Beirut 1920: The Secret Map That Created Greater Lebanon

When the borders of modern Lebanon were drawn in 1920, it wasn't just a French colonial decree—it was the culmination of lobbying, secret diplomacy, and a contested vision of what Lebanon should be. This episode unpacks the role of Maronite Patriarch Elias al-Huwayyik, who traveled to Paris in 1919 to argue for an expanded Lebanon; the King-Crane Commission that surveyed local opinion and found deep divisions; and the French high commissioner Henri Gouraud, who finally proclaimed Greater Lebanon on September 1, 1920, adding the Bekaa Valley, Tripoli, Sidon, and Tyre to the old Mount Lebanon mutasarrifiyya. We explore why the new borders enshrined a Christian majority but created a multiconfessional state that would struggle for legitimacy, and how the secret map drawn by French cartographers ignored Sunni, Shia, and Druze objections—setting the stage for decades of political tension.

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