Michael Provence’s work on the Syrian Revolt against the French Mandate, 1925-27, is the latest in a series of studies in Western languages. David MacDowell’s excellent Oxford B.Litt. thesis “The Druze revolt 1925-27 and its background in the late Ottoman Empire” was completed in 1972 and Lenka Bokova’s "La Confrontation franco-syrienne à l’époque du mandat 1925-27" appeared in 1990. The revolt features prominently in Syrian histories [Philip Khoury’s "Syria and the French Mandate" (1987)], in Druze histories [Kais Firro’s "History of the Druzes" (1992)], as well as this reviewer’s own historical-anthropological study "Rebellions in the Jabal Druze: Ethnicity and Integration of a Rural Community from the Ottoman Empire to Syrian Independence", (1996 in German and 2003 in Arabic translation). The rural political-economic background of the revolt (the Hawran’s active grain trade with Damascus and the relations it fostered) has been extensively covered in a number of articles by Linda Schilcher.

The reader might perhaps expect that the author would engage with and build upon the body of knowledge and the arguments that have been established before him, but here (s)he will be disappointed. Provence cites almost all the works mentioned above in his references and the bibliography, but, with very few exceptions, does not engage with them. Provence’s text and his body of references sometimes seem to lead almost separate lives, especially since the text is full of rather strong statements.

In the introduction he claims that “no study has traced the relationships between rural and urban regions and their influence on nationalist politics from the Ottoman period into the mandate” and that his book “makes connections between events and social conditions that have not been made in print before” (p. 19). Also: “The economic and social relationships that facilitated the revolt have a history, just as the notion of Druze feudal society has a history. Neither has ever been examined.” (p. 29). This is, at best, contentious. Schilcher has already shown a while ago that the political economy of grain production tied the Hawran to Damascus. Schaebler has shown that the Druze mountain was a sort of rebellious “frontier” society with special musha’ land practices which Ottomans and French wanted to civilize and what the Druze rebellions had to do with early Arab nationalism.

Provence’s passages on feudalism are perhaps good examples of his argumentation throughout much of the book. He wants to demonstrate that “Druze feudalism is a mirage, a convincing and durable fake, invented to justify and render coherent a colonial project of military domination (p. 29).” Provence does not differentiate between the accounts by the various colonial authors, some of whom were more nuanced in their colonial analysis than others: in fact, no names are given at all, French colonialism seems to be a homogeneous block.

Provence claims that “Druze feudalism has somehow survived, uncritiqued, unexamined, and accepted by all (sic!), including many Druze historians themselves” (p. 29). Which Druze historians have accepted the notion of European feudalism? Provence again does not give us any names. In fact, it is exactly the notion of feudalism, iqta’iyya, which has been hotly debated in the Druze Mountain, with most Druze authors coming to the conclusion that this concept could not be applied to the Jabal.

Feudalism is indeed an interesting concept which can be (and has been) used both academically and politically and which can profitably be seen itself more as a discourse than a historical fact or formation. In order to repudiate the (political) use of feudalism by French colonial administrators, Provence would have had to define it academically and show that Hawran Druze society, in contrast to Mount Lebanon, can indeed not easily be defined as feudal, since its social practices tended to undercut its economic structures. Or he could have shown how feudalism is a French discourse and how it was being used in France and in its colonies.

What Provence does is retell the story of the settlement of Jabal Hawran, painting a faulty picture of its social system [marked by “rule by consent” and a “relatively free movement of labor” (p. 38)], which was really only true early in the settlement process.

Already in the 1890s, a sharecropper exploited by his sheikhly employer had to emigrate if he wanted to quit, or was driven off the land if he protested. This situation, in fact, even led to a social revolt. Provence concludes that the social system “had virtually nothing in common with imagined European feudalism” (p. 38). Neither feudalism nor imagined feudalism is ever explained; the Druzes’ rural society is being romanticized.

While the first part of the book (chapters 1 to 3) covers much already known ground, Provence’s second central point, that “the spread of state-subsidized military education in the late Ottoman period likewise fostered popular nationalism and resistance” (p. 19), is indeed a new contribution to the field. Unlike Maktab ‘Anbar, the civil preparatory school in Damascus, the 'harbiyye' is virtually unknown (p. 150). It would have been interesting therefore to learn more than the names of rebel leaders who had visited that school.

The military school is also interesting in that it probably influenced warfare in the country-side: as we know, the Druzes had banners that they even called, using the Ottoman name, bayraq. They invented rituals around those and fought under them during the Great Revolt. This could have been a nice example of Provence’s subchapter “assimilating the countryside: education and the army”, but his understanding of the larger Ottoman background seems to be rather limited. An important Druze graduate of the Harbiye in Istanbul, Muhammad ‘Izz al-Din al-Halabi, attended a few years of secondary school in Ankara in Central Anatolia, according to Provence “for reasons that are unclear” (p. 41). In fact, the Ottoman state in 1895 sent more than 30 Druze families into exile, to Anatolia among other places (also to Rhodes, Crete, and the Black Sea). Muhammad ‘Izz al-Din al-Halabi was among the exiles and then six years old.

There is much interesting and fresh material on the actual revolt, especially for the Ghuta and Damascus, which offers new insights into the workings of the rebellion. Provence compellingly tells the story of how the rebel bands operated, and paints a vivid picture of Ramadan Shallash, the famous rebel leader. In fact, he might have highlighted
this second part of his book, chapters 4 to 7, a lot more. He concludes that “the rebels of the Damascus countryside were organized, coordinated, and focused on the strategic goal of expelling the French from the mandated territory by destroying the structures and rhetorical claims of mandatory rule” (p. 133). But he also misses an opportunity.

He wants to uncover the “collective consciousness hidden in negative relief in the records of resistance and suppression” but interprets them as “different not only from region to region but from person to person” (p. 108). This is both contradictory and highly individualistic.
What can we learn about the insurgents’ moral universe and their justification for rebellion, for example, if every rebel is seen as holding what amounts to a purely personal opinion?

One more point: Provence seems to subscribe to a dichotomous view of suppression/resistance. Yet, this dichotomy is not enough to understand how colonial rule actually functioned. It is the subaltern school itself, to which Provence looks for inspiration, which made this important observation. That French colonialism was a brutal affair is uncontested, and anti-imperialism is certainly a valid attitude, especially in times of new empires. But it can hardly fill in for new research questions (how did colonialism work beyond suppression? What other forms of resisting it were there?).

This reviewer, then, is somewhat sceptical about the prediction ventured by the doyen in the field of Syrian studies, Philip Khoury, that “Provence’s book will be a significant contribution to the literature on popular rebellions in the Arab world”.

Yet, 200-pages-short and written in an almost literary style it will certainly be an excellent introduction to them, especially for undergraduates.