2021
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
3(1)
no say over France's presence in Syria. 35 According to the Syrian nationalist leader
Shakib Arslan:
It should be clearly understood that the League of Nations, from the Syrian point
of view, is simply an institution whose aim is to provide a clock of legality for the
greedy encroachments of France and England. 36
For the first time, Syrians experienced how international law upholds and
reinforces imperial ambitions by sanitising colonial language. In this regard, the
League of Nations provided a prelude to the United Nations’ mechanisms to serve
imperial ambitions and reinforce inequality among states. This is what Erakat
refers to as ‘the sordid origin of international law as a derivative of a colonial
order’. 37 In effect, the idea that the Mandates System somehow benefited local
populations is contradicted by historical evidence which illustrates the violence of
French colonial rule in Syria. The French Mandatory power exercised a unilateral
rule that left no autonomy to Syrians. France started first by institutionalising a
framework that enabled the colonial administration to enact legislation without
consulting the Syrian population. Rather than recognising the purely economic
and political motivations behind colonialism, France justified its colonial
conquests by advancing the duty of mission ‘civilisatrice’ — the ‘civilising’
mission. According to this notion, Europeans had a ‘moral duty’ to ‘civilise’
indigenous people by occupying them and expropriating their resources. 38 To
quote the words of the French Prime Minister in 1885, ‘the superior races … have
the duty to civilize the inferior races’. 39 In 1920, a French statesman addressed the
Parliament about the Mandate over Syria and declared: ‘we have the duty to stay
there and bring autonomy to these people we taught liberty to and whom, without
us, might fall back into the despotism of fanaticism’. 40 French authorities
fabricated a false narrative of Arab extremism and Islamic fanaticism, and how
the occupation of Syria was the only solution to counter such threat to peace. 41
In reality, French colonial occupation brought land exploitation and tyranny —
not freedom and autonomy. Today, the vast majority of historians reject the fallacy
that French rule in Syria — and colonialism in general — aimed at advancing the
rule of law and was emancipatory. 42 Philip S Khoury argues that France carried
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Shambrook (n 12) 2.
Joarder (n 31) iii.
Noura Erakat, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press
2019) 6.
Mathew Burrows, ‘“Mission Civilisatrice”: French Cultural Policy in the Middle East 1860–
1914’ (1986) 29(1) The Historical Journal 112.
Jules Ferry, ‘Speech before the French Chamber of Deputies’ (Speech, Paris, 28 March 1884).
Journal officiel de la République française: Débats parlementaires. Chambre des députés :
compte
rendu
in-extenso
(Archived
Debate,
26
June
1920)
2464
<https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6331074c/f2.item> (tr author). The French original
version is:
nous nous devons de rester là-bas et … amener normalement à l'autonomie ces peuples
que nous avons éveillés a la liberté et qui, sans nous, risquent de retomber sous le
despotisme du fanatisme.
Thompson, How the West Stole Democracy (n 16) xvi.
Munir Al-Rayyis, The Golden Book of Nationalist Revolutions in the Arab East [ ﻟﻜﺘﺎب اﻟﺬھﺒﻲ
( ]ﻟﻠﺜﻮرات اﻟﻮطﻨﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻤﺸﺮق اﻟﻌﺮﺑﻲDar al-Tali‘a li-al-Taba‘a wa al-Nashr, 1969) vol 1, 142;
Andrew and Kanya-Forstner, ‘The Climax of French Imperial Expansion 1914–1924’
(Stanford University Press 1981) 14–21; Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (New York
University Press 2000) 32; Joarder (n 31) 73.
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