The Exclusion of Arabs at Lausanne: A Decisive Historical Turn

Authors

  • Author

  • Elizabeth F. Thompson

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31430/opdm9020

Keywords:

Lausanne, Mandates, Greater Syria, Self-determination, Colonialism

Abstract

This study discusses the exclusion of Arabs at Lausanne and offers a different reading of the fact that understanding the post-First World War moment in the Middle East cannot be confined to borders and national independence. It investigates the political movement in Syria by attending to exclusion at the Paris Peace Conference (1919- 1920); political and legal challenges to the mandate system in the Arab East (1920-1922); Arab "present absentees" [al-ghāʾibūn al-ḥāḍirūn] at Lausanne (i.e. the question of the Arabs was obscured despite their presence); and decolonizing the historical narrative by reading Lausanne as a decisive turning point in the political history of the Arab World. The study concludes by calling for an assessment of Arab movements after the First World War in the context of other anti-establishment movements in the 1920s in Europe and South Asia, which rejected the new liberal international order and neocolonialism and whose political aspirations in Syria and the Arab World would be dashed by Lausanne.

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غلاف العدد 23 من دورية أسطور

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Published

2025-01-01

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Received: October 2, 2024 Revised: February 11, 2025 Accepted: May 29, 2025

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Vol. 11 No. 023 (2025): Issue 023

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