The War of Famine: Everyday Life in Wartime Beirut and Mount Lebanon (1914-1918)
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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The War of Famine: Everyday Life in Wartime Beirut and Mount Lebanon (1914-1918) Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4bs8383d Author Tanielian, Melanie Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The War of Famine: Everyday Life in Wartime Beirut and Mount Lebanon (1914-1918) by Melanie Tanielian A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Beshara Doumani Professor Saba Mahmood Professor Margaret L. Anderson Professor Keith D. Watenpaugh Fall 2012 The War of Famine: Everyday Life in Wartime Beirut and Mount Lebanon (1914-1918) © Copyright 2012, Melanie Tanielian All Rights Reserved Abstract The War of Famine: Everyday Life in Wartime Beirut and Mount Lebanon (1914-1918) By Melanie Tanielian History University of California, Berkeley Professor Beshara Doumani, Chair World War I, no doubt, was a pivotal event in the history of the Middle East, as it marked the transition from empires to nation states. Taking Beirut and Mount Lebanon as a case study, the dissertation focuses on the experience of Ottoman civilians on the homefront and exposes the paradoxes of the Great War, in its totalizing and transformative nature. Focusing on the causes and symptoms of what locals have coined the ‘war of famine’ as well as on international and local relief efforts, the dissertation demonstrates how wartime privations fragmented the citizenry, turning neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother, and at the same time enabled social and administrative changes that resulted in the consolidation and strengthening of bureaucratic hierarchies and patron-client relationships. This dissertation is a detailed analysis of socio-economic challenges that the war posed for Ottoman subjects, focusing primarily on the distorting effects of food shortages, disease, wartime requisitioning, confiscations and conscriptions on everyday life as well as on the efforts of the local municipality and civil society organizations to provision and care for civilians. Although all residents of Beirut and Mount Lebanon took part in the same war, their experiences were often different, mediated by existing gender and class differences and communal belongings, which the international conflict – and concomitant interventions by the state as well as international relief agencies – both exposed and exacerbated. The war aggravated the inequalities embedded in late Ottoman and European colonial definitions of citizenship, since class and communal affiliation determined people's access to food, their ability to avoid conscription, fight disease, obtain provisions, and secure relief funds. Moreover, mutual sacrifice, collective martyrdom and communal resistance rule loom large in state-sponsored national narratives about World War I. Post-colonial Lebanon is no exception. This dissertation reveals how attempts to construct a dominant 'collective' memory of World War I to promote national unity served to mask the continued perpetuation of social inequalities and contributed to tensions within post-independence Lebanese society. This dissertation contributes to the general scholarship of World War I, which so far has dismissed the experience of civilians on the Ottoman homefront as peripheral. Second it shifts the historiographical focus of World War I in the Middle East as a political diplomatic event, toward it being understood as a dynamic social, economic and political process the outcome of 1 which was dependent as much on the immediate necessities of war, its political economy and strain on civilians, as on long-term historical developments that had left the region vulnerable to the wartime disruptions in the world market and hence more susceptible to famine. Third, this social history of World War I in the Middle East outlines interactions between the Ottoman military authorities, provincial representatives of the state, municipal council members, religious leaders, greedy merchants, bakers and local law enforcement agencies and their relations to the urban and rural poor, that force us to rethink common perceptions of Ottoman tyranny and ambivalence in regards to its civilians and poses a challenge to sectarian interpretations of the war experience on the homefront. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations iii Acknowlegment iv Introduction: The War of Famine 1 Beirut and Mount Lebanon 3 The Predicament of Memory 6 Toward a Social History of World War I 8 Why Famine? 15 Chapter I: The Locust Simply Eats? Toward an Explanation of the Lebanese Famine 19 Nature’s Curse: Fertility, Heat and Vermin 22 Man-Made Disaster: War, Waters and the World Markets 27 Famine as a War Strategy 28 Government Failures: Conscription, Commandeering, Confiscation s 34 Conclusion: A Perfect Storm? 48 Chapter II: Famine and Family: Hunger, Death and Survival 50 The Horrors of Famine: Hunger and Death 52 Dangerous Consumption: Stretching Flour and Wheat 60 Family: “Do Father and Mother Devour Their Own Children?” 64 Conclusion 69 Chapter III: Rats, Lice and Microbes: The Spread and Prevention of Infectious Diseases 70 Disease in the Middle East 73 War, Famine, Disease: Inevitable Boon Companions? 75 The Social Function of Disease: 19th Century Beirut 78 “The ‘Other’ War” 85 Making Sanitary Citizens 88 Creating a Healthy Space 96 Surveillance, Regulation, and Resistance 98 Conclusion 106 Chapter IV: Feeding the City: The Beirut Municipality and Provisioning of Civilians 107 Origins, Social Demographics and Transformations 112 Food Crisis (1914-1915): Initial Stages of Municipal Intervention 117 Disciplining the Market: Regulation, Surveillance and Punishment 120 Rationing and Riots 125 Legislating Food: The Ottoman State’s Efforts to Feed its Civilians 128 Conclusion 134 i Chapter V: Soup Kitchens, Workshops and Orphans: The American Relief Efforts 135 Humanitarianism, Politics and Power 139 Urban Relief: Educator, Missionaries and Diplomats 141 Moving into the Mountains 150 Enclosure, Hygiene, and the Nuclear Family 155 The Children’s Court: Lessons in Self-Government 161 Teaching Self-Sustainability 163 Childhood Agency 165 Conclusion 167 Chapter VI: Fiat Panis! Let There Be Bread! The Aid Campaigns of Civil Society 169 A ‘Purely Local Initiative: Civil Society and Wartime Relief 173 The Alternative: The Syrian Women’s Association 183 Aid in Mount Lebanon: Between State and Church 187 Acts of Small Charity: Politics of Patronage 201 Conclusion 203 Conclusion: The Ghosts of the War of Famine 206 The Paradoxes of War: Ruptures and Continuities 210 Archives Consulted 214 Bibliography 217 ii ABBREVIATIONS AA Politisches Archive des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin, Germany ACSAR American Committee for Syrian and Armenian Relief ARC American Red Cross AUB American University Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon BEY Archive of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy, Beirut, Lebanon Bkerke Archive of the Maronite Patriarch, Bkerke, Lebanon FKS Fliedner Kultur Stiftung, Kaiserswerth, Germany GCA Archives of the Greek Catholic Archdiocese, Beirut, Lebanon GCCA Greek-Catholic Charity Association, Beirut, Lebanon HL Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States HI Hoover Institute, Stanford University, Palo Alto, United States ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross LNA Lebanese National Archive, Beirut, Lebanon NEF Near East Foundation NER Near East Relief NEST Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon PO Archive Proche-Orient, Beirut, Lebanon SKA Stanley Kerr Archive, Zoryan Institute, Toronto, Canada SPC Syrian Protestant College StPH Archives of St. Paul, Harissa, Lebanon USEK Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik, Lebanon USJ St. Joseph University, Beirut, Lebanon iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude first and foremost to my dissertation committee. I could have not asked for better and more caring Doktorväter and Doktormütter. Professor Beshara Doumani was the first to encourage me to write a social history of World War I. His enthusiasm for the project, his generous advise, friendship, ardent support, and critical analytical feedback not only gave me the confidence to carry out the project, but also challenged me to ask deeper and more probing questions. Moreover, he made my and my fellow graduate student’s time at Berkeley a unique experience of collegial cooperation and intellectual exchange. He created a community that I will truly miss, but the friendships created I will carry with me. The project was inspired in Professor Margaret Lavinia Anderson’s seminar on World War I at the University of California, Berkeley. To spend an entire semester discussing the political, economic, military, social and cultural history of the war with her and a wonderful group of graduate students from a variety of fields was not only a great luxury, but motivated me to embark on this project, as I realized the limitation of the existing scholarship in my field. But most importantly, Professor Anderson’s great commitment to mentoring me and reading drafts of the work with analytical acumen and an editorial keenness has been irreplaceable. Saba Mahmoud whose academic rigor and intellectual curiosity has set an example that I can only aspire to. Professor Keith D. Watenpaugh who has believed in my work, offered his time and expertise most generously, helped