ABSTRACT
The traditional leaders of the interwar period made attempts at Arab unity. The Syrian Congress of 1920 called for the reunification of Syria as a first step in the reunion of Syria, Iraq, and the peninsula. The most visible reaction was a rejection of that aspect of European culture that many Europeans themselves criticized as the root cause of imperialist oppression: capitalism. Arabia, the least developed and politically mature of Arab lands, had achieved independence far in advance of its more sophisticated neighbors. The traditional leaders of the interwar period made attempts at Arab unity. In the Western models of socialist revolution, traditional leadership was overthrown because of its capitalism. The Ba’th Party had its origins among Syrian university students in the early 1940s. In 1958 the United Arab Republic was proclaimed—a united Syrian-Egyptian state. Pan-Arabism gradually receded into the ideological past, while pragmatic concerns occupied the regional states.
