Cloth | 1999 | $59.95 / £39.95 | ISBN: 0-691-00254-1 424 pp. | 6 x 9 | 56 tables
Table of Contents: <http://pup.princeton.edu/TOCs/c6625.html> Chapter 1: HTML, <http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s6625.html>; & PDF, <http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s6625.pdf>
In this book, the distinguished scholar Hanna Batatu presents a comprehensive analysis of the recent social, economic, and political evolution of Syria's peasantry, the segment of society from which the current holders of political power stem. Batatu focuses mainly on the twentieth century and, in particular, on the Ba`th movement, the structures of power after the military coup d'état of 1963, and the era of îvfiz al-Asad, Syria's first ruler of peasant extraction. Without seeking to prove any single theory about Syrian life, he offers a uniquely rich and detailed account of how power was transferred from one demographic group to another and how that power is maintained today.
Batatu begins by examining social differences among Syria's peasants and the evolution of their mode of life and economic circumstances. He then scrutinizes the peasants' forms of consciousness, organization, and behavior in Ottoman and Mandate times and prior to the Ba`thists' rise to power. He explores the rural aspects of Ba`thism and shows that it was not a single force but a plurality of interrelated groups--prominent among them the descendants of the lesser rural notables--with different social goals and mental horizons. The book also provides a perceptive account of President Asad, his personality and conduct, and the characteristics and power structures of his regime. Batatu draws throughout on a wide range of socioeconomic and biographical information and on personal interviews with Syrian peasants and political leaders, offering invaluable insights into the complexities of a country and a regime that have long been poorly understood by outsiders.
Review: "Batatu1s thoroughly researched, objective study provides a sociological and anthropological approach to contemporary Syrian politics and is an excellent source of information on various and often conflicting components of Syrian society."--Choice
Endorsements: "This is a richly textured study. . . . The book is full of interesting and novel ways of understanding Syrian peasant behavior and why peasants cannot be discussed as a single socioeconomic or political force or group."--Philip S. Khoury, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"This is a profound and comprehensive study of modern Syria that is unlikely to be surpassed for a very long time. It is a model of how social history should be written, and of how it can be used to explain the politics of a complex society like Syria."--Rashid Khalidi, University of Chicago
<http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/6625.html> *****
***** Hanna Batatu. Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1999. Pp. xviii, 413. $49.50.
The work of the late Hanna Batatu (1926-2000) had already risen to the level of legend prior to publication of this study of the politics of Syria's peasantry. His massive, 1,300-page tome on class and revolution in modern Iraq, The Old Social Classes and the Revolution Movements of Iraq (1978), became one of the best, if not the best, historical monograph on modern Iraq. Given his two decades of research into Syrian history, the book under review here was eagerly awaited. Published shortly before his death in June 2000, it will surely rise to the level of a classic study of modern Syria.
Batatu's goals for the book are ambitious, perhaps even too ambitious. Part one studies the modern Syrian peasantry, focusing in particular on the complex differentiation that characterizes the country's farmers. He traces such important factors in this stratification as religion, family, "warrior origin," size of holding, and type of agriculture. The author also provides myriad statistics about the living conditions and tenure patterns experienced in the Syrian countryside. Part two then broadens the discussion to examine the cultivators' political attitudes in the first half of the twentieth century. Batatu focuses particular attention on the role of the Sufi mystical brotherhoods in engendering political quietude among the cultivators as well as the efforts of the Arab Socialist Party and the Communists to organize them. Batatu then moves on, in part three, to discuss the extent to which peasant grievances have impacted Syria's ruling Bath Party in its various incarnations. In this context, he links growing peasant consciousness with the general rise of what he terms the "lesser rural notability" within the Syrian military and the party itself. Part four offers a study of Hafiz al-Asad, Syria's ruler from 1970 to 2000. Here Batatu delves into such varied topics as the means Asad used to maintain his power, his political philosophy, and his rocky relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), all in the service of showing the extent to which the policies of Syria's first modern ruler from a peasant background were motivated by that same background.
Batatu's trademark attention to detail and huge assortment of statistics and biographical material make this an indispensable contribution to historians of the modern Middle East, as does the fact that he correctly anchors Syria's politics to its underlying socioeconomic trends. The author's analysis also benefits from another of his trademarks: his extraordinary access to important sources. Over the years, he conducted interviews with some of the leading political figures in modern Syrian and Middle Eastern history, including Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Michel Aflaq, founders of th Bath Party; the peasant organizer Akram Hawrani; Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj, Syrian military official and minister in the government of the United Arab Republic; and PLO leader Salah Khalaf, a.k.a. Abu Iyad. He also gained access to Syrian Bath Party documents and the files of the PLO.
Yet this book is not without its detractions, some of which stem from Batatu's approach to history. Batatu was a scholar impatient with historical analysis that was overly theoretical. He preferred to start with his massive quantities of data and develop broad conclusions thereafter rather than begin with presuppositions or a rigid theoretical framework. Indeed, as he states in the book, he offers only tentative observations about Syria's peasantry. Fair enough, but what is Batatu saying about Syria and its peasantry in the final analysis? What does this vast amount of empirical data say to us about Syrian history beyond the descriptive narrative itself, which ranges from a discussion of Syria's cultivators to factionalism within the Bath Party, and from the nature of Asad's rule to Syrian-PLO relations? After decades of research, one would hope that Batatu had at least summed up his theses with an introduction and conclusion-neither of which he provides us (although he does offer an epilogue).
This nonetheless remains an important book. Batatu has provided us with a masterfully detailed study of modern Syrian history. It is our loss that it proved to be his last such contribution.
Michael R. Fischbach Randolph-Macon College
<http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.5/br_182.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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