On Nov. 7, 1918, the British and French Governments issued a joint declaration, in which they announced their intention of establishing, both in Syria and Meso potamia, "national governments drawing their authority from the initiative and free choice of the native populations." Meanwhile the Syrian sea-board, including Beirut, was placed in charge of the French, while the interior was handed over to an Arab Gov ernment which was set up at Damascus under the emir Feisal, both areas remaining as occupied enemy territory under the gen eral supervision of Lord Allenby as commander-in-chief. On Sept. 15, 1919, Great Britain and France signed a convention by which the Syrian seaboard came under the direct and exclusive control of France. The interior remained under the administration of the emir Feisal, but it was now brought within the French sphere of influence, and ceased to be under the general control of the British commander-in-chief. The anti-French agitation conducted by the Arab Nationalists came to a head in March 192o, when an Arab congress met at Damascus and declared "the complete independ ence of Syria, without any form of foreign interference." At the same time, Feisal was proclaimed king of Syria. Great Britain and France united in refusing to recognize the Syrian kingdom, but the Damascus Nationalists remained defiant. The end came in July 192o, when a French ultimatum to the Arab Government was followed by an advance into the interior, the flight of the emir Feisal, and the entry of French troops into Damascus.
Meanwhile, Syria had been under discussion at the Peace Con ference in Paris, where it was the subject of a complicated, and at times acrimonious, exchange of views between Great Britain and France. It was eventually agreed in principle that the situation in Syria should be examined on the spot by an international com mission of enquiry, but all that actually happened was that two American delegates, Dr. King and Mr. Crane, spent a few weeks in Syria in the summer of 1919. They reported that a French mandate would be wholly unacceptable and recommended that the Mandatory Power should be the United States, with Great Britain as a second-best. The King-Crane report, however. had no influence on the course of events, and on April 25, 192o, the Supreme Council of the Allies formally agreed at San Remo that the mandate for Syria should be allotted to France. The terms of the mandate were approved by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, but further delays intervened, and the mandate did not become fully effective until Sept. 29, 1923. The situation was finally regularized by the formal detachment of Syria from the Ottoman empire under the Treaty of Lausanne, which came into force in Aug.
French Administration.—It was, however, the French occu pation of the interior in the summer of 192o which marked the opening of the new regime by bringing the whole country under direct French control. The Lebanon, which the French had occu
pied at the Armistice, was recognized in Sept. 192o, by the League of Nations as a separate "State," with an area considerably larger than the pre-war province. The Lebanon was predominantly Christian, and its administration involved the absorption of a large number of unwilling Muslims. Inner Syria was broken up into the "States" of Damascus and Aleppo, together with the "Territory of the Alawiyin," with its capital at Latakia. In July 1922 the three divisions of Syria proper, as distinct from the Lebanon, were given an opportunity of co-operating in matters of common concern through the medium of a federal council. By a decree dated Dec. 5, 1924, the federation was dissolved, the States of Damascus and Aleppo were amalgamated into the State of Syria, and the State of the Alawiyin became a separate unit.
Syria contains many turbulent ele ments, and the French had repeatedly to deal with unrest in vari ous parts of the mandated territory. In 1919-20 they met with determined resistance in the Djebel Ansariyeh, the northern neighbour of the Lebanon. There was serious rioting at Damascus in 1922 and again in 1925. In the Alexandretta district, in the extreme north of Syria, the French were constantly harassed by Turkish raids across the border, while they also had some trouble with the tribesmen of the desert frontier on the east. In the Druse country in the Hauran there was scarcely a quiet year until 1923, and it was here that the signal was given for the widespread rising which closely followed the arrival of Gen. Sarrail as high commissioner, in succession to Gen. Weygand, at the beginning of 1925. The Druses rose in open rebellion in July. Their initial successes brought to the surface the latent discontent which existed in other parts of Syria, and it looked for the moment as though the French would be faced with a general rising. A serious situation developed at Damascus, and on Oct. 18-20 the French took the extreme measure of subjecting the city to a 48-hour bombardment. By the end of 1925 the weak French garrison in Syria had been considerably strengthened, and the insurrection had been checked, though by no means completely suppressed. In Dec. 1925 Gen. Sarrail was superseded as high commissioner by Henri de Jouvenel, whose declared policy was one of conciliation. De Jouvenel was not, however, conspicuously successful. Nation alist opposition defeated his attempt to form a provisional Syrian Government under the sheikh Taju'd-Din, while in some parts of the country, notably at Damascus, the population boycotted the elections which he ordered to be held as a first step towards a modus vivendi. By the middle of 1926 the back of the rebellion had been broken, though the country remained restless.