사이크스-피코 비밀협정과 레바논, 시리아 건국 과정

The Sykes-Picot Secret Agreement and the Process of Nation-building in Lebanon and Syria

The main purpose of this article is to analyze the Sykes-Picot Secret Agreement and its relation to nation-building in Lebanon and Syria. During the period of the First World War, three contradictory promises, including the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Secret Agreement, and the Balfour Declaration were made by Britain with Arabs, Jews, and the French. Among these three, the Sykes-Picot Secret Agreement became the cornerstone of the subsequent division of the Levantine region into a series of separate nations after the war. This agreement was designed by Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, without considering the aspirations of the native people. According to their Imperial interests, Britain and France started to build artificial nations in their mandatory regions, but the new nations lacked basic conditions required for development into viable nations. As a result, political instability in these nations continues to exist until today. This paper also found that the difference between British and French colonial attitudes toward the Arab World affected the successes and failures of nation-building. The British was more cooperative with the local people, while the French employed more repressive measures to rule the natives. Due to these differences, nations built by the British have been more stable and peaceful, whereas nations built by the French, such as Lebanon and Syria, have experienced a greater deal of political instability and faced many difficulties after independence.