1 - Nineteenth to Mid-Twentieth Century

Summary

Chapter 1 offers historical context and an overview of the intellectual and political history of Classical Liberalism during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the region. The focus of the chapter is on how classical liberals approached questions of despotism, civil freedoms, rights and democracy, and on how they have conceived of political change. These questions have been ignored within most of the academic literature, which has tended to focus on these intellectuals and politicians’ pan-Arabist and nationalist agendas instead of on their liberal and democratic outlooks. Overall, the chapter provides an essential historical and analytical background about the region’s earliest liberal intellectual and political history; it shows that liberal concepts were not “foreign concepts” imposed suddenly on an unsuspecting public. The chapter informs the rest of the study and sets the boundaries of the movement.