ABSTRACT
When the two Shi-ite communities of Jebel Amil and the northern Beqaa were brought into the Lebanese system in 1920, they were very separate societies. Ever since the inception of the inter-sect system in Mount Lebanon, in the late sixteenth century, one sect within the system had been the 'first among equals' within it. As the system had developed, it became clear that there were definite limits on the power this leading sect could exercise: its position was always one of primacy, rather than domination or control. The resurgence which the Shi-ite community experienced from the 1960s on was rooted far more deeply in the internal processes of what happens to a sect brought into the inter-sect system, than it was in any regional factors. President Fuad Shihab's roads and schools, and the invigorating effect of Lebanese liberalism, did far more to feed the Shi-ite renaissance than the actions of the Israelis, Palestinians or Iranians ever did.
