In need of some alternative power to that of the muqata'jis, Bashir II strove to enhance the position of the Patriarch in his own community by bestowing on him arbitration prerogatives and assigning him other diverse political tasks. This policy was welcomed by the Patriarch, who was looking forward to some political role after the reformation of the Maronite Church and the weakening of the muqata'jis. A relationship of “mutual support” thus ensued between the two men, and the Patriarch tried as hard as he could to rally the Maronites behind Bashir II.31
These political developments coincided with demographic and economic changes that magnified their importance. For more than a century the Maronites had witnessed a remarkable increase in their numbers, due to improved security and health conditions, new economic opportunities, exemption from conscription, and the salubrity of the mountain climate, which protected them from the recurrent waves of epidemics that periodically decimated the population of the towns and plains. They thus came to constitute, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, a sizeable majority of the Mountain's population and a relative majority in nearly all districts.32 This situation was all the more critical since the demographic dynamism of the Maronites was not matched by a similar process among the Druzes. The latter had seen their numbers dwindle over the years due to continual infighting and periodic waves of emigration to the Hawran. Their numerical importance was further curtailed under Egyptian rule due to harsh conscription measures and a new wave of emigration to Hawran.33 The imbalance between both communities during the last years of Bashir II's rule was thus further accentuated.
These demographic changes also corresponded to economic alterations triggered by the intensification of Western trade in the Mediterranean. This process altered the old social and economic structures of the Syrian provinces and diversely affected the local population. Overall, the balance of trade between the Syrian provinces and the West favored the latter: an influx of cheap manufactured Western goods drained away local gold and silver reserves. It also undermined local textile production and manufacturing and marginalized the old regional merchant networks of the main cities of the interior, thus impoverishing the urban population. At the same time, the Ottoman treasury, in continual need of money, resorted to periodic depreciations of the Ottoman currency and increased tax demands. Tax rates thus began to rise, intensifying the pressure on the local population. However, the Syrian population was not altogether negatively affected by this process. Some groups benefited from it, particularly local Christian merchants of the coast with links to foreign trade.34
The economy of the Mountain was also affected by these economic changes, albeit in its own way. Lebanon had traditionally cultivated silk, which was sold mainly to the interior Syrian markets. Small quantities also reached Italy and France. With the rise of Western demand and the relative decline of textile manufacturing in the interior Syrian towns, sales of Lebanese silk were redirected toward the Egyptian and European, and more particularly the French, markets, providing the Lebanese with an exportable cash crop. Commercial exchanges between the Lebanese Mountain and the West were thus slightly balanced. The Mountain paid the price in another form: its integration in the international silk market laid it prey to fluctuations over which it had no control whatsoever. Moreover, if this orientation toward foreign markets and the consequent support it gave to the local silk industry temporarily sustained the demographic dynamism of the Maronites, providing guaranteed markets for the peasants in addition to jobs and money, the limits of the absorptive capacity of this productive sector were quickly reached. By the end of the nineteenth century, the lack of lands and work opportunities in the Mountain prompted the Lebanese to emigrate by the thousands. By this time, silk had become a monoculture, and close to “80 percent of the cultivable land of Mount Lebanon was covered with mulberry trees.”35 The economy of the Mountain was dramatically altered, shifting from a partial subsistence economy to the intensive cultivation of silk for export.36
These economic changes had significant social and political consequences. They further weakened the muqata'ji class and again accentuated the interior imbalance between the Druze and Maronite communities since control over the production and sale of silk lay largely in Christian hands. The muqata'ji class, who remained tied to the land, becoming dependent upon Beirut merchants and the agents of the manufacturers in the Mountain, suffered a relative collective impoverishment. This phenomenon, compounded with egalitarian inheritance laws inside the notable families, which favored the continual division of their properties, led increasing numbers of impoverished muqata'ji families to sell their lands to merchants and entrepreneurs or to their old tenants. Their prestige and standing, already undermined by Bashir II's policies, was thus negatively affected, and their traditional exactions and haughty demeanor became all the more unjustified and unbearable to the peasants. Simultaneously, a new class of merchants emerged in the Mountain, one whose recently acquired wealth and rising self-confidence and expectations contributed to undermine further the local political and social order based on the supremacy of the muqata'ji families in the hierarchy of family lineages. Finally, the new economic situation allowed a measured emancipation of the peasants from their muqata'jis and landlords, as silk merchants, or the agents of the French manufacturers, became a source of loans and payments, in cash or kind. These changes led to peasant and commoner restlessness against the exactions of the muqata'jis and the ever-rising level of taxes under Bashir's government and initiated a series of peasant uprisings, starting in 1820 and stretching until 1860.37
All of these overlapping economic, social, political, and communal changes and contradictions led to a period of protracted instability and conflict, lasting some two decades after the demise of Bashir II in 1840, when socioeconomic factors intermingled with political and communal issues.
No attempt is made here to retrace the chronology of this period. Instead, this study concentrates on selected events, their impact on some of the main actors, and the emergence of new Lebanist ideas that arose concurrently.
THE 1840 REVOLT
In May 1840, a popular uprising erupted in Mount Lebanon against Bashir II and his ally and overlord, the governor of Egypt Muhammad Ali, who, in a gesture of open defiance of the Ottoman Sultan, occupied Syria and Lebanon in 1831, sparking off an international crisis that consumed Ottoman and European diplomats for nearly a decade. The rebellion was triggered by an Egyptian demand for a general disarmament of the Mountain and a local fear of ensuing conscription. The Maronites, who were primarily affected by this measure, which had already been applied to the Druzes, accordingly initiated an insurrection on hearing of this resolution.38
The rebellion started in Dayr-al-Qamar, where the inhabitants refused outright to surrender their arms and incited the remaining population of the district to follow suit. Soon the rebellion spread to the central districts of Matn and Kisrawan. Two foci of insurrection subsequently formed: one in the neighborhood of Sayda, gathering insurgents from the Shuf; and another in Hursh, not far from Beirut, for the rebels of the northern Christian districts. Some Shihabi and Abillama emirs, as well as few Christian and Druze shaykhs, joined the rebel camps or secretly encouraged them.39 No real coordination seemed to exist between the two camps, although exchanges between both sides took place. Before long, the rebels of the Shuf were wooed by Bashir II's promises and surrendered, abandoning their allies in the north.40 The latter, amounting to “some few thousand individuals,”41 held out for nearly two months in the outskirts of Beirut, flouting Egyptian authorities there. At the same time, their claims multiplied as all the other grounds for resentment against Bashir II's rule and Egyptian occupation came to the fore to sustain their determination. Over and above their initial demand for the revocation of the disarmament measure, they raised claims for a fairer rate of taxation, exemption from anticipated conscription, the abolition of forced labor, and the institution of a diwan, or council, to assist the ruling Emir.42 At this point, Bashir II and his Egyptian overlord decided that only force could bring them to yield, and the rebels rapidly disbanded when an Egyptian campaign against them was undertaken at the beginning of July, followed by the arrest of the leaders and the heavy-handed disarmament of the mountaineers.43 However, the insurgents
