[Download] "Traces of Empire" by Maurice Marc Labelle Jr. * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Traces of Empire
- Author : Maurice Marc Labelle Jr.
- Release Date : January 18, 2013
- Genre: History,Books,Politics & Current Events,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 44824 KB
Description
This dissertation explores how the United States became an “imperial” power in Lebanese imaginations after its political decolonization. As Lebanon obtained its full constitutional independence in 1946, a shift occurred in how Lebanese peoples perceived and encountered U.S. global power. Despite the United States’ anti-imperial rhetoric and support for Lebanese self-determination, many Lebanese increasingly grew disenchanted with real and imagined U.S. interferences in national and regional affairs, as well as Washington’s apparent blatant disregard for Arab human rights. In particular, U.S. public declarations in favor of Zionism and support toward the creation of Israel—a perceived product and surrogate of Western imperialism—in May 1948 led many to question U.S. motives in the Middle East, interrogate the United States’ so-called anti-imperial tradition, and equate Lebanon’s post-independence present with its colonized past.Despite being self-governing, Lebanese society imagined itself in a constant state of decolonization as traces of empire remained and jeopardized Lebanon’s sovereignty. The U.S. military intervention in the Lebanese civil war of 1958 contributed to ongoing constructions that considered Washington to be openly disregarding Lebanese public opinion and stepping into the shoes of fading imperial powers in the Middle East: Britain and France. The U.S. sale of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel in 1962 and, finally, the popular belief that the United States colluded with Israel during the third Arab-Israeli war of 1967 formalized the process in which U.S. “empire” became a reality in Lebanese mindscapes. By the war’s end, many Lebanese peoples viewed the United States as being far from exceptional as it had fully embraced an “imperial” policy and culture like others before it and stood at odds with decolonization.