The mediterranean idea in syria and lebanon: Between territorial nationalism and pan-arabism

The subject of this article is the place of the Mediterranean and the ‘Mediterranean idea’ in the thinking of political leaders and intellectuals in the Levant–primarily Syria and Lebanon–from the early 1920s on. Up until the first half of the twentieth century this region was the arena of a battle among three contradictory nationalist concepts: pan-Arabism, which viewed the region as an integral part of the Arab homeland; Syrian nationalism, which aspired to create a state for the Syrian nation rooted in the region's pre-Arab and pre-Islamic past; and Lebanonism, which sought to separate Lebanon from Syria and establish a Lebanese–Maronite state based on the region's Phoenician past. Pan-Arabism emerged victorious, but the emergence of Syrian and Lebanese territorial states eventually enabled or even led their leaders and intellectuals to exploit their pre-Islamic and pre-Arab past–and thus the Mediterranean Sea and the Mediterranean idea–in establishing their statehood and national identity.