“Our 1789”: The Transitional Program of the Lebanese National Movement and the Abolition of Sectarianism, 1975–77

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Main author: George, Nathaniel
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-38699
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic D839 Post-war History, 1945 on
D880 Developing Countries
DE The Mediterranean Region. The Greco-Roman World
HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
HT Communities. Classes. Races
HX Socialism. Communism. Anarchism
JQ Political institutions (Asia, Africa, Australia)
JZ International relations
description Were the events of 1975–77 in Lebanon, commonly thought of today as an internecine sectarian war between Christians and Muslims, more comparable to the furies of revolution and counterrevolution? This article reframes the Lebanese National Movement's (LNM) “Transitional Program” as a revolutionary, anti-colonial, and radical republican challenge that sought to implement a new constitutional order based on popular sovereignty. Internally, it severed the link between sectarian affiliation and political representation that was the hallmark of the Lebanese regime. Externally, the program announced a commitment to popular struggle against imperially sustained settler colonialism in Palestine while calling into question the authoritarian practices of most regional regimes. Drawing from periodicals, memoirs, diplomatic sources, and interviews, this article considers the efforts of the LNM-PLO alliance to push the Transitional Program in the political sphere and on the battlefield. In turn, it demonstrates how the United States, Syria, Israel, and Lebanese counterrevolutionaries worked in concert to ensure that the sectarian regime would be preserved at the moment of its greatest challenge. Against a historiography that either dismisses the venture as predestined to fail or considers the period only within the shackles of post-defeat melancholia, it reevaluates the history of one of the most explicit emancipatory challenges to the Arab order.
format Journal Article
author George, Nathaniel
author_facet George, Nathaniel
authorStr George, Nathaniel
author_letter George, Nathaniel
title “Our 1789”: The Transitional Program of the Lebanese National Movement and the Abolition of Sectarianism, 1975–77
publisher Duke University Press
publishDate 2022
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/38699/

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