Catholic Missionary Education in Early Mandate Syria and Lebanon - Brill
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Social Sciences and
Missions 30 (2017) 225–253 Social Sciences and Missions
Sciences sociales et missions
brill.com/ssm
Catholic Missionary Education in Early Mandate
Syria and Lebanon
Idir Ouahes
Department of History, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
io212@exeter.ac.uk
Abstract
This article examines the interaction of Catholic missionary education with the French
mandate state in Syria and Lebanon in the 1920s. Taking a short cross-section of the
Mandate era, the article argues that Catholic missionaries’ activity in the educational
sphere must be considered from a meso-level analysis to complement micro-level
focus on school activity and macro-level examination of imperial relations. Such an
approach begins by acknowledging the particularity of the Levantine setting, wherein
Catholic activity was well embedded into the locale. It also puts into evidence the util-
ity of Catholic educational institutions in the region for the French Mandate state’s
priorities. It nevertheless considers the autonomy of these institutions; for instance,
the parallel hierarchy that the French Church itself represented, with its indepen-
dent priorities. Finally, the article considers the significance of inter-imperial rivalry
in the Levant leading to these institutions’ empowerment by French mandate author-
ities.
Résumé
L’article analyse les interactions entre l’éducation missionnaire catholique et la puis-
sance mandataire française en Syrie et au Liban dans les années 1920. En s’intéressant à
une courte séquence, représentative de la période du Mandat, le texte montre l’intérêt
d’un niveau analytique intermédiaire (ou méso-analyse) pour étudier l’activité des
missionnaires catholiques, en complément d’une micro-analyse de la sphère éduca-
tionnelle et d’une macro-analyse des relations impériales. En premier lieu, une telle
approche permet de prendre en compte les particularités du contexte levantin, dans
lequel l’activité des catholiques était fortement insérée. Elle souligne ensuite l’utilité
des institutions éducationnelles catholiques dans la région pour les priorités de l’état
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mandataire. Elle prend néanmoins aussi en considération l’autonomie de ces institu-
tions; notamment en relation à la hiérarchie parallèle que l’église elle-même constitu-
ait, avec ses propres priorités. Enfin, le texte souligne l’importance des rivalités entre
empires au Levant, qui amena les autorités mandataires françaises à renforcer ces insti-
tutions.
Keywords
French – Syria – Lebanon – Levant – Middle East – Near East – Catholic
Mots-clés
Français – Syrie – Liban – Levant – Moyen-Orient – Proche-Orient – Catholique
Introduction
The introduction of direct French Mandate rule over Syria and Lebanon in
1920 can be considered as a case of meso-level interaction between French
missionary institutions and colonial government. This contrasts with micro-
level studies of school activities and macro-level examination of inter-imperial
rivalries in the region; which were well embedded by the 1920s. Examining
and translating excerpts from the mandate state’s archives and correspondence
of the Catholic missionary bureaucracy in France evidences the significant
autonomy that Catholic institutions could muster to extend their aims in the
region; aims that could even lead to tensions with a direct French administra-
tion.
Two French incursions, the first an Enlightenment-era invasion by Napoleon
in 1798 and the second the 1860 pro-Catholic intervention in Lebanon by his
nephew, became fixed in the regional and metropolitan imagination. How-
ever, France gained de facto control over the western coast from Lebanon to
Cilicia (today part of Turkey) only from 1918 onward. In 1920, a military inva-
sion asserted French control over ‘Syria proper’; from Damascus to the eastern
provinces of Al-Hasakah and Deir Ez-Zor. De jure control was granted to France
by the League of Nations in the form of a Mandate in 1922. The League of
Nations Mandates were also granted in post-German Empire African territo-
ries as a ‘tutelage’ for ‘under-developed’ peoples. In inter-war mandated Togo
mission schools were not particularly subject to regulations on their curricula
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with the exception of a requirement to teach French.1 The League’s Perma-
nent Mandates Commission, based in Geneva and theoretically supposed to
serve as an oversight mechanism, provided the platform for a challenge to
French-language learning policies in German Cameroon.2 Here, as in man-
dated Syria and Lebanon, Protestant and Catholic hierarchies and the signifi-
cance of French domestic political and legislative battles impacted missionary
school’s activities.
In the French and German Cameroons, tensions between a secularising
metropolitan government and the religious zeal of missionaries abroad were
also consistently present.3 Inherent tensions between Catholic missionary
appeals and burgeoning twentieth century secular-Republicanism were but
one of several contradictions emerging in the Late French Empire.4 Spatial dif-
ferences in the access to education were apparent within the colonies, just as
they had been in the growth of education in metropolitan France: with a slow
and contested spread of French language education that resulted in imbalances
within France and her empire.5 Deeply embedded alternative sites of educa-
tion in the Vietnam allowed for a successful articulation of nationalist alter-
natives to the Mission Civilisatrice promoted by French colonial administrators
and missionaries.6 Such tensions, including with the pre-existing Islamic edu-
cational frameworks, were also present in Senegal.7
These tensions were not simply obstacles to, but also symptoms of, the
imperial condition. Considering the intersection of non-state actors with the
imperial state further complicates standard political economies of the French
Empire. Traditional approaches to empire have been noted to focus on mate-
rial factor, overlooking the key role of culture, education and mentalities in
1 R.O. Lasisi, “Christian missions’ education under international mandate: The example of
French Togo 1922–1945”, Ilorin Journal of Education, Vol. 12, December 1992.
2 Kenneth J. Orosz, Religious conflict and the evolution of language policy in German and French
Cameroon, 1885–1939, New York: Peter Lang, 2008, pp. 259–261.
3 Asenju C. Tamanji, Three Instances of Western Colonial Governments and Christian Missions in
Cameroon Education: 1884–1961, Chicago: Loyola University unpublished diss., 2011, 64–65.
4 Martin Thomas, The French Empire Between The Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society, Man-
chester: Manchester University Press, 2005, 5–6.
5 Robert Gildea, Education In Provincial France, Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.
6 Gail Paradise Kelly, French Colonial Education: Essays on Vietnam and Africa, New York ny:
ams Press, 2000; Charles Keith, “A Colonial Sacred Union? Church, State, and the Great War
in Colonial Vietnam”, in White & Daughton, In God’s Empire …, pp. 195–212. doi: 10.1093/
acprof:oso/9780195396447.003.0009.
7 Kelly Duke-Bryant, Colonial Schooling and Political Debate in Senegal, 1850s–1914, Madison wi:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2015.
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the relations between metropolitan (anti)imperialism, colonial administration
and local or institutional aspirations; a relationship carried out as often in
negotiation and contestation as in concert.8 Marxist and underdevelopment
approaches have sought to highlight the relations of production, consumption
and class formation, in the ‘first’ and ‘third’ world. More liberal approaches, best
typified in the ‘gentlemanly capitalist’ thesis, may disagree with the former on
outcomes but agree on a framework of unidirectional economic interests as the
principal drivers of the imperial venture.9 The insights of such scholarship can
now be augmented and complicated by considering more ideational factors. In
short, missionaries “both complemented and complicated French engagement
with non-European societies around the globe”.10
The case of Catholic missionary education in the Levant, the Eastern Medi-
terranean, has been especially examined from micro- and macro-level interac-
tions. In their individual and quotidian decision-making, missionaries such as
the Jesuits revealed commitment to their institutions and proselytizing mission
above all else.11 Certain studies have stressed the personal beliefs and faith as
practiced by individual missionaries drawn to the Orient.12 At the macro-level,
imperial interest in the Levant was closely tied to claims of cultural affinity
among public opinion shapers and political decision-makers.13 Yet these lev-
els were not simply separate; they interrelated through the work of institutions
and the local state; a meso-level. A cross-sectional analysis of Christian mis-
sionaries’ meso-level interaction with the French colonial state apparatus can
sharpen the picture of missionary activity while signalling the shifting operat-
ing environment instituted by the Mandate. It reveals a degree of distance and
tension between institutions and the colonial state.
8 Martin Thomas, ed., The French Colonial Mind: Mental Maps of Empire and Colonial
Encounters. Volume i., Lincoln ne, University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
9 Patrick Wolf, “History and Imperialism: A Century of Theory, From Marx to Postcolonial-
ism”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, (2), April 1997, pp. 388–420. doi: 10.2307/
2170830.
10 White & Doughton, In God’s Empire … 6.
11 Chantal Verdeil, “Un Etablissement Catholique Dans La Société Pluriconfessionelle de la
Fin de L’Empire Ottoman: L’Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth”, Cahiers De La Méditér-
ranée, Vol. 75, 2007, pp. 28–38.
12 Bernard Heyberger, “Sainteté et chemins de la perfection chez les chrétiens du Proche-
Orient (xviie–xviiie siècles)”, Revue De L’Histoire Des Religions, Vol. 215, (1), 1998, pp. 117–
137; Akram Fouad Khater, Embracing The Divine: Passion & Politics In The Christian Middle
East, Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 2011.
13 Jennifer M. Dueck, The Claims of Culture at Empire’s End: Syria and Lebanon under French
Rule, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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Such an analysis must begin with an explanation of the storied French
Catholic missionary engagement with the Levant. The confluence of mission-
ary and mandate state interests at the outset is made evident using mandate
archives. Yet subsequent sections demonstrate that these missionaries were not
simply tools to be used to achieve the French colonial administration’s aims.
Further layers of analysis highlight the independent bureaucracy of Catholic
organisation and the inter-imperial rivalry between France and her rivals in the
Levant. This demonstrates the missionary institutions’ capacity for negotiation
even with the French state’s administrators.14 Elizabeth Thompson’s study of
the role of Republicanism in gendering a nascent Syro-Lebanese public sphere,
for example, notes the tensions between the Republican and secular leaning
High Commissioner General Sarrail and missionaries as well as local religious
congregations who “sought to oust him through diplomatic means”.15
Context
Catholic education in the Ottoman Levant was an established phenomenon
with autonomous local (micro-level) institutions using French and other impe-
rial powers’ (macro-) privileges to secure concessions from the local and Otto-
man (meso-) administration. Initial Catholic involvement had begun because
of seventeenth century interchanges between the Maronites, a local Christian
Lebanese community that had pledged fealty to Rome in the twelfth century,
and the French King. This entrenched Catholic role was frequently referred to
by those active in the early Mandate, even those seeking to upset this embed-
ded order. One report written by medieval historian and archaeologist Paul
Deschamps on the eve of the Mandate for the Mission Laïque, a secular mis-
sionary organisation intended to spread republican education, observed that
through the “rights of protection that the [Ottoman] capitulations granted …
the French royalty gained a powerful means of action: sending missionaries
to the Orient was both working for France and for religion.” Quoting the turn-
of-the-century French consul in Beirut, René Ristelhueber, the Mission Laïque
report noted the “there is no doubt … [that these early missionaries] pursued
the dream of a new crusade against the Muslims.” Ristelhueber noted that
14 Peter Sherlock, “Missions, Colonialism, and the politics of Agency”, in Amanda Barry et
al. (eds.), Evangelists of Empire?: Missionaries in Colonial History, Sydney: University of
Melbourne Press, 2010.
15 Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender
in French Syria and Lebanon, New York ny: Colombia University Press, 2000, p. 45.
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this mission had changed, it was now “no longer about fighting but convinc-
ing” yet the goal remained “by peaceful means, to restart the interrupted work
of our crusades”.16 The report’s author noted that the Capuchins had estab-
lished themselves in Sidon in 1626, where they had begun their work with the
Maronites, who were portrayed as having “fallen into heresy”. This work was
followed by the arrival of the Jesuits at Antoura in 1659.
Citing Consul Ristelhueber again, Deschamps’ Mission Laïque report wrote:
Having succeeded in slipping into the midst of oriental society, our reli-
gious men boasted to the Christian populations of the invincible power of
the King … the heads of the Levantine churches – above all the Maronite
Patriarch – believe … the [French] monarch was their awaited redeemer
… from this arose those appeals to the power and generosity of the King
of France.
Catholic missionaries also succeeded in encouraging various heterodox
churches, such as the Greek Orthodox to come under the Papal umbrella;
later recognised as Greek Catholics (or Melkites). Among these efforts was
the sending of twelve children from the most elite Melkite, Coptic and Arme-
nian families to study at the Jesuit College in Paris.17 Other early missionary
orders included the Carmelites of Déchaux who converted families wholesale
in Ottoman Aleppo.18
The belief in the embeddedness of Catholic activity in the Levant was
such that even Paul Deschamps’ report for the secular Mission Laïque char-
acterised Syria and Lebanon as “profoundly religious” countries where even
“free thinkers” identified themselves with religion. The Mission Laïque’s report
added that “no school could succeed without affiliating to a religion … the
Muslims … in spite of their fanaticism, preferred Christian schools to secular
schools”.19 Yet alongside the great diversity of Christian action were an impor-
tant variety of Catholic institutions, as shown in table 1. In 1835, the Lazarist
order founded the College Saint Joseph in Antoura, representing the oldest
16 Paul Deschamps, “Rapport présenté au Conseil d’Administration de la Mission Laïque
Française”, (February–April 1919), [mae Paris/ Série e Levant/ Carton 313/ Dossier 18/ 103].
17 Ibid.
18 Bernard Heyberger, “Les Chrétiens d’ Alep (Syrie) A Travers Les Récits des Conversions
des Missionaires Carmes Déchaux (1657–1681)”, Mélanges de L’Ecole Française De Rome.
Moyen-Age, Temps Modernes, 100, n. 1, 461–499.
19 Deschamps, “Rapport présenté au Conseil” [1919].
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table 1 Catholic Missionary schooling situation in Syria and Lebanon in 192620
Catholic order Logo Location Schools/Colleges Student
enrolment
Jesuits Taanayel École Normale (Normal
School)
Various Primary Schools 3462
Beirut Université Saint Joseph
Lazarists Antoura College Saint Joseph 312
Various Primary Schools 1634
Franciscans Aleppo Collège de Terre Sainte 235
Marists Jounieh & Aleppo Colleges c. 1000
Various Primary Schools 1479
Frères des Ecoles Various Two Colleges & Five c. 2600
Chrétiennes Primary Schools
Benedictines Baalbek Primary School 110
20 Source: G. Julien, “Le Devoir de la France en Syrie: Quelque mots de géographie et
d’ histoire”, in La Géographie (July–August 1926), 19–20.
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(cont.)
Catholic order Logo Location Schools/Colleges Student
enrolment
Filles de la Charité Various Thirty-Six Schools 5672
Soeurs de Besancon Various Four Schools 703
Sœurs de Saint- Various Nine Schools c. 2000
Joseph de
l’Apparition
Dames de Nazareth Various Four Schools 258
Sœurs françaises de Various Five Schools
la Sainte-Famille
Carmelites Latakia One School
Total enrolment Primary Secondary Grand total
22,593 3888 26481
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French school in the region.21 The Lazarists had an even earlier and intimate
connection with the ‘Orient’, having themselves been founded by St Vincent de
Paul who had been enslaved by North African traders. Myriad other Catholic
orders also were involved from the 16th century onward; the Jesuits, the Pères
Blancs, the Marists and the Sisters of the Charity.22 The 1901 French Law on
Associations, which had made special provisions for religious societies, had led
to an exodus of missionary organisations toward the East.23
Higher education was also the result of missionary activity. Following the
American University of Beirut’s founding by American Protestant missionaries,
the Jesuits founded the Université Saint Joseph in 1875. By the 1880s, the Saint
Joseph University was receiving 93,000 Francs a year from the Ministry of For-
eign Affairs.24 In the nineteenth century, Protestant establishments such as the
American University in Beirut were evidentially more open and had an impact
on a whole generation of Arab intellectuals.25 Whereas the Jesuit schoolmasters
tended to see non-Catholic students as mischief-makers, the American Presby-
terian Syrian Protestant College in Beirut had statutes emphasising openness
and forbidding religion-based student societies; instead expecting that stu-
dents might convert to Protestantism by the virtues of their education itself.26
By 1926, however, the Saint Joseph University had departments for philoso-
phy and theology, medicine, law, pharmacy, pedagogy and ran an astronomical
observatory at Ksara. It also had an institute dedicated to fighting rabies, an
institute for chemical, bacteriological and physiotherapeutic research as well
as a school of engineering.
The Catholic missionaries’ historic role in drawing France to the Levant was
known to the administrative and intellectual classes. On the eve of the begin-
ning of the Mandate, French foreign minister Alexandre Millerand’s personal
papers rehashed France’s ties to the Levant.
21 See: Verdeil “Un Etablissement”.
22 Ibid.
23 Jérôme Bocquet, “Comment Rester Musulman dans un Etablissement Etranger? L’Islam
Dans les Etablissements Français du Prôche-Orient à la Fin de l’Empire Ottoman”, Cahiers
De La Méditerranée, Vol. 75 2007, pp. 58–73, 59.
24 Jean Riffier, “Les Oeuvres Françaises en Syrie à la Vielle de la Première Guerre Mondi-
ale: Compétitions Linguistiques et Rivalités Coloniales”, Documents Pour L’Histoire Du
Français Langue Etrangères Ou Seconde Dans Le Bassin Médierranéen, Vol. 27, 2001, 3.
25 Betty S. Anderson, The American University in Beirut, Austin tx: University Of Texas Press,
2011; Georges Antonius, The Arab Awakening, New York ny: Capricorn, 1965.
26 Verdeil, “Un Etablissement”; Anne-Laure Dupont, “Une Ecole Missionaire Et Etrangère
Dans La Tourmente De La Révolution Constitutionelle Ottomane: La Crise De 1909 au Syr-
ian Protestant Collège De Beyrouth”, Cahiers De La Méditerannée, Vol. 75, 2007, pp. 39–57, 3.
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figure 1 Map showing location of some French Catholic Schools in French Mandate Syria
and Lebanon
source: google
Millerand explained that:
[France] brought the benefits of civilisation and the West’s moral and
material progress … if France was able to achieve such a result, she owes
it, it is true to say, to the activity of her national missionaries, professors
and merchants who acted in conjunction with her political activity and
in constant liaison with her.27
According to Millerand, France had contributed to education in the region
by building a “centuries-old [French] Protectorate” in Syria, originating in the
Crusades and continuing via the protection of Christians and charitable works
as well as humanitarian relief and education. For the latter Millerand noted the
activity of 84 French schools, whether secular or religious, official or private,
hosting 40,000 students in 1913 in Syria proper with another estimated 12,000
in Cilicia and Palestine.
27 Alexandre Millerand, “Tradition Politique de la France en Orient”, (c. 1920), [Archives
Nationales De France, Pierrefitte-Sur-Seine, 470ap/60].
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As Count De Gontau-Biron wrote in his post-World War i colonial propa-
ganda book:
No one can ignore the profound influence on this oriental country [that
is, Syria] that its clergy exercises on the believers … the spreading of our
culture and our language … [gave] Syria a French atmosphere. Each year
50,000 students passed their exams in our schools … such numbers allow
us to see Syria as France in the Levant.28
The sentiment was not isolated; it had grown over the early 20th century in
press and magazine discussions as well as among politicians.29 In the influen-
tial periodical the Revue des Deux Mondes, a kind of French Atlantic Monthly,
the Maronites were described by French consul René Ristelhueber as:
Our traditional clients … [their] attachment … to our country is very
widely known … but if … [no doubt exists] … that Syria is a kind of “France
Outre-Mer” … [and if the Maronites] … are very popular with us due to
their devotion to our cause … very few [among us] know who they exactly
are.30
In 1919, President Clemenceau wrote to Monsignor Hoyek reassuring him of
the “invariable attachment to the mutual traditions of devotion established
over the centuries between France and Lebanon.”31 As the brothers D.C. and
Paul Roederer put it in a pre-Mandate pamphlet: “France is not simply the
first among Catholic nations, she is, along with Britain, the greatest Islamic
nation, and ahead of Britain, the greatest Arab power”. The Roederers also
laid out how cultural institutions such as missionary schools could enable
France to shape the direction of the Arab world.32 Such turns of phrase were
not uncommon in governmental discussions, which conceptualised the role
of Catholic missionaries as a vanguard for the French empire’s expansion. A
28 Count R. De Gontaut-Biron, comment la France s’est installée en Syrie (1918–1919), Paris:
Librairie Plon, 1922, pp. 7–8.
29 Vincent Cloarec, “La France du Levant, ou la Spécificité Impériale Française au Début
du xx Siècle”, Revue Française D’ Histoire D’ Outre-Mer, Vol. 83, n. 313, 1996, pp. 3–32, 10–
12.
30 René Ristelhueber, “Les Maronites”, Revue Des Deux Mondes, n. 25, (Feb. 1915), p. 188.
31 Clemenceau to Monsignor Hoyek, (10 November 1919), [mae Nantes/579po/1/605 Rome
Quirinal].
32 D.C. & Paul Roederer, La Syrie et la France, Paris: Berger Levrault, 1917, p. 105.
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vanguard that prominent nineteenth century politician Léon Gambetta noted
had served France more than her army.33
Concentric Circles: The Early Mandate State and Missionaries
Political interest in Catholic circles gave the Mandate administrators a bias
towards Catholic missionary education. Nearly 1000 schools were being sup-
ported by the High Commission in 1925, double the numbers prior to the World
War.34 Internal discussions show that an attempt by the Frère Lazaristes to
gain a stipend from the French government was looked on favourably because
the Lazarists “contribute the most to the spread of French culture.”35 The goal
of French rulers in their financial promotion of schools was not the simple
pursuit of knowledge but the establishment, as one administrator put it, of
“great centres of propaganda”, thus demonstrating an early attempt at mobi-
lizing cultural institutions for colonial administration, a process in full swing
by the later period of the Mandate.36 The voices of the Christian mission-
aries such as the Pères Lazaristes du Collège Français in Damascus were lis-
tened to when they asked for emergency credits after World War i.37 In con-
trast, the Jewish-French Alliance Israélite school in Damascus attempted to
get certain tax exemptions from the French administration that it had previ-
ously secured in the Ottoman period, yet the administration refused to renew
these.38
The mandate witnessed a flourishing of missionary education supported by
the new administration. Missionary schools were in fact favoured by local Mus-
lim notability precisely because of their religious stance, with efforts at spread-
ing education through the Republican and secular Mission Laique Française
encountering obstacles.39 It is noteworthy that several scions of Arabism were
educated in Catholic schools; Muhammad Kurd ʿAli, Antoun Saadé, Michel
33 Riffier, “Les Oeuvres Françaises”, 1.
34 Antoine Hokayem, “L’Ascension de le Bourgeoisie Urbaine au Liban: De l’Epoque Des
Tanzimat à Celle du Mandat Français”, Cahiers De La Méditerranée, n. 45, pp. 203–228, 220.
35 Commandant Catroux, Chief of French Mission in Damascus to High Commissioner
Gouraud Beirut, (22 September 1920), [mae Nantes 1sl/v/2377].
36 Etats Des Alaouites, “Rapport Trimestriel – Juillet, Août, Septembre, 1922”, (1922), [mae
Nantes 1sl/v/1842].
37 Gouraud to Catroux, (13 November 1920), [mae Nantes/1sl/v/2377].
38 Gouraud to Catroux, (24 May 1920), [mae Nantes/1sl/v/2377].
39 Bocquet, “Comment Rester Musulman”, 61.
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ʿAflaq, Ameen Al-Rihani.40 Yet controversy did erupt over the spread of French
language instruction; with various Muslim families being reported to have
stopped sending their children as a result of a lack of Arabic-language learn-
ing. The Missionary school leaders found themselves in an awkward situation
as these Muslim students attended in increasing numbers without converting
to Catholicism; thus needing to be kept at a certain distance and disciplined;
a phenomenon showing how at the micro-level these schools were not simply
agents of European domination, but malleable spaces in flux.41
Administrative bias towards French Catholic educational institutions was
nevertheless broadly evident. This was the case with the distribution of state
bursaries to students. In May 1923 of 27 bursaries in the state of Damascus,
only seven were to students in non-missionary schools. Out of the institu-
tional grants helping struggling schools, only four out of twelve for this month
were to non-missionary schools.42 In September in 1924, only 16 % of students
in Lebanon granted state bursaries were in non-missionary schools. In the
rest of the Syrian states, this figure stood at 32%. This meant that most High
Commissariat bursaries went to private, often Catholic, schools. The French
state even intervened to support private financial support for Catholic mis-
sions. The Belgian based superior-general of the Carmélites Apostolique de
France, Syrie et Palestine, was supported by French ambassador to the Vatican,
Charles Jonnart, who requested that Vatican officials clear her request for a
bank loan of 125,000 f from the Banque Foncière Algérienne et Syrienne for the
purposes of refurbishing of schools in Latakia.43 The superior explained that
the loan was destined to allow the creation of a girls’ boarding school and that
“if this authorisation is refused it will result in a great blow to French inter-
ests”44
Such a bias is understandable given the role of such schools in encouraging
the use of French language and culture in the classroom and beyond. Father
Albisson, a guest of the Lazarists in Syria, reflected on the Lazarist effort at the
beginning of the mandate. Describing one of the schools they ran, in the village
of Antoura, he wrote in September 1919: “near 400 young people found their
40 Georges Corm, “Quels Horizons Pour la Présence Chrétienne en Syrie”, Perspectives &
Réflexions, Vol. 2, 2014, pp. 5–22, 10.
41 Ibid., 67.
42 Based on Ministry of Foreign Affairs mandate archives.
43 Jonnart to Superior General of Carmelites Apostolique de France, Syrie et Palestine,
(26 June 1923), [mae Nantes/576po/1/988 Rome Saint Siege].
44 Mathilde de la Crois, Superior General of Carmelites Apostolique de France, Syrie et
Palestine (1923), [mae Nantes/576po/1/988 Rome Saint Siege].
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peace within its walls. They came to gain knowledge of humanities, but also
the French spirit, which they thereafter spread to the deepest crevices of their
mountains.”45 Such a service was recognised by lobbyists for the mandate; as
was the case with Lyon University professor Paul Huvelin in his opening speech
to the 1919 French Congress on Syria in Marseille.46
In another instance, Father Delore, a Jesuit missionary in Lebanon, reported
in 1926 on daily life in missionary schools. He visited Jesuit schools at Halat,
Aabaydat, Ghalboun, Bejjeh, and other villages finding that:
The men and boys confess during the night. The next morning is the
women and girls’ turn: the people of the village assist the Mass … I
undertook serious inspection of the schooling (Arabic, French) … I was
amazed at the affection of these good Maronites for the religion and
the French missionary … even Metwalis [Shia] came in sympathy to the
catechism.47
Delore was pointing to the key importance of the Catholics in forging and main-
taining ties to the Levant. Such ties spread further than Catholic constituents
and to other groups, including the Shias of south Lebanon. In the Shia neigh-
bourhood, the Lazarists’ missionary school was that chosen by Alawite and Shia
elites before the 1901 creation of the madrasa Al-ʿAlawiyya.48
Delore further described what he understood as the “religious ignorance …
where[ever] a school was missing.” He added that “the elementary school is
even more useful, more necessary, for the girls of the mountains … through
the school the missionary [also] gives back to the population, even the non-
Catholics.”49 French novelist Maurice Barrès related his tour of one Lebanese
missions: “We saw Amsheet on the coast … the entire village is dominated by
the establishment of the Fathers of the Company of Mary, the Marists.” Delore
related the story given him by the Marists, “in May 1903, we were expelled from
45 “Lettre de M.J. Albisson, Visiteur General Des Lazaristes De Syrie et De Palestine”, Annales
de la Propagation de la Foi, n. 546, September 1919, p. 197.
46 Riffier, “Les Oeuvres Françaises”, 9.
47 R.P. Delore, Jesuit missionary in Lebanon to Monsignor Lagier, Director General of Œuvres
des Écoles D’ Orient, Paris, (18 January 1926), Oeuvre des Écoles d’Orient, n. 369, February
1926.
48 Bocquet, “Comment Rester Musulman”, 60.
49 Delore, Jesuit Missionary in Lebanon to Monsignor Lagier, Director General of Œuvres
des Écoles d’Orient, Paris, (18 January 1926), in Œuvre des Écoles d’Orient, n. 369, (February
1926).
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Varennes-Sur-Allier … Many of our novices and scholars had to go home … the
most courageous followed us to the Orient … Their pedagogical training still
ongoing … they were employed in schools.”
Father Barrès complained of French laws that were limiting French edu-
cational implantation in various ways in contrast to growing American, Bel-
gian, Italian and even German activity. Barrès discussed the role of missionary
education. He wrote: “schoolboys and older boys joined us. They spoke to me
… as fluently as children in France. I congratulate their educators.”50 Barrès
was essentially making the case for what historian Elizabeth Thompson has
described as the “paternalistic constituencies” cultivated by the French through
missionary institutions to cement their rule in a heavily contested and inse-
cure new colonial territory.51 The Superior Father of Marists’ story reported
by Maurice Barrès demonstrates the interweaving narratives that need to be
reconstructed in historical analyses. This supports the conception of Catholic
missionaries’ activity, both preceding and over the course of the mandate, as
effectively acting as concentric circles, allowing for its instrumentalisation by
the French mandate authorities.
Catholic Hierarchy: A Parallel Bureaucracy
Parallel to the state was the tight support network that French Catholic organ-
isations in the métropole formed, providing supplementary funds for Catholic
education. This further entrenched a resource bias toward Catholic missions. In
1923, the Reverend Delore of the Jesuits thanked French donors for supporting
27 schools in Syria, though he noted that “the government [subsidies] are often
lacking”.52 Writing later in 1926, Delore continued: “The funds that the govern-
ment is giving us are insufficient … we have to make repairs … we need con-
crete … we need tables.”53 In 1925 the Almanach Catholique Français reported
with pride that “Catholic France” had provided over 5 million francs of dona-
tions for Missionary activity, about a quarter of all Catholic donations world-
wide.54 The 1925 budgetary exercise by the Conseil Général de l’ Œuvre, a body
50 Maurice Barrès, Une Enquête au Pays du Levant (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1923), pp. 44–47.
51 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, p. 168.
52 “Nouvelles Des Missions” in Annales de la Propagation de la foi, Lyon: m-p Rusand, 1923,
p. 185.
53 “Dans les montagnes de Syrie” in Annales de la propagation de la foi, p. 42.
54 “Le Mouvement Missionnaire en France” in Almanach Catholique Français, Paris: Bloud &
Gay, 1925.
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table 2 Grants made from the French Metropole to Catholic Missions55
Order/Individual School Grant in Francs (f)
Capuchins 2000
Father Rémy56 1000
Filles de la Charités Ecole normale pour les classes de la Montagne 4000
Ecole de Damas 1000
Franciscans Tripoli School 4500
Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes Various Schools in Syria and Palestine 5000
Frères Maristes Schools at Taanayel & Homs 8000
Sœurs de la Sainte-Famille Jounieh & Maameltein 1000
collecting donations for missionary organisations, demonstrated the impor-
tant missionary engagement with Syria (see table 2).
Local Catholic orders also received money from Catholics in France. Œuvre
des Écoles d’Orient, an association dedicated to supporting pre-existing Chris-
tian communities and putting out a bulletin, also supported Lebanese Chris-
tians seeking to promote education.57 In summer 1921, the general council of
Œuvre des Écoles d’Orient voted to give special grants to schools in Aleppo and
Damascus, as well as emergency funds of 3000 f for Ephrem ii Rahmani, the
Syrian Patriarch in Antioch and 1000 f to Monsignor Tappouni, a Maronite
Catholic bishop. A further 9280 f was sent to the Chaldean bishop in Mardin.58
When Tappouni sent an update, a year later in 1922, regarding the educational
work done in his diocese, he was praised by the editors of Œuvre d’Orient for
being “an apostle with a great work ethic”.59 The aforementioned Patriarch
Monsignor Rahmani, wrote to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs “in the
name of the Syrian nation” to “express our profound recognisance”. He noted
that:
55 “Compte de l’ Exercice 1925” in Œuvre des Écoles d’ Orient, n. 370, April 1926.
56 Father Rémy had been a sergeant in French military intelligence during the pre-Mandate
years. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, p. 60.
57 Frédéric Eleuche, “Le Proche-Orient Entre 1918 et 1936 Vu Par Une Revue Catholique”,
Cahiers De La Méditerranée, n. 8, pp. 44–72.
58 Ignace Ephrem ii Rahmani to Monsignor Lagier, Director General of Œuvre D’Orient,
(1 August 1921), Œuvre des Écoles d’ Orient, n. 342, June/July 1921.
59 Gabriel Tappouni, Archbishop of Aleppo to Monsignor Lagier, Director General of Œuvres
des Écoles d’ Orient, Paris, (15 February 1922), Œuvre des Écoles d’Orient, n. 346, April 1922,
p. 57.
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The regions over which the mandate is extended … hold not only an
archaeological importance … [but so too] natural fertility … on the bor-
ders of the Euphrates … we project the creation of villages capable of
sheltering Christians immigrating from Turkey and perhaps from Iraq.60
Rahmani was demonstrating his keen awareness of the geopolitical importance
of the places that the Christian church had open access to. With this knowl-
edge, it is likely that members of the Church would have sought to situate
themselves in conjunction with French interests in order to secure support.
The Catholic hierarchy offered a space within which clergymen, educators,
and institutional actors calculated and navigated imperial interests. In a let-
ter to the readers of the Mission Catholique bulletin the superior of the Jesuit
mission in Ghazir, Father Jeannière, thanked them for their donations. His
description of his own role in World War i as a soldier gives an insight into
the variety of missionary life and the genuine engagement of these war-worn
priests in improving the human condition.61 Jeannière was not alone as a mis-
sionary educator who had played a role in World War i; the case of Dominican
Father Antonin Jaussen being an evident example.62 In 1919, the procureur (top
local authority) of the Jesuits in Syria, Reverend Pere Nouebit, discussed the
case of a group of local Lebanese women who had created a congregation of
teachers in the hope of preserving their faith; they were known as the Sœurs
Mariamettes.
Despite initial tensions in this order between Greek Catholic and Maronites,
they eventually joined together, thus convincing the procureur that “the holy
charity glides above the rivalries of races”. Nouebit noted the difficulties these
sisters had encountered during the World War, when the Ottomans had
expelled all religious orders except this local one. Speaking in favour of rejuve-
nating this local missionary order, the procureur wrote to the Catholic readers
of the Les Missions Catholiques journals of the need for funds that would fight
against the secular teaching that would inevitably seep into the classrooms
unless French Catholics defended the faith. Unlike the North African French
possessions, for the procureur, Syria and Lebanon were already partly Christian
thus making the missionary effort less a proselytizing effort, and more one that
60 Rahmani, Syrian Patriarch Antioch to Minister of Foreign Affairs, (September 1915), [mae
Nantes/576po/1/988 Rome Saint-Siège].
61 “Un Merci de l’ orphelinat de Ghazir”, Les Missions Catholiques, Paris: Challamel, 1923.
62 Roberto Mazza & Idir Ouahes, “For God & La Patrie: Antonin Jaussen, Dominican Priest
and French Intelligence Agent in the Middle East”, First World War Studies, Vol. 3, n. 2,
(2012), pp. 145–164. doi: 10.1080/19475020.2012.728735.
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sought to defend Christian populations.63 There was nevertheless a continu-
ing proselytizing zeal. Sister Montagne, the superior of the Filles de la Charité
school in Tripoli, reported in 1924 “a great movement of conversions among
the orthodox … we are joyous to contribute all the more to this renewal [of the
Church] by forming the children through a good and serious education.”64
Macro-Level International Competition and the Meso-Level
Administration
European schooling in Syria and Lebanon was provided by a variety of well-
established religious and lay associations founded and funded in specific Euro-
pean countries. Italian schools were dominated, for the most part, by Catholic
orders that maintained regular contact with the Holy See. Historical Franco-
Italian Catholic ties meant Italian schooling was dealt with in a spirit of amica-
ble competition. In one case, officials reported the dangers posed to French
dominance over baccalaureate level education in Damascus, served primar-
ily by the College of the Frères Maristes Christian order. The Italian Govern-
ment had offered 4.5 million Lira for the construction of a new college right
next to that of the Frères Maristes.65 In 1924 the government of Alexandretta
was spending 200 Francs a month simply to combat Italian “propaganda”,
which meant the promotion of Italian Catholic institutions.66 Earlier in 1921,
Carmelites in France expressed their wish to send sisters to Latakia to teach.
This became a wider diplomatic problem because Rome was slow in grant-
ing permission to the sites. General Gouraud intervened on their behalf and
asked the Quai d’Orsay to take up the topic with Rome via the French Consul
in Rome.67
This was in keeping with Ottoman-era Franco-Italian competition. In 1896
for instance, the French consul in Beirut expressed the need to “purge Syria
of Italian influences”, noting that “everything in Syria is French: French reli-
63 R.P. Nouebit, “Les Sœurs Mariamettes”, Les Missions Catholiques (1919), Paris: Challamel,
1919.
64 Sœur Montagné, Supérieure de la Maison du Sacré-Cœur, Tripoli, (25 July 1924), Œuvre des
Écoles D’ Orient, n. 360, August 1924, pp. 123–124.
65 Délégation De Damas “Rapport Trimestriel – 4eme Trimestre”, (1924), [mae 1sl/v/1843].
66 Service Des Renseignements Beirut, “Subventions diverses payées en 1924” (1 January
1925), [mae 1sl/v/921].
67 General Billote, Administrator of Alawite State to Gouraud, High Commissioner, Aley, (1st
September 1921), [mae 1sl/600/6].
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gious institutions, primary and secondary schools, the Jesuit University, French
orphanages and the hospital, the port and railroad.”68 In 1911, the Carmelite Ital-
ian mission in north Syria came under scrutiny from Ottoman authorities due
to French lobbying.69 Within Syria orders such as the Frères Maristes were suc-
cessful in playing on official French fears of foreign influence. In January 1920,
two Italian missionary sisters affiliated to the Salesians arrived in Damascus
with the aim of founding a Catholic Parish at Salihiya outside Damascus and
setting up an Italian school.
The plans led to the French High Commissioner bemoaning the fact that
“the Italians do not understand that Syria is especially reserved for French influ-
ence”.70 In July 1921, the High Commissioner related a request from the Frères
Maristes regarding the opening of a college at Aleppo. The Maristes had com-
plained that their two previous demands on the matter sent to the Vatican had
been rejected because, in the Vatican’s view, the Collège de Terre Sainte, run by
the Italian-backed Franciscans, sufficed for the needs of Aleppo. High Commis-
sioner Gouraud disputed the Italian argument, noting that Aleppo’s Collège de
Terre-Sainte only hosted 240 students. The Collège Saint-Nicolas, counting 375
students of the Armenian community and under the management of the Frères
Maristes, the St. Ignace boarding school and an ‘official’ public school made up
the rest of the schools in the city. Gouraud argued that “there would be con-
siderable interest in favouring the opening of a school to a French personnel
who would give satisfaction to a great number of Aleppines and would help us
in our great work of French propaganda.”71 Gasparri, the Cardinal Secretary of
State at the Vatican, refused to bow to French pressure regarding the school in
Aleppo proposed by the Maristes.72 Similar issues nevertheless resurfaced, for
instance in 1924, with Mandate administrators reporting proposed Italian plans
to set up a college in Damascus, and suggesting giving support to the Maristes’
existing Lycée, rather than building one from scratch.73
68 Daniel Grange, L’ Italie et la Méditerranée (1896–1911). Les Fondements D’Une Politique
Etrangère, (Rome, Ecole Française De Rome, 1994), 715.
69 Ibid., 809–816.
70 High Commissioner, Aley, to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paris, (5 January 1920), [mae
Nantes/579po/1/605 Rome Quirinal].
71 General Gouraud, High Commissioner Aley to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paris, (11 June
1921), [mae Nantes/576po/1/967 Rome Saint Siege].
72 Cardinal Gasparri unaddressed letter, (26 April 1922), [mae Nantes/576po/1/977 Rome
Saint Siège].
73 Délégation de Damas, “Rapport Trimestriel, 3eme Trimestre 1924”, (n.d.), [mae Nantes/
1sl/v/1843].
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Franco-Italian competition was not limited to Damascus and Aleppo. In
Baalbek, the Benedictine reverend fathers’ mission had been made the man-
ager of the College de Baalbek through the Vatican congregation pro ecclesia
orientali (meaning “of the Oriental Churches”) with an assurance that the Bene-
dictines would be able to take in noviciates (religious trainees). However, in
1925, the Benedictines’ superior contacted High Commissioner General Mau-
rice Sarrail in Beirut to express the lack of support forthcoming from the Vat-
ican’s representative in Beirut, Monsignor Giannini, as a result of having been
considered by the congregation “as simple missionaries in Syria who remain
under the dependence of the Melkite bishop of Baalbek”.74
A core concern was growing Italian influence in Cilicia. A telegram from Laf-
fon, the French consul in Port-Said, notified Paris that “the Franciscan sisters of
Port-Said, placed under the Italian protectorate, have received an order to open
a boarding school at Mardin. The rumour in the Italian colony [in Port-Said] is
that Cilicia will be given to Italy”.75 In 1923, Franco-Italian negotiations sketched
out an accord relating to the Syrian Mandate that included the assurance by the
French government to the Italians “that the Italian schools, orphanages, asy-
lums, hospitals and clinics will enjoy in Syria and Lebanon the tax exemption”
and “that article 10 of the Mandate … will not have the aim of impeding the
opening of new Italian schools, nor limiting the rights of these schools to take
students from other communities.”76 Though this agreement may have reduced
core differences, it is clear that missionary education was a core sphere within
which imperial rivalries were played out.
Competition with Protestant activity sponsored by Britain and America had
been a long-standing feature of the Levant and this continued during the
Mandate. Even before direct French rule over Syria, for instance, the Jesuit
mission in Lebanon was wedded to French consular support and fought Pres-
byterian, American-originated, influence.77 Catholic establishments, whether
sponsored by French or Italian power, followed a more traditional emphasis on
74 General Sarrail, High Commissioner, Aley to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paris, (5 January
1925), [mae Nantes/579po/1/605 Rome Quirinal].
75 Laffon, Port Said to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris, (27 January 1920), [mae Nantes/579
po/1/605 Rome Quirinal].
76 “Project d’ Accord Franco-Italien Relatif à La Syrie”, (c. October 1923), [mae Nantes/579po/
1/605 Rome Quirinal].
77 Chantal Verdeil, “Between Rome and France, Intransigent and Anti-Protestant Jesuits in
the Orient: The Beginning of the Jesuits’ Mission of Syria, 1831–846”, in Martin Tamcke &
Michael Marten (eds.), Christian Witness Between Continuity and New Beginnings: Modern
Historical Missions in the Middle East (Münster, lit Verlag, 2006), p. 24.
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the rote learning of classical religious doctrine as the basis of education.78 An
emphasis on religious doctrine was foundational in schools such as the Ecole
Des Sœurs or universities such as the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut right up to
the Mandate period. These curricular differences translated into socio-political
changes. Association through Catholicism was a favoured method for commu-
nal groups, such as the Lebanese Maronites, to expand their access and influ-
ence to French administrators; Armenians, Maronites, Melkites were among
those receiving help from the Association for Oeuvres D’ Orient.79
In contrast, a German Catholic periodical, Germania, published an overview
of the geopolitics of the early Mandate, noting the allegedly preponderant
British influence on Arabs, Druze and Jews in Syria. France, on the other hand
counted “only 555,000 Catholics, that is to say an unpowerful minority”. The
pro-Catholic newspaper nevertheless took heart in the fact that:
A number of French Catholic orders are represented in Syria, especially
the Jesuits who have 150 schools and the Brothers of the Christian doc-
trine, who have 300. France possesses in Syria two thirds of the schools,
hospitals, orphanages that are run by foreign powers.80
This demonstrates the importance of Catholic institutions in criss-crossing
imperial alignments.
In 1918 a report on Aleppo was commissioned for Woodrow Wilson’s so-
called brain trust, the Inquiry. Its author, Princeton classics professor David
Magie, used contemporary scholarly sources to find that by the end of the
War, Aleppo had two boys’ schools run by the Franciscans and one run by
the Jesuits. Girls were taught at four schools run by the Sœurs de Saint Joseph
and one school run by the Sœurs du Sacré-Cœur. At Kahramanmaraş, in south
Turkey a Franciscan school existed. In contrast, Aleppo had only one British
Presbyterian school and one German non-sectarian school. Citing a British
consular report, Magie found that:
78 Chantal Verdeil, “Travailler a la Renaissance de l’ Orient Chrétien. Les Missions Latine
en Syrie (1830–1945)”, Proche-Orient Chretien, Vol. 51, (3–4), 2001, pp. 267–316; Antonio
Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, trans. Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell
Smith, New York: International Publishers, 1992, pp. 36–38; Henry Diab & Lars Wahlin,
“The Geography of Education in Syria in 1882. With a Translation of ‘Education in Syria’
by Shahin Makarius, 1883”, Geografiska Annaler Series b, Vol. 65, (2), 1983, p. 108. doi:
10.2307/490939.
79 Eleuche, “Le Proche-Orient”, 53.
80 “La Question de Syrie”, (13 February 1920), [mae Nantes/579po/1/605 Rome Quirinal].
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education in the vilayet of Aleppo is very backward. A large number of
schools appear on paper, but many of them do not exist otherwise. The
government … has assigned a definite proportion of the osher, or tithe
on produce, for the purposes of education, but this money seems to be
diverted frequently into other channels. Many communities, especially
the Jews, maintain schools by means of donations … Other schools are
maintained by foreign missionary organizations for the benefit of all,
without regard to creed.81
Itamar Rabinovitch has discerned the rise of Middle Eastern ethno-religious
communal blocs, so called “compact minorities” over the course of the late
Ottoman and mandate era.82 Magie’s report confirms that such communal
affiliations were encouraged by criss-crossing imperial interests leading to the
encouragement of Jewish, Catholic, Presbyterian, Protestant or even secular
missionary education.
Another of the specialists reporting on the post-war situation for Woodrow
Wilson’s Inquiry found that French Catholics maintained some 500 schools
hosting 59,414 students in the whole of the Ottoman Empire on the eve of
the First World War. Paul Monroe, a professor of the history of education
at Columbia University wrote that it “has been almost a battle ground in
foreign education. Russian, German, French, Italian, British, American schools
have their rival system … of these … the French representing the Catholic
churches, and the American and British representing the Protestant, have the
most complete systems.”83 The fact that Monroe noted the content of the
curricula represents underlines the deep divisions between weltanschauung of
the Catholic, Protestant and other missionaries, and their state-backers.
Despite an evident competition with Britain, French mandate officials did
not challenge this order because of the significant presence of French mission-
aries in British mandates. One note explained that the maintenance of foreign
privileges in Syria was intended to secure a quid-pro-quo for French schools in
Egypt and Palestine, which were far greater in number and could thus outweigh
British influence in the Levant.84 Indeed the British consul in Aleppo, Norman
81 David Magie, “Report on the Vilayet of Aleppo”, (c. 1918.), [Yale University Manuscripts and
Archives (yuma)/ms8/Series iii/The Inquiry Papers (ip)/24], 11–13.
82 Rabinovitch, Itamar, “The Compact Minorities and the Syrian State, 1918–1945”, in Journal
of Contemporary History, Vol. 14, n. 4, (Oct. 1979).
83 Paul Monroe, “The Ottoman Empire: Education”, (c. 1918), [yuma/ms8/Series iii/ip/23],
70–71.
84 E. Chevalley, ‘Notes Sur L’Enseignement En Syrie 1919–1920’, (1921), [mae Paris/ Série e
Levant / c 313/ d 18/ s-d 104].
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