Lebanon: The Politics of Frustration - The Failed Coup of 1961 (History and Society in the Islamic World) [Hardcover]

Adel Beshara (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415351138 | ISBN-13: 978-0415351133 | Publication Date: February 3, 2005 | Edition: 1

Lebanon examines the ideological, political and social underpinnings of the attempted coup against General Chihab's government in Lebanon in 1961. The author analyzes the role of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, the history of the army in Lebanon and it role in Lebanese politics and the impact of the coup on Lebanese political life. This book provides an extraordinary insight into the mechanisms of military coups in the Arab world and will be of interest to students and researchers of the history and politics of the Middle East.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Adel Beshara studied Economics at La Trobe University and Political Science at the University of Melbourne. He received his Ph.D in History in 2002 from the University of Melbourne where he is also a teacher and a Fellow of the Department of History. His previous publications include Syrian Nationalism: An Inquiry in to the Political Thought of Antun Sa'adeh (1995), and several articles in leading journals on the Middle East.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (February 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415351138
• ISBN-13: 978-0415351133
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,509,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thorough and Well-Documented Account, January 27, 2007

By 

Jazz It Up Baby - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Lebanon: The Politics of Frustration - The Failed Coup of 1961 (History and Society in the Islamic World) (Hardcover)

University of Otago's William Harris said that Beshara provides a thorough, well-documented account of a curious punctuation in Lebanon's modern history--the attempt by the small Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), in cooperation with sympathetic middle rank army officers, to overthrow the regime of President Fouad Chehab on the night of December 31, 1961. The SSNP, founded by the Orthodox Christian Antun Sa'adeh in Beirut in 1932, aimed to combine the new states of the Levant into a Greater Syria; accordingly, he opposed both Arab nationalism and Lebanese sectarian politics. The SSNP gained enough adherents and was sufficiently well organized to make intermittent assertions in Lebanon and Syria in the 1940s and 1950s, though it lacked the public following necessary to make its ambitions realistic. Out of frustration, it became increasingly radicalized, looking to its paramilitary wing, its links with army officers, and strong-arm tactics to compensate for limited popular weight.

Beshara, a historian at the University of Melbourne, has closely examined the SSNP and Syrian nationalist ideology. He here deploys his formidable knowledge of both the party and the Lebanese political environment of the time to place the 1961 coup attempt in a wider context. He investigates the SSNP's emergence as a significant armed backer of President Camille Chamoun in the 1958 confrontation between the Lebanese regime and Nasserite Arab nationalism. He then charts the SSNP's drift into hostility to the regime as the new president, former army commander Fouad Chehab, sought to pacify Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt and the mainly Muslim Arab nationalists in Lebanon by updating rather than eroding the country's sectarian political system. In particular, Beshara includes an excellent study of the army's position in Lebanese political life and the increasing distaste of some younger officers for Chehab's political predilections, authoritarian tendencies, and manipulation of the military intelligence apparatus. The SSNP and the disaffected officers gravitated together and dreamed up a scheme to remove Chehab and transform Lebanon in defiance of the actual balance of forces in the country.

Beshara's detailed, balanced dissection of the incompetence of the coup attempt, the mixing of judicial fairness and casual brutality in the regime's response, and the underlying strength of pluralist, confessional politics tells a great deal about Lebanon's distinctiveness in the Arab world. His analysis of the subsequent evolution of the SSNP, as it changed from a rightist to a leftist orientation with entirely new allies in reaction to prolonged regime hounding, is a good illustration of the more general twisting and turning in the Lebanese pressure-cooker. The SSNP began the 1960s in alignment with Camille Chamoun and ended the decade at the opposite end of the spectrum with Kamal Junblatt. Finally, Beshara's information on the Lebanese army's interface with civilian affairs is useful background material for anyone interested in President Emile Lahoud's "security regime."

5.0 out of 5 stars superb book about a powerful movement in the Middle East, October 17, 2005

By 

Jad Melki - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lebanon: The Politics of Frustration - The Failed Coup of 1961 (History and Society in the Islamic World) (Hardcover)

This is the first well written and excellently researched English book on a less known but powerful political movement in the Middle East. It's a must read if you are interested in secular movements in the region, the modern political history of Lebanon and Syria, and coups in general. It is easy to read and well researched and documented.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars the frustration of fascism., January 19, 2007

By 

jeremiah aram (new york) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lebanon: The Politics of Frustration - The Failed Coup of 1961 (History and Society in the Islamic World) (Hardcover)

a piece of junk written by a member of the ssnp, a secular and the most fascistic ideological enterprise in the history of the middle east.
do not waste your time and money on it. the ssnp and its frustrated intellectuals cannot pen but junk..it deserves a minus 5 stars..