{"product_id":"9780748685400","title":"The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East : The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria by Benjamin Thomas White","description":"Why, in the years around 1920, did the concept of `minority' suddenly become prominent in public affairs worldwide? Within a decade after World War One, the term became fundamental to public understandings of national and international politics, law, and society: minorities (and majorities too) were taken to be an objective reality, both in the present and the past.   This book uses a study of Syria under the French mandate to show what historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as `minorities'. Despite French attempts to create territorial, political, and legal divisions, the mandate period saw the consolidation of the nation-state form in Syria. There was a trend towards a coherent national territory with fixed borders and uniform state authority within them, while the struggle to control the state was played out in the language of nationalism - developments in the post-Ottoman Levant that closely paralleled events in Europe at the same time, following the demise of the Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist empires. Through close attention to what changed in French mandate Syria, and what those changes meant, the book argues for a careful reappraisal of a term too often used as an objective description of reality.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56296811364725,"sku":"9780748685400","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780748685400.jpg?v=1762775014","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9780748685400","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}