French mandate of Lebanon

Lebanon, 1920–1943. Draft, not yet reviewed

The State of Greater Lebanon, informally known as French Lebanon, was a state declared on 1 September 1920, which became the Lebanese Republic in May 1926, and is the predecessor of modern Lebanon. The state was declared on 1 September 1920, following Decree 318 of 31 August 1920, as a League of Nations Mandate under the proposed terms of the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon which was to be ratified in 1923. The British were given Palestine and Iraq, while the French were given a mandate over Syria and Lebanon. General Henri Gouraud proclaimed the establishment of the state with its present boundaries, after support from the majority of Lebanese regardless of religion, and Beirut as its capital.

Seat of power: Beirut

No rulers documented for this era yet.

Culture

• The term Greater Lebanon alludes to the near-doubling of the size of the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, the existing former autonomous region, as a result of the incorporation of the former Ottoman districts of Tripoli and Sidon as well as the Bekaa Valley.
• The new territory was granted a flag, merging the French flag with the Lebanese cedar.
• The term, in French "Le Grand Liban", was first used by the Lebanese intellectuals Bulus Nujaym and Albert Naccache, during the buildup to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

Picture

The National Museum of Beirut is the principal museum of archaeology in Lebanon and was officially opened in 1942.

Image: Elie plus (talk), Public domain, file

Sources

• Greater Lebanon (Wikipedia)
• French mandate of Lebanon (Wikidata)
• About the picture (Wikipedia)

Text adapted from the Wikipedia articles listed as sources, CC BY-SA 4.0.