ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the political and economic transformations from the mid-1940s that had a radical impact on the Euphrates-Jezira region. It summarizes the political process in Syria and describes the impact of imposing state order on tribal communities in the al-Raqqa region, and the subsequent diminution of traditional power of the Bedouin Fed’an. It also discusses the emergence of a capitalistic agricultural economy in the Jezira region. Huge tracts of land were brought under mechanized cultivation, leading to Syria’s post-war agricultural boom. Agriculture was transformed from a subsistence mode to large estates growing cash crops (cotton, wheat and barley), financed first by Aleppo merchants and later by sheikhs of semi-sedentary tribes. Their accumulation of wealth, coupled with access to parliamentary representation, gave these ‘Cotton Sheikhs’ political power at local and national levels. There were far-reaching effects on social organization. Struggle over land ownership was a major source of conflict, and total sedentarization occurred throughout the region as semi-nomadic tribesmen became settled in villages, often as landless fellahin (peasants). Given the unequal distribution of economic and political power and the resultant tension within the traditional tribal system, conditions were ripe for the gradual spread of reformist and/or socialist Ba’th ideology.
