Land, Ecological Interventions, and the “Modern” State
IDIR OUAHES
The case of agricultural experimentation in the early French mandate period demonstrates the shift of ecological interventions by organized state actors from romantic orientalism to coherent state-centered development after the First World War. The interwar era witnessed an increasing focus on state-building logics in agricultural affairs. This case study on French Mandate Syria and Lebanon demonstrates how agrarian doctrines of development informed a policy of science, measurement, and control. The history of agrarian reforms in Syria and Lebanon builds on—as well as critiques—historical interpretations of agrarian development in the French Empire and the British Empire. The case study of agrarian efforts—ranging from species introductions and fertilizers to legislation—examines hitherto unknown interactions between the local population, the French, and neighboring colonies and countries relating to agrarian improvement.
France took over Syria and Lebanon from the British military administration in 1918, after the collapse of Ottoman rule over the Levant. France “received” Syria through the League of Nations Mandate, with a stipulation that France should exercise tutelage of the local peoples to prepare them for independence. France’s League of Nations Mandate framework required a rapidly assembled state-building exercise. France brought officials with extensive experience in French colonial North Africa to help develop a modern colony in Syria.1 France received official control over Syria only in 1922, although French direct rule over the region had begun in 1918 in the Mediterranean coastal regions of Lebanon and Lattakia, and in the summer of 1920 over the rest of Syria “proper,” which had sought to form an independent Arab Kingdom under Hashemite leader Faisal Bin Hussein Bin ‘Ali Al-Hashimi.
To incoming colonial administrators, Syria and Lebanon could be understood as regions whose people and nature needed “improvement” to fulfill colonial agrarian ideals. Syria and Lebanon were “colonies” of Europe despite the humanitarian language of the League of Nations. The evolution of the modern nation state, rooted within European and colonial experiences, undertook increasingly sophisticated efforts to shape nature and society using science, technology, and measurement.2 Imperial domains offered more malleable testing grounds for ecological interventions because autocratic powers associated with colonial rule gave experts and state officials greater ability to imagine and implement plans for reformatting nature and society. Joseph Hodge’s review of science in the British Empire noted that power was unevenly exercised through scientific knowledge and innovation in British colonies.3 The increasing interest in the role of state-directed ecological interventions in the British Empire was paralleled in the French Empire. Diana Davis has dealt with the role of the French colonial forest service in shaping the environment in Morocco. She examined how the creation of protected forests resulted in the dispossession of local peasants.4 Discussing a similar subject, Caroline Ford notes that the case of forestry in French Algeria demonstrated “the darker sides of environmentalism” because of its dispossession of peasants.5
Post–First World War developments in Syria and Lebanon built on late nineteenth-century colonial efforts to manage the people and nature of French North Africa. French colonial policy increasingly emphasized the mise en valeur (literally meaning “to make worthy”) of colonial territories. This concept was replacing the earlier romantic-orientalist rhetoric and representation that had tended to idealize the “pure” and “guileless” exotic “Other” people and environments to be found in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. It is notable that, in contrast to the presence of orientalist and romantic imaginations in the German and British agricultural services, French savants and experimental researchers in such places as Algeria had initially focused on the aesthetics of a civilizing mission rather than questioning the degree of economic and technical success achieved.6 The concept of giving economic value to colonial possessions, which paralleled the “constructive imperialism” outlined earlier in Britain by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, was one rung up in a “ladder” that tied the romantic-era “civilizing mission” of the nineteenth century to the developmental state of the interwar and early post–Second World War periods.7
This chapter situates the history of agriculture within wider historiographies focused on the environment, science, and imperialism.8 Colonial agricultural efforts represented the pinnacle of what James Scott described as “high modernism,” which sought to control people and nature for human benefit. Scott argues that: “Agriculture is, after all, a radical reorganization and simplification of flora to suit man’s goals.”9 Scott’s emphasis on the state also allows him to see the particular force and direction given to ecological interventions in the modern period, often starkly evident in colonial circumstances.10 Situations where a state-imposed logic was intended to improve agricultural production had cascading effects as a result of ecological and human reactions. Timothy Mitchell has noted that the Egyptian state’s policies encouraging a “free-market” agriculture in fact led the peasants to plant cash crops to survive; a reaction that carried significant aftereffects for the country’s economy and ecology.11
At the same time, we should be wary of casting the state as an all-seeing and powerful agent that harmed the interests of locals. In many respects, French administrators had little power over rainfall, heat, local farming practices, and fertility. Nor did their efforts always meet with criticism. Local Syrian and Lebanese elites agreed with French agrarian improvement efforts and the introduction of useful plants and animals. This point has a wider relevance for the French Empire in North Africa and the Middle East. Interwar agricultural efforts did not simply conform to Diana Davis’s suggestion that a declensionist narrative emphasizing a lost agricultural potential owing to Arab deforestation retained its appeal in the twentieth century. Writing in a specialist journal in 1931, French-Algerian agronomist Jean Blottière presented a statistics-informed outline of the growth of cereal agriculture and even noted that Algeria had been a net exporter of grains prior to the French conquest, an endeavour that Blottière admitted had harmed indigenous cereal production.12 The same edition of L’Agriculture des Pays Chauds carried an account of cotton growing in the country, which noted that cotton had been introduced by the Arab conquerors, with the root of the word “cotton” itself coming from the Arabic qtun.13 The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate the historical development and contradictions of French agrarian efforts in mandate Syria and Lebanon.
France was something of a latecomer in the Levant. The Levant had experienced Middle Eastern state interventions in agricultural and water management from antiquity onward; a phenomenon (in)famously described as “hydraulic despotism.”14 The Middle East was also noted to have experienced an “Islamic Green Revolution” in the early days of unified Muslim rule. Edmund Burke III suggests that the reversal of this agricultural growth was the result of a combination of human and environmental factors, including plant diseases, in the medieval period.15 Such state interventions continued under the Ottomans, though the imperial nature of their rule, its Islamic foundations, and confusing layers of taxation, did not particularly increase state interference in ecological situations. As late as 1886, Ottoman land was divided into five categories, with different categories of taxation forming an even more complex postfeudal system. This complex system limited the Ottoman efforts at agrarian modernization and complicated later French efforts.
First was mülk land, which was subject to proprietary law according to the civil code. Second were the waqfs, which were mortmain (perpetuities with absolute or relative inalienability). Third were the mirie state lands. Fourth were the metruke lands, which did not have private claims and were instead reserved for public and communal use (such as highways and communal pastures). Finally, there was mewat, undeveloped lands. French authorities were most interested in mirie lands since they were the most cultivable and accessible to the state. This land was rented on a usufruct (shared) basis. If this type of land had gone uncultivated for three years, however, the rentiers would lose their rights. The lands were rented for either money or a tithe of food. French Mandate agricultural advisor Edouard Achar also noted the existence of great landlords with latifundia that were hampering development and even suggested a progressive weakening of the hold of these landowners and the parceling out of the land to productive farmers.16
Despite this labyrinthine organization, there had been some Ottoman efforts at modernization. In the 1880s, Istanbul’s Ministry of Trade and Public Works employed a director for agriculture who sent inspectors out to advise farmers on improving their techniques, and Istanbul sent young Ottomans to Europe to study agricultural science. A more professional agricultural policy was outlined during the 1890s, with agricultural schools set up at Muslimiyah near Aleppo, Salonica, and Bursa, as well as experimental farms.17 An agricultural bank was organized in Istanbul in 1898. This bank had branches in Damascus that had continued to operate during King Faisal’s independent Arab government. Branches were opened in Beirut during the First World War, though the mutassarifate of Lebanon was not interfered with due to its special administrative autonomy. As they retreated during the First World War, the Ottomans took most of the banks’ accounts with them. The Faisalians reopened the agricultural banks and undertook painstaking work to recover the names of the banks’ investors by using local administration archives. The bank was thus able to again lend money to farmers for machines, tools, and instruments. Upon reviewing this established system, the agronomic advisor Lieutenant Florimond accepted its core utility, though he suggested that there was a need to unite the funds of the various banks into one central bank for the mandate territory. This would allow the poorer regions to draw on greater loans than their limited local deposits could afford.
Despite these plans for reform, the agricultural situation on the ground was deemed to be dire. The Faisalian government in Damascus estimated in 1918 that the retreating Turkish army had seized 798,269 Turkish lira of deposits from the agricultural banks.18 By the beginning of the mandate, credit for farmers was being primarily loaned by individual bankers via buyback contracts. The high interest rate on these loans meant that farmers could not pay their debts, leading to foreclosures that allowed banks to consolidate ever larger bank-owned latifundia.19 In contrast, research on Ottoman agriculture emphasizes the relatively low level of concentrated land holdings in earlier periods.20 A 1931 review of land laws in Syria by an agronomist attached to the State of Syria’s government outlined the French view that the “defectuous” Ottoman land holding system had harmed agriculture.21 An undated report from the period of France’s arrival in Syria outlined agricultural conditions in Syria in the preceding years. It noted that agriculture was the keystone of Syria’s prosperity. It estimated that up to 95 percent of the country’s locally produced exports were agronomic and accounted for up to 50 percent of the tax income for local governments. The report explained that to “understand Syria, to recognize her proper worth, it is necessary to go beyond the coastal mountain chain … one must have visited the great plateaus of fertile land … on which millions of hectares remain unexploited.”22 Even at such an early stage, the state-focused, developmental attitude toward agricultural intervention was being outlined.
The Ottoman precedent was changed by an increasingly intrusive mandate state system in the early 1920s. For instance, the State of Syria, founded in 1924, arrogated several types of Ottoman land titles. These included the mudawara lands previously held by the Ottoman Sultan, the mussakafates (public buildings), the moutafaouda (land repossessed by the state), and mahloule (goods without inheritance claims), as well as all other holdings through eminent domain and domaine utile (rights secured through productive use of the land). Of the mudawara lands, there were 500,000 hectares (approximately 1,235,000 acres) in Aleppo of which four-fifths were being cultivated. In Damascus, there were 1250,000 hectares, of which only 130,000 were cultivated. This came to a total of 1,750,000 hectares, of which 530,000 were developed. Two types of Ottoman taxes were imposed on privately owned land. The first was the land tax, the werko based on the worth of the land. The other, a variable one, was the land tithe, ashour, which was applied to cultivations. The werko tax was charged at 4 percent of the land’s value, though as the land became increasingly dotted with fruit trees, this rose to 12 percent. By the time of the French Mandate, the taxes charged were generally low with respect to the revenue from the lands. This was due to land worth estimates still being based on those of the 1870s, with a significant undervaluation of their worth.
To combat this, French mandate authorities organized a service of land registration, the Service du Cadastre.23 In the State of Syria, the lands were also subjected to inspections (teftiches) that were undertaken by an inspector (moufatache) and a tax collector, who covered 40,000- to 60,000-hectare regions. This structure was overseen by a centralized land service with two agencies in Aleppo and Damascus. In each agency, there was an agent of the domain, an inspector for the territory, an accountant, a secretary-archivist, a typist, a designer-surveyor, a tax-collector, and an orderly. The agencies were overseen by an audit service, made up of a comptroller, an accountant, a translator-secretary, a typist, and an orderly. The state land generated 230,000 Syrian pounds of tax income in the early 1920s.24 A 1926 report by authorities in Paris praised the cohesion of the High Commissariat’s agronomic advisor, the agricultural services, and the intelligence services in monitoring ecological developments.25
Although the Ottoman land system was reformed by the new mandate authorities, the full force and directedness of mandate state capabilities still encountered the limits imposed by ecological actors. Instead of relying on romantic-orientalist discourses on the ineffectiveness of Ottoman agriculture, French efforts in Syria were guided by an attempt to exercise sovereignty over ecological actors. These efforts often encountered mixed results. This was signaled early on when changes were forced upon mandate authorities in Cilicia. By 1918–19, only one-fiftieth of the cultivable lands were being developed. The following year, this had more than doubled. However, climatic conditions, including heavy rains from February to May 1918 followed by a dry summer, caused damage in the 1918–19 year. The drought continued right up to December 1918. The harvest was thus very poor, which, in combination with the arrival of thousands of Christian refugees in Cilicia, caused problems for the region’s food supply. French authorities organized monthly meetings of farmers, millers, and exporters to coordinate food supply. However, they miscalculated the scale of the problem, leading to a requisition of barley stocks that was not well received by local farmers.26
Weather, pests, and other environmental factors proved especially challenging for mandate authorities in the 1920s. Rains were poor in 1923–24. A particularly cold winter had led to subzero temperatures and snowfall, even on the coast. A freak event—a tornado on June 15—required 10,000 Syrian pounds in compensation to those affected.27 Cold and drought diminished agricultural output to some extent. The agricultural bank provided 850 quintals (hundredweights) of oat and wheat seeds and 500 quintals of Cypriot winter barley because of the domestic shortfall in production.
These weather conditions had the beneficial effect of killing the cereal larvae (Dudet al-Zarḥ). But not all pests suffered. In the spring of 1923, arsenic was spread in the region of Suedieh to fight against voles that “ravaged” fields.28 In 1924, a fight against another kind of “parasite” was undertaken, targeting a larva called Dudet Al-Maher, which affected barley and wheat. The parasite was a microlepidoptera (micromoth) and a technical study was undertaken to determine its habitat and evolution cycle.29 By 1926, there was a concerted effort at fighting cotton parasites in the region.30 The northern frontier was even momentarily closed in 1925 to avoid the spread of bovine pests.31 Reports of poor harvests continued until the late 1920s; one 1928 report noted continuing dry conditions in Syria. So too were grasshopper invasions reported in that year.32
This latter ecological actor was a persistent thorn in the side of French agricultural plans, as was the case in other colonial domains.33 Early in the mandate period, cultivation in the Jabal ‘Amil of South Lebanon was noted for having been invaded by grasshoppers, though the impact was less severe than in other parts of the country.34 The High Commissariat’s agricultural service noted that invasions of grasshoppers represented the principal danger to different agricultures. A coordinated fight against parasites was undertaken, with technocrats being made responsible for the destruction of grasshopper nests. These efforts were controlled by specialists of the economic service and even members of the army intelligence corps. Turco-Syrian commissions on the grasshopper threat were organized with Turkey.35
Alongside securing the mandate state’s raison d’être and modus operandi, ecological interventions were the subject of otherwise rare tutor-tutee consensus. Lebanese newspapers Al Qa´baa and Alef Ba published a report by the director of agriculture Yousef Atallah regarding locust culling, ensuring that the reading public were informed of governmental efforts at protecting crops.36 Such reports gave details of efforts in the fight against locusts. In Deir Ez-Zor in mid-April 1930, a report published in Al-Qabas described “the fighting … against the flying Nejdian and the Moroccan locusts.” Near Hama, 34,492 kilos of the flying locusts were killed.37 The nationalist Beirut newspaper Al-Sha´ab wrote an article critical of the governmental response to locusts, which it claimed “fill the plains and the mountains.… Rush about like waves.” The newspaper reported that a local committee to destroy the locusts was formed to pressure the government for financial aid to fight the insects, an effort that nationalist and future Syrian premier Fakhri Al-Baroudi encouraged. The committee’s proposal to incentivize the killing and collection of locusts by paying and fining individuals for participating in or ignoring the culls was adopted by mandate authorities.38 Pressure on French authorities was increased when the nationalist Baroudi was subsequently sent an official government of Palestine report on Britain’s successful locust repression by the British Consul in Damascus.39
Competition between the mandate states was short-lived. The consensus on fighting locusts meant that in 1926, French and British mandate authorities reached an agreement with Turkey to organize responses to and prevent locust swarms. The agreement founded an International Bureau to fight locusts, based at Damascus. The Locust Bureau’s activities would be guided by a committee formed of the delegates from the states involved. Its primary purpose was the communication of intelligence on the “positioning, extensions and density of oviposition sites (champs de ponte), their stage of development, the direction of locust swarms, methods of control and for fighting.” The bureau would coordinate this exchange, which would be based on data put together by dedicated special divisions within the respective states’ agricultural departments.40 However, these state-led efforts at controlling ecological movements that threatened crops were not self-evidently successful. For instance, it had taken a month for the French authorities in Aleppo to gather information on locusts. The British Consul noted that the High Commissioner’s delegate in that region assumed “a somewhat passive attitude in the matter as he holds that successful methods for dealing with the question are in use in Northern Africa and accordingly it is not considered of any great utility to keep careful statistics.”41
A French report underlined the mobilization of the mandate state’s resources to fight ecological actors. It explained that: “the locust invasion of 1930 was of a particularly dangerous character.… Since 1865, several locust invasions have been recorded in Syria [in 1878, 1890, 1902, and 1915].… The locusts that invaded Syria in 1930 belong to two different species.… The Nejdi Grasshopper … the Moroccan Grasshopper … [both are] acclimatized to Syria.” The report noted that the Moroccan locusts’ eggs could survive throughout the summer, meaning any efforts against them had to cross over into the next season. The report described the “propagation” of the locusts that “continued to advance west … crossing the Syro-Lebanese and Syro-Alawite borders … to ensure the rapid execution of anti-locust efforts … each region was divided into sectors for agricultural defense. Technical officers (graduates of the agricultural schools) … have been mobilized … to enable technical personnel in each sector to relentlessly pursue the destruction of locusts.” Mobile groups of gendarmerie with flamethrower teams were dispatched. Despite these concerted efforts, the locusts were estimated to have destroyed 1.25 to 1.5 percent of Syria’s crops.42
Alongside pest control, an important introduction of modern state-directed ecological intervention was the increasing use of chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers were little used before the First World War, and the French authorities sought to increase their use under the logic of increasing agricultural productivity. Authorities noted that chemical fertilizers were being used for particular crops, such as bamieh (okra) and cotton, although for cereal crops only natural manure was used. One report complained that the “lack of chemical fertilisers prevents the peasants from exploiting to the full the fertility of the soil.”43 Alongside the logic of increased productivity, the use of fertilizers would have an impact on encouraging metropolitan commerce. The Société Commerciale des Potasses d’ Alsace and other merchants were noted by administrators to be keen to use their potassium fertilizer products in Syria. However, because of their high cost and the exploitation of the soil by sharecropping, these products were judged unlikely to be widely used. Instead, authorities acknowledged that in the short term, the use of “green” fertilizers such as beans, chickpeas, and lentils could be favored. These fertilizers were nothing new to Syrians, who were perfectly aware of the positive impact of intercropping.44 Certain French actions, such as High Commissariat order number 1449, which banned the export of manure from the Alawite state, encouraged the use of green fertilizers. This was done because the Alawite farmers needed manure for the tobacco and tombac plantations.45
Other reports demonstrated less pragmatism from mandate authorities on the issue of fertilizer use. In the Sanjak (district) of the Jabal Barakat in Hatay province, agriculture was focused on the two plains of Islahiye and Osmaniyah, in the shadow of the Nur mountains. A report expressed surprise that despite their fertility, the two plains were largely fallow. The report pointed out that this could be blamed on a “perfectly uninterested” Ottoman government and the effects of the First World War. However, it noted that many similarly fertile plains in Turkey had seen productivity growth in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Instead, the blame was put on the longue durée invasions and population movements of this strategic crossroads between Syria and Anatolia. This had led the local populations to take refuge in the mountains and give up agriculture and was made worse by continuing lawlessness, such as brigandage, which made farming unstable. The report heaped self-congratulatory praise on French authorities for having brought protection and claimed that the locals were slowly being reassured by French security. Fascinatingly, a certain ethnic order was also outlined, which seemed to be attached to abilities to absorb European agricultural methods. The Rumeliotes were deemed good cultivators but materially poor. The Kurds were deemed poor and without a sense for cultivation. The Çerkes and Armenians were deemed intelligent and able to make use of modern machinery. The report added that fertilizers were entirely unknown in the region and manure was rarely used and claimed that the farmers were irrationally suspicious of new methods.46
To the south, in Lebanon’s Jabal ‘Amil, agriculture was similarly judged to suffer from the mountainous region and a lack of communications and capital. The peasants had, over centuries, put up foundations that held up the land. However, this had the impact of encouraging deforestation as a result of winter mudslides. The report noted that French machinery was beginning to make an appearance, although it added that peasants “ignored” the utility of the natural and chemical fertilizers. The seguias irrigation canals put up by locals to divert water from the local rivers tended to cause water loss. The report also criticized a postfeudal system that meant land was generally owned by great landlords named beys or achaiers and was worked by the sharecroppers. The landowner provided the funds and animals while the laborer provided seeds, material, and labor. After cultivation, the produce was split, with between one-third and one-half of the cereals going to the landowner.47
In their efforts at intervening in the environment, French authorities found local governing elites to be supportive. A report from Greater Lebanon noted that a local administrative commission approved of French methods used to fight diseases of citrus and olive trees and asked for them to be made more widespread. To do this, the Lebanese government sent out a circular notice with methods for fighting diseases.48 This was in response to a petition sent to the government by local representatives who portrayed the dire impact of citrus diseases. The letter explained that “if this disease continues to spread … there is no doubt that that will be the coup de grace for the inhabitants [of Saida’s] fortunes … one of the landowners of Saida said: ‘If the government is not interested in our issue … we will tell them to take over our lands and give us free access to the sea; the world is vast.’ ”49
The administrative council of the Lebanese Assembly met to discuss the matter. Fourteen members, presided over by Daoud Bey Ammoun, considered the issue presented before their session by Rachid Bey Jumblatt, Yussef Bey Jouhari, and Nasri Bey Azouri. Jouhari noted that some 1,500 oranges were being lost every day in each plantation. Rachid Jumblatt observed that some 200,000 Syrian pounds were being raised in taxes on the gardens of Sidon. The French governor of Lebanon’s representative Francis Petit, justified the efforts being made by the agricultural department of the Lebanese government. Petit added that, in contrast to the department, several local landowners were struck by “inertia” and passivity. The assembly then heard from the Lebanese director of agriculture, a Mr. Younes, who outlined the efforts made to fight diseases. He also noted the unanimous passivity of various notables in the Sidon region, leading the authorities to act alone, sending technicians in cars with the necessary equipment. Regarding the major disease afflicting the olive trees, Younes highlighted that the disease was more difficult to fight since it was caused by an insect that lived between the bark and the branches. It was thus impossible to fight through external methods, and the only remedy was to cut the trees regularly.50 This case demonstrates how some local elites worked in tandem with French authorities in their efforts to control ecological outcomes. The logic of technocratic state ecological interventions met with less local political resistance than the traditional forms of political arrogation concerned with social, economic, and political matters.
Mandate state ecological intervention also occurred in transfers of plants. Though this was in the context of longer-term mutual and local ecological exchanges in this crossroads region, a particular organization and direction was given to ecological transfers by the mandate state.51 This was a result of the colonial state justifying its modus operandi as it sought to develop the country (mise en valeur). The long-term dangers of heavy-handed interventions on ecological balance were rarely considered. As James Scott explains “the very strength of scientific agricultural experimentation—its simplifying assumptions and its ability to isolate the impact of a single variable on total production—is incapable of dealing adequately with certain forms of complexity. It tends to ignore, or discount, agricultural practices that are not assimilable to its techniques.”52
In the local public sphere, there were different opinions about the introduction of species to increase agricultural profits. In 1924, the Beirut newspaper Al-Watan wrote that emigration away from the Levant could be reduced by encouraging agriculture.53 Another newspaper, Al-Barq, published an article encouraging the possibility of growing cotton in the country.54 French government officials reported that local peasants would be interested in accessing the increasing number of seeds available in an agricultural bank.55 Other public sphere commentaries, however, were more critical. The newspaper Lisān al-Hāl wrote that the experimental farms were expensive, with most of their funds going toward technical personnel. The newspaper acknowledged that such highly qualified personnel were necessary for experimentation in cotton culture because this was a new phenomenon in Syria. However, it questioned why they were required for mulberry- or olive-growing cultures since local agriculturalists already had long experience with these. It suggested reducing technical advisors for these two plants and instead using the money to give more seeds to local farmers.56
With a dual logic of securing the foundations of domestic and colonial rule through the promotion of French commerce and mandate legitimacy, authorities used their organizational capacity to direct ecological transfers. In 1923, it was reported from Damascus that experimental seed banks had been organized. They included cuttings of a range of seeds.57 A report noted that sorghum had had excellent results, with the seeds proving to be resistant to poor climatic conditions.58 Antioch’s plant nursery had sold 95,000 cubic feet of mulberries by the early 1920s.59 Another report noted that although a poor cereal harvest in the Alawite state had resulted from dry weather in the spring, the creation of nurseries in January 1924 had produced promising results in the Tartus region, which had produced 100,000 mulberry trees. The report also noted some successes in the acclimatization of new seeds and an Iranian specialist was hired by the administration to experiment with tobacco cultures. Authorities were adept at combining this with promotion of French capital goods. Demonstration stations were organized to showcase French products such as threshers, straw choppers, and engines.60
Cotton was principally cultivated in Idlib and the Jebleh plain, which produced around 2,000 tons. Authorities expected it to develop in Syria since it would fit with France’s “efforts … to produce in countries submitted to her influence, the primary materials necessary for her factories.” Officials expressed their hope that introducing cotton to the Euphrates plains, Alexandretta, Lattakia, and Tripoli could lead to production of 35,000 tons. To encourage this, the High Commissariat organized an experimental station in the ‘Akkar plain. In Damascus, a trial of Egyptian cotton was undertaken in 1921.61 Transplanted cotton seeds were described as having left the experimental stage in 1924. More farmers were seeking to know about experimental cotton seeds, leading to 23,143 hectares being cultivated in 1924, primarily in the Aleppo region. This led to a doubling of the previous year’s Aleppo harvest. Cotton had been nonexistent in Damascus in 1924 and very rare in other states. In Aleppo, it was the nonirrigated cotton, named baladī, which was most popular with cultivators. According to French authorities, this preference persisted despite the great deal of work that this strand needed from farmers. However, the French sought to encourage the irrigated Egyptian cotton and organized irrigation projects toward this end. The High Commissariat based this on studies of Egyptian cotton’s productivity.62
Trials of Egyptian and U.S. cotton were regarded as successful and as “perfectly acclimatized to the soil and climate of the Alawite State.” Various strains of cotton were grown, including the Egyptian sakellarides and zagora cotton, as well as yerli from Cilicia and the local Levantine baladī. The president of the Mulhouse Chamber of Commerce Mr. Dolfus sent a U.S. strain, the Texas Good Middling, in May 1923. This variety was planted in Jebleh by the Aly Dib family. Of 3,000 dunums of land, half of the cotton cultivated was baladī, 1000 dunums were Egyptian, and 500 were strains from Cilicia or the United States. The bolls of the U.S. cotton were three to four times bigger than Egyptian cotton and 10 times bigger than Syrian baladī cotton, and also opened much faster—within thirty days. However, the Egyptian strain remained the most productive and had the finest and longest fibers.63 The scope of French imperial bureaucracy was thus particularly influential in encouraging ecological transfers of regional, even global, reach.
The most evident case of this was the employment of French diplomats in Brazil to secure the transfer of a variety of Brazilian seeds for trials in the Levant. In March 1926, the French ambassador to Brazil, A. R. Conty, wrote to the French consul in Bahia, Léon Hippeau. He explained that the agricultural service in the State of Syria under Edouard Achard was interested in paying for samples of kidney cotton (Gossypium brasiliense), which was reportedly being cultivated in the states of Alagoas and Sergipe. Kidney cotton was believed to provide harvests within only three months of planting. Conty asked for 10 kilograms of seeds, along with a note on their cultivation and economic worth.64 The consul passed on the request to a director of the State Bank of Sergipe.65 The director then sent a request on the consul’s behalf to the Brazilian authorities, seeking 10 kilograms of kidney cotton. In reply, however, the authorities denied the diplomats’ claims about the plants’ abilities. A member of the agricultural department, Heitor Andre Tavares, explained that the subspecies they had requested did not have the qualities of fast turnaround that they had expected. In fact, kidney cotton was usually harvested after seven to eight months of cultivation. He instead suggested an alternative, “Day’s Pedigree,” which had a cultivation period of four to five months.66 After further enquiries, the consul’s agent in Maceio, M. C. Girard, informed Leon Hippeau that kidney cotton was not in fact available in the northern states of Alagoas and Sergipe and it only grew in the southern states, mainly in Sao Paolo.67 Considering this, the consul settled for Day’s Pedigree and 10 kilograms were dispatched to Damascus, gaining Achard’s gratitude.68
Alongside cotton, trials of foreign tobacco were undertaken in the Alawite state and Lebanon. The local tobacco, nicknamed Abu Riḥa, was sold to England and the United States. French authorities reported that the regulatory barrier imposed by the Ottoman Régie des Tabacs had hurt this crop, which would now prosper at levels not seen since its nineteenth-century heyday, when Syria was the main provider of Egypt’s tobacco.69 Experimentation with tobacco strains was augmented as administrators sought to implement this policy of mise en valeur of their territory. In 1924, the production of 300,000 kilograms of local tombac was judged to be a poor performance in contrast to competing Iranian tombac. Use of the local baladī tombac had become inefficient, with over three-quarters of the tobacco grains becoming spoiled. Seeds from Shiraz in Iran were imported and distributed to counteract this. Further trials with the Iranian tombac were undertaken in Lattakia, Bouka, and Jebleh.
Tutor-tutee collaboration was again evident in ecological transfers. In the Alawite state, an agricultural bank provided farmers with selected foreign and indigenous seeds. The agricultural chambers were also reported to have supported the administration’s efforts at trials.70 A petition by Alawite notables praised French authorities for their efforts and called for the opening of agricultural and scientific schools, as well as banks in each qaḍā’ (district) to encourage agriculture.71 The Alawite region also witnessed organized olive tree transplantation. Several thousand young wild olive trees were planted in the early 1920s. A 500 Syrian pound subvention was paid for the organization of forty plant nurseries, which allowed the distribution of seeds to farmers who were reported to be increasingly interested in shrub culture and had created several private nurseries. A model magnanery was based in Safita and later moved to Banias to demonstrate sericulture techniques.72
French efforts at acclimatizing plants to the Syrian situation also focused on forestry in desertified areas. Diana Davis has noted, in her study of French approaches to “desertification” in colonial Algeria, how romantic-orientalist tropes of an Ancient Roman breadbasket shaped administrators’ discourses, which laid the blame for North Africa’s agricultural decline on short-sighted nomadic pastoralism.73 In response, the French encouraged planting fast-growing nonnative trees, such as eucalyptus, though these soon dotted the coastline and may have contributed to a decline in biodiversity in the long term. Eucalyptus acclimatization in French North Africa had already been brought to the Levant prior to the mandate. A Mr. Morel ran a “Villa Eucalypta” in Beirut and had begun planting the tree in 1893. Justifying the spread of the trees in the Levant, Morel explained in particularly romantic terms that this tree was strongly suited to the windy conditions in the Lebanese highlands. He wrote of how “each stroke of the wind fills my garden with debris … this intermittent duel seems to recall Hercules striking the heads of the Lernean Hydra who fought back at each turn; in this case, it is the tree that seems strong and the wind appears to exhaust itself as it seeks to bring it to heel [l’entamer].74
Mandate-era forestry efforts did not involve such romantic concerns. State interest in development (mise-en-valeur) and assuring the authorities’ modus operandi were preeminent. One effort focused on the fixing of shifting dunes through the introduction of acacia saligna. The planting of acacia was suggested because of its success in Cyprus.75 This plant, native to Australia, had been used in French Algeria and later became “one of the worst woody invaders” in South Africa, though its impact has been less considerable in the Mediterranean.76 Other areas, which were stable, were also considered for reforestation from a touristic point of view. This was the case for areas that were deemed uncultivable but located in regions near villages and roads for beautification. Another report claimed that forests would grow by themselves so long as the right measures were made to provide soil stability and cross-pollination. This conclusion was tied to authorities’ acknowledgment that reforestation on a large scale was beyond their limited budget. Instead, reforestation focused on indigenous species and situations where there was a danger of landslide for villages, pastures, or agricultural areas. To pay for this, the local villages were expected to contribute funds, though the state budget would support money for grains, plants, and technicians.
The importance of state-led efforts as sources of ecological interventions is evident from the records of French activity in the post-Ottoman Levant. State intervention was limited by the unpredictability of ecological agency. At the same time, it is noteworthy that local administrative and public sphere elites were in otherwise rare agreement with French policies. The directionality and capacity of the French colonial state resulted in an increase in ecological transfers in the early mandate years. The longer-term impact of these transfers is difficult to discern. Early reports’ optimism of the ability of the mandate state to make major changes to Syria’s agricultural produce did not bear out over the course of the 1920s. Optimism about cotton development was countered by its limited growth despite efforts to encourage the spread of seeds. Cotton produced only 30,000 bales in the first year of the mandate, whereas it had stood at 180,000 bales in 1913 with German pre-war estimates suggesting that Cilicia could grow up to 1 million bales.77 Cilicia, which had been widely seen as the jewel in the Levant’s agronomic crown, was lost to France in 1921, following Turkish pressure on the northern frontier.
Some successes were evident. A 1923 campaign replanting mulberry trees and improving sericulture techniques had avoided as poor a harvest as that seen in other sericulture countries. Cotton production, which had been near nonexistent in 1921, had reached 5,000 bales of 110 kilograms in 1922, 18,000 in 1923, and 25,000 in 1924.78 Standard crops did not perform as well, dashing initial hopes for widespread agricultural improvements. Some 450,000 tons of winter cereals (wheat, barley) were produced over 650,000 hectares. Agricultural inspector Achard predicted that 3 million out of Syria’s 4 million cultivable hectares could be used for winter cereal cultivation. It was estimated that 2 million tons of winter cereals would be the minimum yearly production.79
Yet mixed results were evidenced in a 1928 report on agriculture in the Syrian state submitted to the League of Nations. The report noted that the Aleppo Wilāya (district) had seen an increase in wheat growing but the other regions—Damascus, Deir ez-Zor, and Alexandretta—had seen declines in output.80 Alfalfa was cultivated in the oasis around Damascus and in Lebanon’s Biqaa valley. Trials were undertaken to bring it to the coastline and to Aleppo, where it had some success. Alfalfa was judged to be well acclimatized to the Syrian situation because of its deep roots and longevity, and its spread was encouraged because it could also provide livestock fodder.81
Despite early optimism, reports gradually demonstrated the difficulty in freely implementing state-directed ecological changes. A general report from 1926 admitted that certain regions of the country had experienced poor harvests because of scorching weather. However, it claimed that the peasants had remained optimistic. It also claimed this was because of governmental interventions, provision of security and infrastructure (roads, canals, irrigation), as well as agricultural experimentation and loans that had reached 375,000 Syrian pounds in the state of Aleppo. It added that the agricultural situation was being improved through the purchase of agricultural machines, research on means of fighting disease, encouragement of sericulture through the donation of 100,000 mulberry seeds, and the establishment of an education program for 1925.82 Another 1926 report noted that agricultural progress was set back in 1925 following an invasion of parasites and locusts that had harmed 20 percent of the seeds, with certain regions of Damascus state losing half of their seeds. The report also added that the sericulture campaign had “without a doubt” been less successful than that of the preceding year, with the cocoons grown totaling around 2.7 million kilograms.83
The core premise of the mandate was the idea of tutelage by more advanced and capable nations overseeing tutees in their state-building effort. For the French in Syria, a core element of this idea was that they were making the country worthy, the mise-en-valeur. This represented a revamped civilizing mission no longer deeply dependent on romantic-orientalist rhetoric but shifting toward the notion of technocratic management of the territory. Ecological engineering was a keystone of this policy in a fundamentally agricultural country. This state-directed intervention in local agrarian ecologies was supported by the local political elite and public sphere in a rare display of tutor-tutee consensus that further underlined the state-building logic of agricultural interventions. While the multifarious and chaotically expressed interventions of ecological actors and conditions constrained the execution of French aims, the scope of interventions was much greater than in the less organized Ottoman-state era, thus underlying the shift from the savant and romantic-orientalist experimentation of early colonial botany and forestry to the science of agriculture and state-managed directedness and organization. This case study delineates the shift in French colonial ecological interventions over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—from savant-romantic, individualist interactions toward more bureaucratic, technocratic, state-organized, and more immediately impactful interventions. The case study also contributes to the wider literature on ecological actors and human interventions by highlighting the need to appreciate the different scopes of impacts that human organizational groups can have in relation to ecological actors and interventions. It would seem that the hierarchical and carapace-like intervention of the modern (colonial) state in societal affairs can be said to have had a much more consequential impact on ecological interventions than earlier human-ecological interactions.
1. Edmund Burke III, “A Comparative View of French Native Policy in Morocco and Syria, 1912–1925,” Middle Eastern Studies 9, no. 2 (May 1973): 175–86; Martin Thomas, “French Intelligence-Gathering in the Syrian Mandate, 1920–40,” Middle Eastern Studies 38, no. 2 (2002): 1–35.
2. Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). It is notable that the very word “state” comes from the concept of estates of the sovereign, a relic of feudal organization that fundamentally attached sovereignty to agricultural holdings (79).
3. Joseph M. Hodge, “Science and Empire: An Overview of the Historical Scholarship,” in Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire 1800–1970, edited by Brett M. Bennett and Joseph M. Hodge (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
4. Diana K. Davis, “Potential Forests: Degradation Narratives, Science, and Environmental Policy in Protectorate Morocco, 1912–1956,” Environmental History 10, no. 2 (2005): 211–38. Although this is not in the purview of the present article, the forestry service in the Levant Mandate was equally present.
5. Caroline Ford, “Reforestation, Landscape Conservation, and the Anxieties of Empire in French Colonial Algeria,” American Historical Review 113, no. 2 (2008): 341–62.
6. Ulrike Kirchberger, “German Scientists in the Indian Forest Service: A German Contribution to the Raj,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 29 (2001): 1–26; Michael A. Osborne, “The System of Colonial Gardens and the Exploitation of French Algeria, 1830–1852,” in Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, edited by E. P. Fitzgerald (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 166.
7. Hodge, “Science and Empire,” 13–14; Christophe Bonneuil, “Development as Experiment: Science and State Building in Late Colonial and Postcolonial Africa,” Osiris 2 (2000): 258–81.
8. Alfred W. Crosby Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Donna Harraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Beth Greenhough, “Where Species Meet and Mingle: Endemic Human-Virus Relations, Embodied Communication and More-Than-Human Agency at the Common Cold Unit, 1946–90,” Cultural Geographies 19, no. 3 (2012): 281–301.
9. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 2.
10. Scott also dedicates his discussion to the role of crass materialists such as Lenin and the Bolsheviks in promoting wide-scale agricultural developments, leading to disasters such as the Lysenko experiments. See Scott, Seeing, 164–79, 193–222.
11. Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 252–70.
12. Jean Blottière, “L’Evolution de la Cerealiculture Algerienne,” L’Agriculture des Pays Chauds-Nouvelle Série 2, no. 10 (April 1931).
13. M. Widiez, “La Culture du Cotonnier en Afrique du Nord,” L’Agriculture des Pays Chauds-Nouvelle Série 2, no. 10 (April 1931): 278.
14. Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture (Oxford: Altamira Press, 2001), 671–73.
15. Edmund Burke III, “Rivers, Regions & Developmentalism,” in The Environment and World History, edited by Edmund Burke III and Kenneth Pomeranz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 84–98.
16. Edouard Achard, “Notes Agricoles Sur La Syrie” (n.d.), Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (hereafter MAE) Nantes/1SL/V/2377.
17. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2, Reform, Revolution and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 230; Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilisation, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Research Center for Islamic History, Art and Culture, 2001), 339.
18. E. Florimond, “Agronomical Advisor to the High Commissioner to General Gouraud,” Beirut (19 October 1920), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2371. The Damascus branch oversaw smaller branches in Ḥama, Ḥoms, Al-Salamiyah, ‘Omraniye, Al-Nabek, Wadi al-’Adjam, Hasbeya, Dūmā, Al-Zabadani, Beqaa, Baʿalbek, Daraa, Izra’, ‘Ajlūn, Salt, Al-Karak, and Al-Qaryatayn. The Aleppo branch oversaw operations in Muarra, Idlib, and Barb.
19. Achard, “Notes Agricoles Sur La Syrie” (n.d.), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2377.
20. Huri İslamoğlu-İnan, State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire: Agrarian Power Relations and Regional Economic Development in Ottoman Anatolia during the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1994).
21. E. Florimond, “La Reforme Foncière En Syrie,” L’Agriculture des Pays Chauds-Nouvelle Série 2, no. 10 (April 1931): 267.
22. Achard, “Notes Agricoles Sur La Syrie” (n.d.), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2377.
23. For an account of this service, see Elizabeth Williams, “Mapping the Cadastre, Producing the Fellah: Technologies and Discourses of Rule in French Mandate Syria and Lebanon,” in The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, edited by Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (London: Routledge, 2015).
24. High Commissioner’s Delegate to the Syrian Federation, “Avant Propos. Economie Generale Du Programme,” 68–72 (n.d.), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2362.
25. Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales, “Lettre Collective No. 109” (16 May 1926), MAE Nantes/Consulat Santiago/616PO/1/51.
26. “Historique Résumé de l’Installation et du fonctionnement des services administratifs dans les T.E.O. Nord (Cilicie), du 1er Février 1919 au 15 Février 1920” (n.d.), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2362.
27. Etat des Alaouite, “Rapport Pour le 4eme Trimestre 1924,” MAE Nantes/1SL /V/1843.
28. Sanjak of Alexandretta, “Rapport Trimestriel Avril– Mai–Juin 1924” (1924), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
29. Etat des Alaouites, “Rapport Trimestriel Janvier, Février, Mars 1924,” 12, MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
30. Le Mandat Au Début de 1926,” 16, MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2518.
31. N.A., “Le Mandat Au Début de 1926,” 16, MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2518.
32. Ministry of War, Army Chief of Staff, Section of Studies for Africa, The Orient and the Colonies, “Bulletin de Renseignements des Questions Musulmanes” (10 August 1928), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1616.
33. Mitchell, Rule of Experts, 19–51; Holger Weiss, “Locust Invasions in Colonial Northern Ghana,” Working Paper on Ghana: Historical and Contemporary Studies 3 (March 2004). Locusts had affected French administrators in Algeria, leading to an attempt to improve the country’s access to fresh water. See Brock Cutler, “Imperial Thirst: Water and Colonial Administration in Algeria, 1840–1880,” Review of Middle East Studies 44, no. 2 (Winter 2010): 168, 167–75.
34. Service des Renseignements, Poste du Liban Sud, “Etude Sommaire de la Région du Djebel Amel,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2200.
35. Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales, “Lettre Collective No. 109” (16 May 1926), MAE Nantes/Consulat Santiago/616PO/1/51.
36. British Consular translation of article in el Kabaa No. 343 (8 April 1930), The National Archives, Kew, TNA/FO684/4; British Consular translation of article in Alif Ba No. 2800 (10 April 1930), TNA/FO684/4.
37. British Consular translation of article in el Qabas No. 248 (15 April 1930), TNA/FO684/4.
38. British Consular translation of article in Esh-Sha´ab No. 799 (3 March 1930), TNA/FO684/4.
39. E. C. Hole, British Consul Damascus to Fakhri al-Baroudi (4 April 1930), TNA/FO684/4.
40. International Agreement for the Establishment of an International Bureau of Intelligence on Locusts, Damascus, 20 May 1926 (London: HMG Stationery Office, 1930).
41. Geoffrey Meade, Acting British Consul in Damascus to Foreign Secretary, London (6 June 1930), TNA/FO684/4.
42. International Bureau of Intelligence on Locusts at Damascus, “General Report on the Anti-Locust (Anti-Acridienne) Campaign in Syria in 1930” (December 1930), TNA/FO684/4.
43. Rapport Economique de la Zone Aintab-Killis,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
44. Achard, “Notes Agricoles.”
45. Rapport Mensuel Succinct Présenté Par le Chef des Services Economiques Pour le Mois de Juin 1922” (June 1922), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2379.
46. Captain P. J. André, “Notes Introductives a L’Etude du Sandjak du Djebel-Bereket (Cilicie)” (n.d.), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2362.
47. Service des Renseignements, Poste du Liban Sud, “Etude Sommaire de la Région du Djebel Amel,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2200.
48. Francis Petit, Advisor to the Government of Greater Lebanon, “Note Pour M. le Conseiller Pour les Services Economiques” (24 November 1921), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2379.
49. N.A., letter translated by Aziz Ghazi (n.d.), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2436.
50. Etat du Grand Liban, Délégation Administrative, “Procès-Verbal de la Séance du 21/12/1921,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2436.
51. Alan Mikhail, “The Middle East in Global Environmental History,” in A Companion to Global Environmental History, edited by J. R. McNeill and Erin Stewart Mauldin (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2015).
52. Scott, Seeing, 264.
53. Etat du Grand Liban, Service de la Presse, “Journaux du 29 Octobre 1924,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1683.
54. Etat du Grand Liban, Service de la Presse, “Journaux du 11 Février 1924” (11 February 1924), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
55. Confin de L’Euphrate, Sandjak de Deir Ez-Zor, “Rapport Trimestriel (3e Trimestre 1924),” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
56. Etat du Grand Liban, Service de la Presse, “Journaux du 9 Décembre 1924” (9 December 1924), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
57. Etat de Damas, Direction des Services Economiques, Rapport Agricole et Economique 1er Semestre de l’ Anne 1923, MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
58. Gouvernement D’ Alep, Sanjak Autonome D’Alexandrette, “Rapport Pour le 3eme Trimestre de l’ Année 1924,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
59. Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales, “Lettre Collective No. 109” (16 May 1926), MAE Nantes/Consulat Santiago/616PO/1/51.
60. Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales, “Lettre Collective No. 84” (11 October 1924), MAE Nantes/Consulat Santiago/616PO/1/51.
61. Achard, “Notes Agricoles.”
62. “Lettre Collective No. 109,” MAE Nantes/Consulat Santiago/616PO/1/51.
63. Etat des Alaouite, “Rapport Pour le 4eme Trimestre 1924,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
64. A. R. Conty, French Ambassador to Brazil to M. Hippeau, French Consul in Bahia (9 March 1926), MAE Nantes/Consulat Bahia/79.
65. A. R. Conty, French Ambassador to Brazil to P. Larrue, Director of the Banco do Estado de Sergipe, Aracju (9 March 1926), MAE Nantes/Consulat Bahia/79.
66. Departmento Estadual do Algodao, Estado de Sergipe to Director of the Banco do Estado de Sergipe (22 March 1926), MAE Nantes/Consulat Bahia/79.
67. M. C. Girard, Consular Agent in Maceio, to Léon Hippeau, French Consul in Bahia (27 March 1926), MAE Nantes/Consulat Bahia/79.
68. Achard, Director of Inspections at the Services Agricoles et Economiques, Ministère des Travaux Publics et de l’ Agriculture, State of Syria (12 June 1925), MAE Nantes/Consulat Bahia/79.
69. Achard, “Notes Agricoles.”
70. Ministère Des Affaires Etrangères, Direction Des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales, “Lettre Collective No. 84” (11 October 1924), MAE Nantes/Consulat Santiago/616PO/1/51.
71. Ibrahim Hinj, Chief of the Beni Ali Haddadin, Nadim Ismail, Chief of the Kalbiyeh, Ahmad Al-Hur, Chief of the Khayatin, Mahmoud, Chief of the Haddadin of Sahiyoun, “Programme de revendications de la secte Alaouite Auprès du General Gouraud” (19 December 1919), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2200.
72. Etat des Alaouites, “Rapport Pour le Quatrième Trimestre 1924” (20 January 1925), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1843.
73. Diana K. Davis, “Desert ‘Wastes’ of the Maghreb: Desertification Narratives in French Colonial Environmental History of North Africa,” Cultural Geographies 11 (2004): 359–87.
74. “Les Eucalyptus,” L’Agriculture des Pays Chauds—Bulletin du Jardin Colonial et des Jardins d’ Essai des Colonies Françaises 11 (1911): 94–95, 328.
75. Pierre Montet, “Rapport de Monsieur Monnet, Inspecteur Adjoint des Eaux et Forets, Sur les Forets de la Syrie et du Liban” (n.d.), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2200.
76. Quentin C. B. Cronk and Janice L. Fuller, Plant Invaders: The Threat to Natural Ecosystems (Oxford: Earthscan, 2013), 64; Ahmed Hegazy and Jonathan Lovett-Doust, Plant Ecology in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 253.
77. “Historique Résumé de l’Installation et du fonctionnement des services administratifs dans les T.E.O. Nord (Cilicie), du 1er Février 1919 au 15 Février 1920” (n.d.), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2362.
78. “Historique Résumé,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2362.
79. Achard, “Notes Agricoles.”
80. “Renseignements Complémentaire Pour le Rapport a la Société des Nations, Anne 1928” (3 April 1928), MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1560.
81. “Renseignements Complémentaire,” MAE Nantes/1SL/V/1560.
82. Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales, “Lettre Collective No. 109” (16 May 1926), MAE Nantes/Consulat Santiago/616PO/1/51.
83. N.A., “Le Mandat Au Début de 1926,” 16, MAE Nantes/1SL/V/2518.