A New History of the Eastern Question: Imperialism, Security and Civil Wars in Mount Lebanon

From Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 to the foreign armed interventions in the ongoing civil wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya today, global empires or the so-called Great Powers have long assumed the responsibility to bring security in the Middle East. In this book talk, Ozan Ozavci will revisit the nineteenth-century origins of these imperial security practices and discuss the early history of Great Power interventions in Mount Lebanon. Why did foreign interventions in Mount Lebanon tend to result in further turmoil and civil wars? He will embed this highly pertinent genealogical account into a new history of the Eastern Question and reconsider the validity of the prevailing arguments in the literature about the birth of sectarianism in Lebanon.