Druzes and the Maronites had proven incapable of governing either themselves or each other. Therefore, he added: “If we had before us a tabula rasa, I would be inclined to say that the simplest and most practical arrangement would be to assimilate the Mountain to the rest of the pashalik and entrust its administration to the governor of the region.”31
Indeed, the British commissioner saw no reason to exempt Lebanon from what he believed to be a generally beneficial administration. Such a system, he contended, represented a better guarantee for the security of its Christian populations—and the Druzes for that matter—than their former “anomalous” and “ill-defined” privileges. “Such privileges are at best a bad expedient invented to protect those who enjoy them against the ill effects of a worse government. When a good government is in operation, they are an embarrassment to the rulers, and a disadvantage to the ruled.”32
However, Dufferin clearly saw that France would never consent to despoil the Christian sector of Mount Lebanon of its former privileges, and that European public opinion would view with indignation any European intervention leading to a deprivation of former Christian privileges and the reestablishment of a reinforced Ottoman rule, a fact that might be construed as “handling them over in a still more defenceless condition to the tender mercies of their persecutors.” Therefore, he observed, a compromise must be sought “reconciling the practical with the sentimental exigencies of the situation.”33 He thus advanced the idea of allowing the northern sector of Mount Lebanon, inhabited mainly by Christians, to retain its former relative autonomy under its qaimaqam, while leaving the rest of the Mountain under the same government as the remaining Syrian provinces. In order to mitigate the inconvenience of this necessary imperium into imperio, the British commissioner insisted that the qaimaqam should be appointed by the governor-general of Syria. Later on, at the request of the French commissioner, Béclard, he conceded the reunification of the whole Mountain, including the mixed sectors, on the condition that its administration be entrusted to a Christian non-native governor, who should differ in no respect from any other pasha of the province.
Dufferin's project, once disclosed, exerted a “real fascination”34 over most people in Beirut. Its impact on some local groups and personalities, and its repercussions on the simultaneous emergence of the Syrianist ideal, expressed at the time by Butrus Bustani, is examined in chapter 5.35 Just as important, however, was its effect on the workings of the European Commission.
When Dufferin revealed his plan to the European commissioners in a private meeting at his house on December 20, it rallied the unanimous approval of all of his colleagues.36 Until February 1861, when peremptory instructions from the European courts, following strong protests from the Porte, enjoined the commissioners to confine their labors strictly to the reorganization of Lebanon, Dufferin's plan seemed to have won the day. At any rate, it remained the sole common denominator among all of the commissioners and the most complete and coherent project presented.
Surprisingly enough, the French commissioner was easily won over by the plan of his British colleague in this first phase of the negotiations. He has often been accused by contemporary publicists and many historians of having been a poor defender of French and Maronite interests, and of having been totally subjugated by the personalities of Dufferin and Fuad Pasha. In fact, this perceived weakness stemmed from the fact that, as time passed, his original convictions were shaken by his immediate experience of concrete realities. Moreover, Béclard seemed to have been genuinely swayed by the views of his British colleague. As a result, he acquired many doubts as to the propriety of the project that his government had asked him to defend.
Upon his arrival, Béclard was considering other alternatives. Influenced by the special instructions of his minister, who had enjoined him to defend as best as he could the interests of the Maronites,37 and by some recurrent themes in traditional French policy, he intended to propose to the Commission the establishment of an independent Christian principality extending over Mount Lebanon and the adjoining seacoast.38 After some time in Beirut, Béclard began to question some of his original views and to develop other opinions.
Shortly after the informal agreement of the European representatives to Dufferin's plan, Béclard sent a report to his minister in Paris, on December 28, 1860, arguing in favor of such a project. A total reorganization of Syria, he asserted, was “the only way to follow if we want to build something durable and serious.” Moreover, this idea did not disagree with the principle of the maintenance of the ancient privileges of the Christians of the Mountain to which his government seemed so attached. It presented the advantage of extending to the Christians of the Syrian province as a whole the privileges formerly enjoyed by those of Lebanon only. This combination, he went on, had a better chance of guaranteeing the security and happiness of the inhabitants of the Mountain than their alleged traditional privileges, which were, when closely examined, “almost illusory,” and apart from some rare occasions, “have not in the least guaranteed the security and the development of the interests of the [local] populations.”
The real banes of the Mountain, Béclard asserted, were the “feudal and the theocratic” systems, and their abolition would be much more beneficial to the Mountain than their confirmation. For that reason, the French commissioner spurned the restoration of a Shihabi prince, the embodiment of this abhorred “feudal” system, and representative of the old order.
It was therefore reluctantly that Béclard was brought, on the express injunctions of his minister, to abandon a plan he favored and to defend another about which he held grave reservations. His mission in this sense was facilitated by the fact that in the last phase of the negotiations, when the commission had put aside the plan for Syria and was working on one for Lebanon only, Béclard was not as isolated as he originally had been. Indeed, an intense diplomatic offensive by the French minister for foreign affairs had in the meantime laid the ground for acceptance by the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian governments of the principle of the establishment of a unitary Christian government over the entire Mountain. His British colleague was then outnumbered and unwillingly rallied to the last plan devised, providing for a semi-autonomous united Lebanon administered by a Christian governor. The question of whether the governor should be a native or not was left open for negotiations in Istanbul between the European ambassadors and the Porte. But, even after the commission's adoption of this last option, favored by his government, Béclard remained of opinion that “establishing a strong government for the Mountain is possible—I can say with complete assurance—only if Syria is administratively detached from the rest of the empire. Only a strong central authority in Damascus can guarantee that the new situation in Lebanon will be maintained.”39
The setting of the Lebanese question within the general Syrian context had therefore imparted an altogether different scope to the problem. It brought the two leading commissioners to seriously question the opportunity of confirming the so-called privileges of the Mountain. Béclard and Dufferin were of the opinion that an improvement in the administration of the entire Syrian province represented the appropriate formula to guarantee a better and more secure future for the Christians of this region in general, and those of Lebanon in particular.40 The two commissioners perceived the main danger facing the Christians of the province as stemming from a deficient administration, detrimental to its Christian and Muslim populations alike, rather than from the presumed fanaticism of its Muslim population. They believed that an improvement in living conditions under a strong and secular government, which would endeavor to assimilate them on the basis of equal civil and political rights, regardless of religious differences, would gradually and necessarily attenuate the current tensions and animosities and eventually ensure the emergence of a harmonious polity. This solution sought to ensure the security of all of the Christians of the region through the welfare of all of its inhabitants.
In other words, this view posited that the security of the Christians could not be guaranteed against, but in conjunction with, that of the Muslim
