A Hungry Population Stops Thinking About Resistance: Class, Famine, and Lebanon's World War I Legacy

Abstract:Conventional understandings of Mount Lebanon's World War I famine blamed outside forces for the tragedy. In particular, an Ottoman plot to starve the Lebanese has been the predominant explanation for the catastrophe. This view conflicts with how observers understood why the famine was happening as it unfolded. A rapacious capitalist class used its control over the apparatus of the state to accumulate profits while the poor and middling population of Beirut and Mount Lebanon faced starvation. The narrative that emerged subsequently deflected blame away from this class which maintained its control after the war.