Date: 2010
Type: Working Paper
From Millet to Nation: The Limits of Consociational Resolutions for Middle East Conflict
Working Paper, EUI RSCAS, 2010/84, Mediterranean Programme Series
SHIELDS, Sarah, From Millet to Nation: The Limits of Consociational Resolutions for Middle East Conflict, EUI RSCAS, 2010/84, Mediterranean Programme Series - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/14942
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This paper argues that Europeans worked to transform the bases for group affiliation in territories of
the former Ottoman Empire, insisting on national and linguistic self-identification that created
dissonance among the population. Focusing on the decades between the two World Wars, when the
new Middle Eastern borders were being created and contested, the paper analyzes two episodes in
which the League of Nations sought to document the identity of Middle Eastern populations in order
to allocate contested territory: the Sanjak Question
(Alexandretta) and the Mosul Question. Each province was home to a population diverse in
language and religion; in each, the League of Nations intervened to insist that one or another group
must be predominant. Instead of creating a consociational or federal system, each episode resulted in
one group satisfied and the other group becoming a “minority.” The sorts of identities which the
League of Nations privileged had little meaning before mid-century, when the new governments they
created began to adhere to ideologies that reified nation and exploited the new fault lines for their own
political benefit.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/14942
ISSN: 1028-3625
Series/Number: EUI RSCAS; 2010/84; Mediterranean Programme Series
Sponsorship and Funder information:
(Product of workshop No. 5 at the 11th MRM 2010)