Feeding the City

The Beirut Municipality and the Politics of Food During World War I

Bibliographic Data

ID8968668
AuthorsMelanie S Tanielian (0000-0002-8422-2393, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume46
Issue4
Pages737-758
Publication date2014-10-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743814001044
OpenAlexW2019627763
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited23

World War I in the Ottoman Empire was a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented scale. By 1916 in the Greater Syrian provinces, men, women, and children were dying en masse of a war-induced famine so devastating that popular memory still names this war ḥarb al-majā ʿ a (the war of famine). Despite the civilian catastrophe, people's experiences on the Ottoman home front have been only marginally explored in the scholarship. Focusing on the city of Beirut, this article highlights the centrality of food provisioning in the competition for political legitimacy in the provincial capital. Through a detailed analysis of how the Beirut municipality was represented in the city's daily newspaper al-Ittihad al- ʿ Uthmani , I argue that for local reform-minded notables and intellectuals the war presented an opportunity to prove, both to the local population and to the Ottoman state, that issues related to the internal security and well-being of the Beirut province generally and the city specifically could be dealt with locally through existing governing bodies. The article thus traces the fierce political games played around the issue of food by various actors seeking to win the hearts of Beirutis through their stomachs

Ancient history · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Famine · Legitimacy · Newspaper · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Scholarship · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Turkey's Politics and Society

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