Traboulsi 53Public spheres in historical perspective: An arrested development
I would like to advance here the argument that in two historical moments
the emergence of the public sphere in the Arab world, spurred by the
development of peripheral capitalism, was arrested mainly by the exacer-
bation of the colonial, national and identitarian questions.
e Ottoman Tanzimat of 1839 and 1856 were simultaneously an Th
ambitious program of centralization, secularization, modernization and
political reform. They were spurred by a contradictory drive: first, to bow
to European pressures to reform the structures of the Empire; second, to
adopt some European values and state institutions in the hopes of creat-
ing the conditions for viable competition with the growing economic and
military power of the European states.
ere seems to be little doubt among historians that the Ottoman Th
Tanzimat were one of the last attempts to create an Ottoman individual
whose allegiance is to the state rather than to his community and mil-
let or even to the Sultan. The impact on the Arab regions of the Empire
was quickly noticeable as that region had already known Mohammad
‘Ali’s modernist and reformist movement which was itself thwarted by the
Empire and its British allies.
e post-Tanzimat period witnessed the flowering of different Th
aspects of an emerging public sphere all over the Arab regions of the
Ottoman Empire. Though this is not the place to discuss and analyze that
multifaceted movement in detail, it is necessary to highlight some of its
most salient aspects.
e impressive modern urban development was perhaps the most Th
noticeable aspect of the emerging public sphere. Not only were urban
spaces opening up, in the form of public squares, gardens, wider roads,
promenades, etc., but cities were witnessing the same phenomena that
Europe had known in the eighteenth century: a proliferation of cafés,
associations, theaters, scientific, literary and learned societies, salons, etc.
In addition, independent and autonomous secret societies were actively
engaged in organizing the youth, calling for constitutionalism, decentral-
ization or simply Syrian or Arab independence.
e countryside was not on the margin of those developments. In the Th
1860s and 1870s, a cycle of rural revolts by commoners and peasants swept