Foreign Intervention in The 19th Century and Changing Economic Conditions
The tensions that burst into the sectarian conflict during the 1860s were set within the context of a fast paced change in the established social order in the region. Under Bashir II, the agricultural economy of the Mount Lebanon region was brought into greater interdependence with the commercial economy of Beirut, altering the structure of feudal obligations and expanding the influence of cash crops. This created increased economic and political ties with France, leading to the French becoming an international patron of sorts to the Maronites of Lebanon. This left the British to side with the Druze to the extent that a counterweight to France could be established in the region and that such tensions would not result in separatism that would threaten the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. The reforms within the Tanzimat also provided a source of increasing disagreement between Maronite and Druze populations. The European powers attempted to make sure the Tanzimat was interpreted as a mandate to protected Christians in the region and grant them great autonomy; while Druze elites interpreted the Tanzimat as restoring their traditional rights to rule the land. Youssef Karam, a Lebanese nationalist played an influential role in Lebanon's independence during this era.
Read more about this topic: History Of Lebanon Under Ottoman Rule
Famous quotes containing the words foreign, intervention, century, changing, economic and/or conditions:
“For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. “I don’t see how you stand it,” they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. “It’s all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living.” And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“I was curious, I was avid to know only what I found more real than myself, that which allowed me to glimpse the thoughts of a great genius, or the force or grace of nature left to its own devices, without the intervention of man.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Sublimity is the echo of great mind.”
—Longinus (3rd century A.D.)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“Under weak government, in a wide, thinly populated country, in the struggle against the raw natural environment and with the free play of economic forces, unified social groups become the transmitters of culture.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world’s end somewhere, and hold fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)