The French colonial general who had served in Niger, Chad and Morocco was portrayed as an indispensable peacemaker and benevolent arbiter between what the Europeans claimed to be the antagonistic communities of the Orient. Thus General Gouraud appeared in the photograph not as a vanquisher of supposedly barbarous native tribes he was neither a modern HernГЎn CortГ©s toppling the Aztec Montezuma nor a French reincarnation of Andrew Jackson destroying the Seminoles of Florida. This late colonialism was allegedly meant to liberate the peoples of the Arab world from the tyranny of the Ottoman Muslim вЂTurkвЂ™ and from the depredations of notionally age-old sectarian hatreds. Photo by Photo12/GettyДЇrance separated the Christian-dominated state of Lebanon from the rest of geographic Syria, which itself was parcelled out along sectarian Alawi, Druze and Sunni polities under overarching French dominion. The alleged object of France in the Orient was not to aggrandise itself, but to lead its inhabitants, particularly its diverse and significant minority populations of Lebanon, towards freedom and independence. The pretext offered for this late colonialism was one that continues to be used today.

With BritainвЂ™s blessing, France had occupied Syria two months earlier and overthrown the short-lived, constitutional Arab Kingdom of Syria. GouraudвЂ™s proclamation of the state of Greater Lebanon, or Grand Liban, which was carved out of the lands of the defeated Ottoman empire, served as the occasion. On the other side is the Sunni Muslim Mufti of Beirut. Seated to one side is the Patriarch of the Maronite Church, an Eastern Christian Catholic sect. An iconic photograph from September 1920 of the French colonial general Henri Gouraud dressed in a splendid white uniform and flanked by two вЂnativeвЂ™ religious figures captures this moment. It was also the first to be colonised in the name of self-determination. The Arab East was among the last regions in the world to be colonised by Western powers.

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