Imagining Lebanon : tourism and the production of space under French Mandate (1920-1939).

Abstract

This thesis is a historical study of tourism during the time of French mandate rule. Based on an analysis of various sources, including organizational papers, governmental and contemporary press records, it analyzes the efforts of several bourgeois tourism initiatives and the colonial state to develop a touristic infrastructure and promulgate a destination called Lebanon in publicity campaigns between 1920 and 1939. Using efforts of touristic development and publicity campaigns as an entry point, this thesis argues that its advocates used tourism as a means to produce a Lebanese nation within its colonial boundaries. While efforts of touristic development, including the building of roads, the making of centres d’estivage and the development of winter sports, consolidated a colonially delineated territory as the unit of developmentalist efforts, tourism campaigns served as a means to define a Lebanese nation as the sum of ruins, monuments, and landscapes and generate symbols of national identity.