Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East

399 Pages·1997·6.835 MB·English

by  James Jankowski, Israel Gershoni

Rethinking Nationalism
in the
Arab Middle East
James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni
editors
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright O 1997 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rethinking nationalism in the Arab Middle East / James Jankowski
and Israel Gershoni, editors,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-231-10694-7 (cloth : alk. paper).—ISBN 0-231-10695-5
(paper : alk. paper)
1. Nationalism—Arab countries. 2. Arab countries—Politics and
government. I. Jankowski, James, 1937— . II. Gershoni, I.
DS63.6.R47 1997
320.54'0974927—dc21
97-12826
Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on
permanent and durable add-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 987654321
p 10 98765432
Contents
Acknowledgments_________________________________________________________vii
Introduction ix
Israel Gershoni and lames Jankowski
PART I Narrativity I: Mechanics of Historiography:
How Academics Construct Nationalist History i
i. Rethinking the Formation of Arab Nationalism in the
Middle East, 1920-1945: Old and New Narratives 3
Israel Gershoni
?, The Formation of Yemeni Nationalism: Initial Reflections 26
Fred Halliday
3. The Tropes of Stagnation and Awakening in Nationalist
Historical Consciousness: The Egyptian Case 42
Gabriel Piterberg
PART Ii Narrativity 11: Mechanics of Ideology:
How Nationalists Construct Nationalist History 63
4. The Arab Nationalism of George Antonius Reconsidered 65
William L. Cleveland
5. The Imposition of Nationalism on a Non-Nation State:
The Case of Iraq During the Interwar Period, 1921-1941 87
Reeva 5. Simon
6. Nationalist Iconography: Egypt as a Woman 105
Beth Baron
VI CONTENTS
PART 111 Discursive Competitions:
The Interplay of Rival Nationalist Visions 125
7. Nationalizing the Pharaonic Past: Egyptology,
Imperialism, and Egyptian Nationalism, 1922-1952 127
Donald M. Reid
8. Arab Nationalism in "Nasserism" and Egyptian
State Policy, 1952-1958 150
lames Jankowski
PART iv Polycentrism 169
9. The Formation of Palestinian Identity:
The Critical Years, 1917-1923 171
Rashid Khalidi
10. The Palestinians: Tensions Between Nationalist
and Religious Identities 191
Musa Budeiii
11. Arab Nationalism in the Age of the Islamic Resurgence 207
Emmanuel Sivan
PART v Nationalist Diffusion from the Bottom Up:
Other Voices 229
12. The Other Arab Nationalism: Syrian/Arab Populism
in Its Historical and International Contexts 231
lames L. Gelvin
13. Arab Workers and Arab Nationalism in Palestine:
A View from Below 249
Zachary Lockman
14. The Paradoxical in Arab Nationalism:
Interwar Syria Revisited 273
Philip S. Khoury
Notes 289
Glossary of Arabic Terms 337
Works Cited in the Text 341
Contributors 355
Index. 359
Acknowledgments
This volume had its genesis in a workshop on nationalism in the Arab
Middle East, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities
and held at the University of Colorado in September 1994. We wish to
thank the Endowment and the Department of History, the College of
Arts and Sciences, the Council on Research and Creative Work, and the
Committee on the Arts and Humanities of the University for their fi­
nancial support. We are particularly appreciative of the advice and coun­
sel provided by Dr. David Coder, program officer of the Endowment, and
Dean Charles R. Middleton of the College of Arts and Sciences, and for
the observations and input of the other workshop participants, Ahmed
Abdalla, Amatzia Baram, Joel Beinin, C. Ernest Dawn, Eberhard Kienle,
Thomas Philipp, and Robert Vitalis.
We received help from many friends and colleagues. Several contribu­
tors offered valuable suggestions concerning the introduction and the
structure of the volume, as did Professors Avi Shlaim and Itamar Even-
Zohar. In Israel, Robert Jancu and Ursula Wokoeck provided valuable edi­
torial and bibliographical assistance. In Colorado, Professors Steven Ep­
stein and Barbara Engel of the Department of History were most suppor­
tive of our efforts, and Pat Murphy a marvelously efficient—and pa­
tient—typist of a difficult manuscript. The editorial advice of Kate Witten­
berg of Columbia University Press greatly improved the eventual struc­
ture and content of the volume. Susan Heath did a splendid job of editing
the text, as did Roy Thomas in shepherding the project through the pro­
duction phase. To all, our most sincere thanks.
As has been the case with our previous collaboration, we are enor­
mously grateful to our families for the support they have given to what
they are now terming, with some exasperation but also (we hope) with
some affection, "Gershoni-Jankowslri Industries."

Introduction
Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski
Perspectives on N ationalism
Coming to terms with nationalism is a vexing project. Between the to­
talizing insistence of nationalist ideologues on the immemorial and
monolithic reality of their nation, and the expansive and contingent
view offered by Zachary Lockman in his contribution to this volume—
that "nationalism always means different things to different people in
different contexts"—a wide range of diverging perspectives about the
nature, evolution, and historical role of nationalism exist. In part this is
because of the protean nature of the phenomenon; in part it is due to
the different prisms through which observers have viewed nationalism
over time.
Until recently, scholars have tended to approach nationalism from
either of two perspectives. An idealist emphasis on the cognitive and af­
fective aspects of nationalism can be traced back to the time of Ernest
Renan's Qu'est que c'est une nation? (1882). In Renan's famous phrase,
nations are "a daily plebiscite," the product of the subjective collective
memory of communities rather than the result of objective "facts" such
as kinship, geography, history, language, religion, or economic interests.
Renan's positing of "large-scale solidarity" or shared "moral conscious­
ness" as the fundamental criteria of national existence1 was accepted and
reiterated by numerous later writers on nationalism. For Arnold Toynbee
in 1915, nationalism "like all great forces in life is nothing material or
mechanical, but a subjective psychological feeling in a living people."2
Hans Kohn's influential The Idea of Nationalism (1944) defined the phe­
GERSHONI AND JANKOWSKI
nomenon as "first and foremost a state of mind, an act of consciousness."3
When Karl Deutsch's Nationalism and Social Communication (1953)
redirected scholarly attention to the social dynamics of nationalism—the
modes and agencies of communication that create and disseminate na­
tional solidarity—he nonetheless remained within the perceptual para­
digm.4 Fully a century after Renan, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Com­
munities (1983) continued to treat nationalism in primarily cognitive
terms: "Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/gen-
uineness, but by the style in which they are imagined."5
The alternative approach to nationalism has been to emphasize its
political character. In 1912 Max Weber recognized that, while nation­
alism was based on "a common bond of sentiment," nationalism's "ad­
equate expression would be a state of its own."6 Elie Kedourie's Na­
tionalism (1960) argued that nationalism had substantively resulted in
a "politics in a new style," specifically "an ideological style of politics"
that in his view was inherently destructive of civic order.7 While view­
ing the genesis and contribution of nationalism in very different
terms, Ernest Gellner began his study of the subject with a political
definition of nationalism: "Nationalism is primarily a political princi­
ple, which holds that the political and the national unit should be con­
gruent."8 Among recent analysts, John Breuilly has been perhaps the
most insistent on the essentially political character of nationalism:
"Nationalism is a form of politics. Before trying to theorise about the
'real' purpose or cause of this form of politics—before trying to go
'behind' nationalism in search of some non-political base which sup­
posedly gives rise to nationalism—one should try to work out precise­
ly what is the form of politics we call nationalism, its political context
and its political modes."9
N ew Directions in Recent Theory
In the past two decades, an explosion of new theoretical writing on the
subject has vastly expanded the analytical framework in which nation­
alism is considered. The intellectual and political dimensions of nation­
alism of course continue to receive attention; but the phenomenon has
been situated in a wider socioeconomic, cultural, and psychological field.
Two sets of contrasting models dominate recent discussion about the
nature of nationalism. One pits what has been variously termed a "pri-
mordialist" or "perennialist" paradigm against a "modernist" interpre­
tation. Where the former views modern nations as ineluctable out­
growths or adaptations of existing ethnic communities or ethnies, the
latter model conceives of nations as totally modem constructions, if not