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LEBANON Lebanon: A History, 600-2011, by William Harris. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 360 pages.
Reviewed by Peter Sluglett
This book is a welcome addition to the historiography of the modern Middle East. It is based mostly on secondary sources, although the author has made intelligent use of 20th century editions of Arabic chronicles for all periods in Lebanese history (see pp. 323-34). The story is compelling, and for the most part he tells it well. It is an impressive achievement in a number of ways: in the first place, Harris seems as much at home in the medieval and early modern periods as he is in the more modern and contemporary period, about which he has written quite extensively. Secondly, what is quite a long book has been divided into two more or less exact halves, from 600-1842 and from 1842 to the present. This means that the premodern period is discussed in some detail, in, as it were, its own right, rather than as a quick or perfunctory prolegomenon to the modern period. Third, Harris has devised a wonderful collection of maps, which appear on pp. 41, 74, 97, 118, 152, 161, 241, and 273 (I list them here because for some reason neither the maps, nor the tables, nor the many telling illustrations are listed in the table of contents). Fourth, partly through the maps and partly through closely reasoned analysis of medieval chronicles, Ottoman censuses and other demographic material, Harris shows the changes and continuities in the numerical strength, location, and political-military power of the main communities (Druze, Maronites, Shi'a, Sunnis) from medieval to modern times.
Almost inevitably, the book has defects, but they are not such as to...