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Essay: Colonialism and imperialism

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  • Published: 15 September 2019*
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For years, many societies have taken part in and experienced colonialism and imperialism. Many of the most powerful countries of the old world, including Britain, Spain, Germany and Holland, all were colonizers, and many of the effects from their trials can still be noticed today. Some expeditions have led to good things in the world, such as the creation of America and many other modern states across the Atlantic, or the spread of ideas and resources across continents, but most of the time, colonialism ended in disaster. Britain popularized mass-slavery. Columbus slaughtered many Native Americans on behalf of Spain. The Germans had the holocaust, and the Dutch led to the rise of the Apartheid. Another important colonizer was France. They had many tries at colonialism, from the Caribbean, to Louisiana, and to North Africa, but there’s one country who they’ve impacted very much, and its influence is very prevalent today. That country is Syria. Let’s start with their current situation.
Syria has currently been dealing with plenty of political instability. Their leader, Bashar al-Assad has been in power since 2000, and his leadership has come with plenty of controversy.
For most of his young life, Bashar wasn’t planning on becoming the leader. His older brother,  Bassel, was supposed to be the heir to the Syrian throne, but he died in a car crash. Bashar, who was studying medicine in London at the time, was now thrust into the position of being heir to the Syrian throne. Once his father passed away in 2000, the Syrian parliament voted to lower the minimum age of a presidential candidate to 34, allowing Bashar to run for office. Although his rise to power wasn’t very smooth, it pales in comparison to the controversy that he has run into as leader of Syria.
For example in 2005, he was accused of ordering the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who he had previously threatened just a year earlier, saying “I will break Lebanon.” Syria also had a military presence in Lebanon, which was slowly fading. He denied the accusations, but it led to civilian demonstrations in Beirut demanding that Syrian troops left.
Assad caused controversy within his country as well. In 2007, when Assad’s term for the presidency was over, Assad was the only candidate to run for office. Instead of being able to choose between multiple candidates for president, the citizens received a ballot only asking whether or not they supported Assad’s candidacy. A reported 97% of voters said they did. Not only has Assad rigged his elections, but he has imprisoned, tortured, and killed his political opponents.
After the first few years of Assad’s presidency, the people had enough. In March of 2010, hundreds of thousands of Syrians protested their corrupt president in the Arab Spring demonstrations and demanded democracy. Protests like these happened all around the Middle East at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. In Syria, as well as a few other countries, these protests still have a major ongoing impact today. Syria’s Arab Spring demonstrations were the initial spark that started the Syrian Civil War.
Syria’s civil war is quite complicated, and involves conflict with four groups. They include Assad’s Syrian government, the Syrian Rebels, the Syrian Kurds, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), all of whom are fighting each other. It has been the reason for multiple chemical weapon strikes that killed innocent civilians, as well as major foreign backing from eight different nations, all giving training and weapons to the sides that they most agree with to attack their enemies.
The situation in Syria has come to the point where people are risking their lives just to be free. An estimated 470,000 people have died as a result of the civil war, and that number is ever increasing. The war has caused over 5.6 million people to flee Syria, and has internally displaced over 6.6 million. That makes up just over two thirds of the population. The country has been destroyed, likely beyond repair; But how did it get this way? How was Syria set up to run to the ground by Assad? Does Syria’s colonial past have anything to do with it? Let’s go back 100 years to see how this all started.
It all started back in 1918 during World War 1, when Britain occupied Syria, which was then controlled by the Ottomans. They promised Faisal, the general of an arab nationalist army who has blood ties to the Prophet Mohammed, that he would be given control of the region, and in 1920, he was elected king of Syria by their new congress. This wasn’t long-lasted though. Later in 1920, the allied countries of World War 1 met in the conference of San Remo. There, they decided that Syria should become a mandate of the French. Faisal was very angered over this decision, and refused to recognize the Syrian Mandate. This led to the French invading Damascus and forcing Faisal to go into exile.
When the French took control of Syria, their main goal was to prepare them for self-determination in the near future. This started by setting up 3 seperate local governments around Syria, dividing them by religion. One region was for the Druzes, one for the Alawites, and one for the Sunni majority in Syria, based in Damascus. The French also built a lot of infrastructure for Syria, and established the University of Damascus, which primarily taught in Arabic.
Although the French were trying to develop Syria to the point where they could self-govern, some groups weren’t having it. They believed that the French had long-term plans for controlling Syria, and that they weren’t going to give it to the Arabs any time soon. This led to the Druze Revolt of 1925, where many Druzes and other Syrian nationalists bombed Damascus, in protest to the French agenda. This led to tighter French control of Syria’s Druze region, but it also led to the birth of Syria’s nationalist People’s Party.
In 1928, the French held elections for a new constituent assembly. Many people supported the new people’s party, and many of its representatives got elected. The assembly worked to draft a constitution that would further move on the process of giving Syria its independence. The constitution though, was never actually enacted by the French because it didn’t explicitly say that the French would have control over Syria. Eventually, the French high-commissioner ended the assembly and hopes for gaining independence seemed very far away.
In 1936, the French finally began peace negotiations with nationalists. Once they were Signed, a nationalist government was set up in Syria, and it cut off some of some territory that was a part of Syria, which became Lebanon. In 1937, the Syrians ratified the treaty, but the French hadn’t. As it turned out, Turkey claimed that a part of Syria was actually theirs. France decided that angering their ally Turkey wasn’t worth giving Syria its independence, so the treaty fell through a few years later.
Finally, during World War 2, they gained independence. In 1941, free French and British forces occupied Syria, and stayed there until 1946. In that time, the French proclaimed Syrian independence and let them elect a leader in 1943, but disputes over the transition of power didn’t let Syria truly be independent until 1945, and French and British troops left the following year. The new leader was Shukri al-Quwatli, one of the main fighters for Syria’s independence.
So we now know how Syria got its independence from the imperial French, but does their colonial past have a direct connection to the country’s state today? Let’s find out.
Before we start making any connections, we have to talk about how the Assad family rose to power. Hafez al-Assad was a member in the Syrian army in 1963, when he and some other army members seized power of Syria from a Sunni government. What all of these soldiers had in common, was that they supported the Baath party, a nationalist and socialist political party which was growing to be popular in the 1950s and 60s. Once they gained power, a divide started to form between the civilian Baathists, which was led by the party’s creator and leader Michel Aflaq, a former teacher and believer that all religions are equal, and the military Baathists, which included former army members like Assad, and were Alawites. In 1970, Assad staged a successful coup against the civilian Baathists and sentenced Aflaq to death.
Once Assad gained power, he engrained Baathist party ideals into the Syrian way of life. Baathist ideologies were taught in school, and top positions in government and military were reserved for Baath party followers, which increased membership. This basically meant that the people were forced to support the party. This angered many people, and there was an unsuccessful and deadly revolution led by Sunnis against Assad in 1985.
So did Syria’s colonial past have a direct impact to its current situation? Absolutely. I think it all stems from people wanting Syria to be run by themselves and not someone else. Ever since the promise to Faisal was broken, all the syrian people wanted was to govern themselves. For over twenty five years, the French had been able to keep Syria away from its people, and once the Syrians finally became the sole leaders of their country, the Baathists believed that they could do it better, and once Assad came in, he did everything in his power to make sure that Syria could be his, no matter how wrong it was, and he set the tone for Bashar’s governing style today, which has ultimately led to its current civil war.
Another reason why imperialism has led to Syria’s civil war is because when the French took over Syria, they separated the country by religion, and that sort of pitted them against each other. This was especially important once Hafez al-Assad got power, because there were constant battles between the Alawites and the Sunnis, from the Baathists first taking power, to Assad taking power from the other Baathists, to the Sunni revolt in 1985.

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