rebels: "Young Egypt," 1933-1952 (Stanford, 1975); Gershoni, Emergence; Israel Gershoni, "The Evolution of National Culture in Modern Egypt: Intellectual Formation and Social Diffusion, 1892-1945," Poetics Today 13 (1992): 325-350. Back.
Note 99: Mitchell, Muslim Brothers, 5-19; Jankowski, Young Egypt, 1-21; Gershoni, Emergence, 29-45; P. J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation (London, 1978), 67-97. Back.
Note 100: Israel Gershoni, "Arabization of Islam: The Egyptian Salafiyya and the Rise of Arabism in Pre-Revolutionary Egypt," Asian and African Studies 13 (1979): 22-57; idem, "The Emergence of Pan-Nationalism in Egypt: Pan-Islamism and Pan-Arabism in the 1930s," ibid. 16 (1982): 59-94; idem, "Evolution," 329-341; Gershoni and Jankowski, Egyptian Nation, 35-142. Back.
Note 101: Porath, Arab Unity, 149-196; Gershoni, Emergence, 35-83; Hourani, Arab Peoples, 333-349; Coury, "Who 'Invented'," 249-281, 459-479. Back.
Note 102: . Khoury, "Divided Loyalties," 324. Back.
Note 103: Simon, Iraq, 65-73; Michael Eppel, The Palestine Conflict in the History of Modern Iraq: The Dynamics of Involvement (London, 1994). Back.
Note 104: Khoury, Syria, 444-456, 535-566, and "Divided Loyalties," 324-345. Back.
Note 105: Ralph M. Coury, "Egyptians in Jerusalem: Their Role in the General Islamic Conference of 1931," Muslim World 82 (1992): 37-54; Thomas Mayer, Egypt and the Palestine Question 1936-1945 (Berlin, 1983); idem, "Egypt and the General Islamic Conference in Jerusalem in 1931," Middle Eastern Studies 18 (1982): 311-322; idem, "Egypt and the 1936 Arab Revolt in Palestine," Journal of Contemporary History 19 (1984): 275-287; Gershoni, Emergence, 35-83; idem, "The Muslim Brothers and the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939," Middle Eastern Studies 22 (1986): 367-397; Gomaa, Foundation, 30-66; Jankowski, "Egyptian Responses," 1-38; idem, "The Government of Egypt and the Palestine Question, 1936-1939," Middle Eastern Studies 17 (1981): 427-453; Gershoni and Jankowski, Egyptian Nation, 167-191. Back.
Note 106: Porath, Arab Unity, 162-175 (quotation from 162); idem, 1929-1939, 274-294; Gomaa, Foundation, 45-56; Jankowski, "Government of Egypt," 427-<453; Khoury, Syria, 535-562. Back.
Note 107: This is the thrust of both Gomaa, Foundation, and Porath, Arab Unity. Back.
Note 108: Porath, Arab Unity, 312. Back.
Note 109: Quotations from ibid., 303. Back.
Note 110: Gomaa, Foundation, 30-66, 153-271; Porath, Arab Unity, 149-159; Mayer, Egypt, 41-308; Jankowski, "Egyptian Responses," 1-38; idem, "Government of Egypt," 427-453; Gershoni and Jankowski, Egyptian Nation, 35-142. Back.
Note 111: Porath, Arab Unity, 257-319; Gershoni and Jankowski, Egyptian Nation, 195-211. Back.
Note 112: For the term "history of meaning," see William J. Bouswma, "From History of Ideas to History of Meaning," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12 (1981): 279-291. Back.
Note 113: John E. Toews, "Intellectual History After the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience," American Historical Review, 92 (1987): 879-907. Back.
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