From administrative to political order? Global legal history, the organic law, and the constitution of mandate Syria, 1925–1930

Adam Mestyan

Journal of Global History, 2022, vol. 17, issue 2, 292-311

Abstract: This article explores the making of the State of Syria after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. I argue that an event-based approach in global legal history offers a useful perspective for studying the transition from imperial to international and national systems. Drawing on new archival research in France and Saudi Arabia, I focus upon the creation of the 1928 Syrian constitution in the League’s mandate to show the administrative framework of political orders. First, I describe the French administrative logic through the story of the international ‘organic law’. Second, I describe the way the organic law necessitated the Syrian political constitution. The constrained constitutional process resulted in a clash and a compromise about a Muslim president between secularist republicans and exiled, Saudi-related Muslim monarchists. Global history can profit from this approach by rethinking decolonization as administrative reorganization and by focusing on dissenting, non-state actors in state-making.

Date: 2022
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