In capital cities, seen as "organised forms of remembrance", toponyms are markers of the state's "ruling socio-political order and its particular 'theory of the world'" and a "story without villains" of the official version of the national narrative. We assess toponyms related to France and the French in Beirut, the Lebanese capital. French toponyms dating back to the Mandate (1918/1920-1943) are still present in the Lebanese capital seventy-two years after the Independence: for example, Général H. Gouraud, the Mandate establisher, and other Mandate army officers (De Gaulle included) are still commemorated by means of street names. The religious aspect is firmly present, too: four French saints are commemorated in Beirut, two of them military and patron saints of the French Nation (Joan of Arc and King Louis IX). Other religious figures include numerous members of the Society of Jesus, founders of the Université Saint-Joseph. In conclusion, French toponyms in Beirut reflect not only the Mandate as a founding point of Lebanon, but also France's role as a traditional "protector" of religious minorities and Fille aînée de l'Église, still central to the relations between France and the Levant. JACK KEILO We find that France, as mandatory power, did not only write toponyms in Beirut, but it also set up "toponymic traditions" that are still used by the Lebanese Republic today. The result can be generalised: the study of toponymic rupture/continuity combined with that of invented toponymic traditions can inform more about postcolonial bodies' policies and their changes.
Abstract. This study questions the anachronism about Phoenicia, often thought to have ended when Alexander the Great conquered the Levant. However, toponymic evidence suggests that Phoenicia came into existence with and after Alexander’s conquests. Then it became an administrative division of the Roman Empire, to subsist as an ecclesiastical title down to Ottoman times. It was only in 1861 that the French scholar Ernest Renan invented and mapped “Phoenician archaeology.” Later interpretations of Renan’s view, converging with Biblical projections, led to the anachronistic use of “Phoenicia.” This anachronism still governs historiography and politics in the Levant today.
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