Une « ceinture » d’espace étatique : le contrôle des Bédouins au début du Mandat Français en Syrie

L'Espace Politique

卷:27

关键词: Bedouin;    Syria;    Lebanon;    Ottoman Empire;    Levant;   

DOI  :  10.4000/espacepolitique.3695

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This paper examines the territorialisation and control of Bedouin tribes in the first decade of the French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon, from 1920-1930. It uses the conceptual writing of Henri Lefebvre, and his particular emphasis on a « belt » of nation-states that emerged in the modern period. The French took over Syria and Lebanon as a League of Nations mandate power in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. A system for controlling the Bedouin nomadic peoples was instituted, under the branch of the intelligence service named the Contrôle Bedouin. In the British mandates, a similar system was instituted. Such in-depth surveillance and control went hand in hand with the violent territorialisation of the new post-Ottoman borders and the negotiation of agreements between mandatory powers. The imposition of this new state space, as conceptualised by French administrators, curbed the experience of traditional Bedouin space in the environmental regions of the Bâdiya (the desert’s steppe) and the ma’mura (the agricultural zone delimiting the Great Syrian Desert).This article examines contemporary archives to outline the structure and activity of the Contrôle Bedouin. It equally considers some of the instances of Bedouin negotiation of this new mandatory reality while providing examples of an overall trend toward territorialisation of Bedouin space in the first decade of the mandate. This is particularly noted in the growing appropriation by French administrators of ‘Syrian’ Bedouins as “our’ nomads as against Turkish or Iraqi based nomads, who were seen as “theirs”. Finally, the article demonstrates the economic strangulation of Bedouin life through the introduction of customs taxes, benefiting both mandatory powers.

【 授权许可】

Unknown