Abstract

This article seeks to describe the ways in which municipal administration and informal networks among political elites during the French mandate contributed to the poor state of public health in North Lebanon, in general, as well as an outbreak of typhoid in Tripoli by the late 1930s. This study largely stems from archival research in France and Lebanon. By examining state-building efforts within what came to be known as the annexed territories of Lebanon, this article will highlight the ways in which public health, as a function of colonial state formation, reproduced political and socio-spatial inequality. In turn, the effects of this inequality can be seen in the crumbling infrastructure and spread of infectious disease in North Lebanon. In these ways, the article will show how the mandate institutions and practices designed to centralize authority ultimately reproduced neo-patrimonialism and rather than create a new relation of power that bound residents to the metropole, further divided the population, widened inequality and set the precedent whereby control of public infrastructure became a political object to exploit while public infrastructure itself was left to erode overtime amid the contests for the spoils of office.

摘要

本文旨在描述在法国委任统治期间，市政当局和政治精英之间的非正式网络如何导致黎巴嫩北部总体公共卫生状况不佳，以及 1930 年代后期在的黎波里爆发伤寒。这项研究主要源于法国和黎巴嫩的档案研究。通过研究后来被称为黎巴嫩附属领土内的国家建设工作，本文将强调公共卫生作为殖民国家形成的一个功能，再现了政治和社会空间不平等的方式。反过来，这种不平等的影响可以从黎巴嫩北部摇摇欲坠的基础设施和传染病的蔓延中看出。通过这些方式，