LITMIR.BIZ

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and we no longer possess anything; in short we are living in appalling degradation. We have thus decided to rise to abolish [this] injustice and seek our tranquility and liberty. If the authorities take this [fact] into consideration and eliminate injustice we are ready to obey its orders, because our revolt does not aim at taking over the government but at eliminating this untenable injustice” [my italics].⁴⁵ When the rebels failed to obtain satisfaction from the Egyptian authorities, they readily accepted the helping hand of the Ottomans and their European allies who promised to alleviate their grievances under a restored Ottoman administration. This reversal of allegiances came about all the more easily since the Ottoman Sultan had by then issued a firman—the Hatt-i-Sherif of Gulhané of 1839—"enjoining the end of injustices and the curbing of every oppressor”⁴⁶ and promising fairer assessment and collection of taxes. Hence the rebels came to ask “to be allowed to return under the protection of our legitimate sovereign, whom we have not ceased to obey for the last four hundred years. We only ask to partake of the privileges and the rights of the Hatt-i-sherif, which our gracious emperor had granted to all his subjects without exception, without distinction.”⁴⁷

      However, it seems that ideas of independence and emancipation were promoted among the Lebanese during this period. These ideas and concepts were propagated at that time by some members of the foreign community in Beirut who supported and incited the rebels to stand firm. It is difficult to gauge the real impact of these foreign exhortations on the population or their elementary importance in the appearance of emancipative inclinations among some Lebanese circles. However, since they concurred with the articulation of such claims and concerns in Mount Lebanon, they are reported here, leaving some margin of uncertainty about their immediate impact and essential significance.

      In his report to the French minister of foreign affairs on the 1840 rebellion, the French consul in Beirut, Prosper Bourrée, mentioned that the Greek consul in Beirut, “a young man of 19 years, who had turned [his consulate] into a branch of the Russian consulate,”⁴⁸ as well as the British consul Moore, were inciting the Lebanese to rebel, extolling the virtues of “liberty, glory, religion”⁴⁹ and quoting the example of the Greek people who had managed few years earlier to liberate themselves from Turkish domination by force of arms.⁵⁰ These exhortations were apparently not totally ignored by the Lebanese rebels. At about the same time, vague mention of the Greek revolt appeared in the proclamations of the insurgents who enjoined the population of Lebanon to follow the example of the Greek insurgents who “have preceded you and already rebelled, and obtained full liberty.”⁵¹ In the same context, Bourrée and his successor often insisted on the role of a Jesuit priest, Father Ryllo, a Lithuanian who had joined the Polish revolt against Russian rule in 1830 and who was favorable to the establishment of a “Christian homeland”⁵² in Mount Lebanon. During the revolt, he encouraged the insurgents to take arms and helped them to organize, earning for himself the reputation of being “one of the motors of the . . . insurrection.”⁵³ Egyptian authorities in Beirut at the time corroborated these contacts between the rebels and some members of the foreign community in this town, reporting continual movement between Beirut and the rebel camp by foreign nationals.⁵⁴ Driven by a romantic enthusiasm, the European community in Beirut seemed animated by a deep sympathy for the cause of the rebels, prompting the then-French prime minister, Adolph Thiers, to comment wryly about “the coterie of young French and foreign men, who consider the insurgents very interesting, and who perhaps, in this perspective, want to encourage and support them.”⁵⁵

      At the same time, Ottoman and British agents greatly contributed to the fanning of local expectations and to substantiating ulterior claims. Among these figured Richard Wood, a special envoy of the British ambassador to Istanbul, Lord Ponsonsby, who accompanied the Ottoman forces in order to support and organize the revolt against the Egyptian presence in Syria and who, “in the anxiety and eagerness of the contest going on . . . , made frequent and extensive promises [my italics] ... to the Maronites to induce them to rise” on behalf of the Ottoman government.⁵⁶ British and Ottoman pledges for assistance included the preservation of the “ancient rights and privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants of the Mountain”⁵⁷ and an exemption from illegal taxes.

      Reappraising in 1842 the role of foreign parties in sowing ideas of independence in Lebanon, Bourrée judiciously affirmed: “Until last year, the idea of independence did not exist among the Arabs. The allied expedition has brought the seed, but for a number of reasons, its development will be very slow.”⁵⁸

      When he wrote these lines, Bourrée may also have had in mind his own role during the events of 1840. Trying hard to conciliate the contradictory terms of French policy in the Levant, at the time divided between its traditional protectorate over the Catholics, which he deemed greatly endangered by a French stand opposed to the Maronite rebellion against Egyptian rule, and the French government's decision to safeguard the Egyptian hold over Syria,⁵⁹ Bourrée came up with a proposal that he conveyed to Paris. The importance of this “plan,” as he called it, lay in the fact that the idea of establishing an independent Catholic principality in Mount Lebanon, under the protection of France, apparently then made its first and explicit appearance on the local scene. “These dangers,” he wrote, “would all vanish with the recognized independence of the Prince of Lebanon, with the creation, finally, of a Catholic principality that would be independent or merely required to perform a few acts of vassalage.” Such an entity, he added, would allow France “without convention or treaty or title but by the very necessity of things, to become the natural protector of the Christian Catholic emir.”⁶⁰

      Bourrée then expounded personally, and on his own initiative, this idea to Emir Bashir II, who, quite practically, objected to his exalted interlocutor that Mount Lebanon could not become independent without the adjunction of a port and the Bekaa Valley for its supply of grain.⁶¹ Bourrée did not mention whether he ever communicated his “plan” to any representative of the Maronite clergy or to other Lebanese parties. Given his enthusiasm for the cause of the Maronite rebels, it is quite probable that this project was conveyed to other Lebanese parties directly by him or by Father Ryllo, who, according to Bourrée, attended the meeting between Bashir II and the French consul at which this idea was advanced. At any rate Bourrée was firmly disavowed by his government, Thiers qualifying his project as “chimeras . . . which are insignificant next to the interest that we have in seeing Syria subdued and brought back under the authority of Muhammad Ali.”⁶²

      Bourrée was immediately recalled to Paris.⁶³ But the idea of creating a semi-independent Emirate, or at the very least securing a “privileged status” for Mount Lebanon to accommodate its largely Christian population, had made its first appearance, and it was to have many later ulterior consequences.

      THE EMERGENCE OF THE LEBANIST IDEAL

      One of first to capitalize on these kind of ideas was the Maronite Patriarch himself, Mgr Yusuf Hubaysh,⁶⁴ who soon after the demise of Emir Bashir communicated to the Ottoman government a petition followed by a full-fledged plan for a Maronite Emirate on behalf of the Maronite community. In these texts, the head of the Maronite clergy insisted that “the Hakim of Mount Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon should always remain, in accordance with ancient custom, a Maronite [sic] of the noble Shihabi family.”⁶⁵ The Patriarch thus strove to twist matters to the advantage of his community by misrepresenting a historical reality. He obscured the fact that the Shihabi ruler had always been a Muslim Sunnite, that Bashir II had been the first Maronite Shihabi governor, and that he had never openly flaunted his religious affiliation. Nonetheless, the unusual situation that obtained during the final years of the reign of Bashir II was adopted as a model, projected onto a mythical past, and adhered to as a norm for the future. The favored status enjoyed by the Maronites during the last years of Bashir II's rule, as well as the relationship of the Maronite Patriarchate with this Emir, came to be viewed by the Maronite Church as an ideal situation that should be at all costs preserved. For the first time in the history of the Mountain, the ruling Emir had been a Maronite Christian, albeit ambiguously so. The Maronites, who had up until then constituted a second-rank community in the Emirate, witnessed an unexpected improvement of their condition. The Patriarch hence engaged in a bid to consolidate and perpetuate the recently established Maronite ascendancy in the Mountain

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