raharris1973
Well-known member
In 1946, most Arab states, except the Republics of Lebanon and Syria, were monarchies, and some were still colonies.
Monarchies rapidly grew increasingly unfashionable in the countries that came to comprise the Arab League, especially among intelligentsia, middle-class, and military service members.
There was a lot to genuinely criticize about monarchical governments, they were certainly not predictably constitutional nor democratic, and were not yielding foreign policy, sovereignty, and domestic reform goals that were broadly popular or shared aspirations.
In the fifties, first the Egyptian monarchy and then the Iraqi monarchy were overthrown. The Jordanian Hashemite monarchy felt existentially menaced by Nasserite and other Arab nationalist groups, but survived. Tunisia was added to the roster of independent Arab League States as a Republic, while Morocco joined it as a monarchy.
In the early sixties, the Yemeni hereditary Imamate was overthrown. Algeria received independence as a republic. Near the end of the decade, the Libyan monarchy was overthrown by a young Colonel who was an admirer of Nasser, Qadhafi. There was a rebellion in the Dhofar desert region against the Omani Sultan. The Kuwaiti Emirate slipped out of its protectorate status under Britain in 1961. The rest of the Persian Gulf/Arabian peninsula Monarchies did by 1971. But not before all the petty Sheikhs of British protected South Arabia (today's southern Yemen) were overthrown by an insurgency led by Aden-based Marxist Leninists who in 1967 won an independent republic that within two years was calling itself the People's Democratic Republic of South Yemen and leasing the former British naval base at Aden to the USSR.
There were internal plots against the Saudi monarchy in the late 60s (by Free Officers, with an Arab Nationalist coloration) and the late 70s (by Islamist extremists) that failed.
Interestingly, since 1969, the overthrow of monarchies by republicans in the *Arab* world has ceased, although in geographically and religiously adjacent Iran and Afghanistan, their monarchs were overthrown in 1978 and 1973 respectively. Also interestingly, at least one of the Arab Republican regimes, in Syria, that of Hafez El-Assad, had a "dynastic" succession to his son Bashir, and other Arab Republican regimes appeared poised to similarly have this happen, Qadhafi's son was being groomed as a successor, and Saddam Hussein's sons were considered inside track for succession.
Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya had increasingly hard times from 1980-2000, getting to godawful from 2003 and 2011. Conditions were more middling in Egypt and Jordan and Morocco and Algeria. The remaining monarchies of the Arabian peninsula and Persian Gulf had rising standards of living and social services, massively helped along by oil revenue and sovereign wealth funds. Perhaps because the ratio of oil to people was relatively large, oil wealth spread to the rulers themselves *and* median native citizens/subjects (not, repeat not, foreign migrant workers*), and it worked to increase living standards in ways that oil riches did *not* similarly work to broadly increase living standards or alleviate class tensions or emigration pressures in populous petro-states like Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela, Equatoral Guinea, and Mexico. (Why? Leaders even more corrupt than Arab monarchs? Just too many people to share the wealth with any sense of equitability, so not even trying?)
The monarchies and republics alike in the Arab world were unfree and undemocratic, the republics generally being dictatorial, with exceptions like the somewhat representative ethnosectarian spoils system in Lebanon. The monarchies, on average, but with Saudi Arabia, led the way with "traditional" types of unfreedom like sexist gender roles and patriarchal priviege, On average, the republics were less traditional and had more variety in society's enforcement of old-fashioned sexist gender norms. Republics were the dictators were less comprehensive in every day life and let more things happen in society independently, like Egypt, succumbed to more Islamist pressures to go for more sexist codes of dress and accompanying expectations, while the more comprehensive dictatorships that were more ideological, like Qadhafi's, Hussein's, and Assad's, were in 1980 certainly, and in 1990 still, certainly less "sexist" and unfree in similar traditional, religious ways, but more unfree in other ways.
The republican regimes also consistently between 1980 and 2000 faced more uprisings, insurgencies, brutal repressions, political violence and wars than the monarchies did.
So would the peoples of various Arab monarchical countries like Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait have been better off than real life if their government had been overthrown by Arab Nationalists/Baathists/Nasserites or Communists when those trends were popular and fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s and a bit into the 1970s?
Would they have been better off if their monarchies had been overthrown by Islamic Republicans once that became more fashionable and popular from the late 1970s on?
Would perhaps all their subjects be better off?
Worse off?
The women better off, the men worse off?
The women better off, the men worse off, until civil war and insurgency and collapse and.or western invasion comes to ruin it all?
Perhaps their intelligentsias would feel more proud and fashionable for "sticking it to the man" (ie, the western world and Zionists) with a radical republican regime, but the everyday reality would fall short?
If any of those Arab monarchies we still have today, had been overthrown between 1946 and the present, would any of them become a parliamentary democracy, with peaceful transfers of power on the regular, or at least as frequent a democratic record as Turkey, instead of immediately turning into Party-led or Military-led executive dictatorships with rubber-stamp legislatures?
*but they still came, because it was more money than home, more often than not
Monarchies rapidly grew increasingly unfashionable in the countries that came to comprise the Arab League, especially among intelligentsia, middle-class, and military service members.
There was a lot to genuinely criticize about monarchical governments, they were certainly not predictably constitutional nor democratic, and were not yielding foreign policy, sovereignty, and domestic reform goals that were broadly popular or shared aspirations.
In the fifties, first the Egyptian monarchy and then the Iraqi monarchy were overthrown. The Jordanian Hashemite monarchy felt existentially menaced by Nasserite and other Arab nationalist groups, but survived. Tunisia was added to the roster of independent Arab League States as a Republic, while Morocco joined it as a monarchy.
In the early sixties, the Yemeni hereditary Imamate was overthrown. Algeria received independence as a republic. Near the end of the decade, the Libyan monarchy was overthrown by a young Colonel who was an admirer of Nasser, Qadhafi. There was a rebellion in the Dhofar desert region against the Omani Sultan. The Kuwaiti Emirate slipped out of its protectorate status under Britain in 1961. The rest of the Persian Gulf/Arabian peninsula Monarchies did by 1971. But not before all the petty Sheikhs of British protected South Arabia (today's southern Yemen) were overthrown by an insurgency led by Aden-based Marxist Leninists who in 1967 won an independent republic that within two years was calling itself the People's Democratic Republic of South Yemen and leasing the former British naval base at Aden to the USSR.
There were internal plots against the Saudi monarchy in the late 60s (by Free Officers, with an Arab Nationalist coloration) and the late 70s (by Islamist extremists) that failed.
Interestingly, since 1969, the overthrow of monarchies by republicans in the *Arab* world has ceased, although in geographically and religiously adjacent Iran and Afghanistan, their monarchs were overthrown in 1978 and 1973 respectively. Also interestingly, at least one of the Arab Republican regimes, in Syria, that of Hafez El-Assad, had a "dynastic" succession to his son Bashir, and other Arab Republican regimes appeared poised to similarly have this happen, Qadhafi's son was being groomed as a successor, and Saddam Hussein's sons were considered inside track for succession.
Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya had increasingly hard times from 1980-2000, getting to godawful from 2003 and 2011. Conditions were more middling in Egypt and Jordan and Morocco and Algeria. The remaining monarchies of the Arabian peninsula and Persian Gulf had rising standards of living and social services, massively helped along by oil revenue and sovereign wealth funds. Perhaps because the ratio of oil to people was relatively large, oil wealth spread to the rulers themselves *and* median native citizens/subjects (not, repeat not, foreign migrant workers*), and it worked to increase living standards in ways that oil riches did *not* similarly work to broadly increase living standards or alleviate class tensions or emigration pressures in populous petro-states like Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela, Equatoral Guinea, and Mexico. (Why? Leaders even more corrupt than Arab monarchs? Just too many people to share the wealth with any sense of equitability, so not even trying?)
The monarchies and republics alike in the Arab world were unfree and undemocratic, the republics generally being dictatorial, with exceptions like the somewhat representative ethnosectarian spoils system in Lebanon. The monarchies, on average, but with Saudi Arabia, led the way with "traditional" types of unfreedom like sexist gender roles and patriarchal priviege, On average, the republics were less traditional and had more variety in society's enforcement of old-fashioned sexist gender norms. Republics were the dictators were less comprehensive in every day life and let more things happen in society independently, like Egypt, succumbed to more Islamist pressures to go for more sexist codes of dress and accompanying expectations, while the more comprehensive dictatorships that were more ideological, like Qadhafi's, Hussein's, and Assad's, were in 1980 certainly, and in 1990 still, certainly less "sexist" and unfree in similar traditional, religious ways, but more unfree in other ways.
The republican regimes also consistently between 1980 and 2000 faced more uprisings, insurgencies, brutal repressions, political violence and wars than the monarchies did.
So would the peoples of various Arab monarchical countries like Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait have been better off than real life if their government had been overthrown by Arab Nationalists/Baathists/Nasserites or Communists when those trends were popular and fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s and a bit into the 1970s?
Would they have been better off if their monarchies had been overthrown by Islamic Republicans once that became more fashionable and popular from the late 1970s on?
Would perhaps all their subjects be better off?
Worse off?
The women better off, the men worse off?
The women better off, the men worse off, until civil war and insurgency and collapse and.or western invasion comes to ruin it all?
Perhaps their intelligentsias would feel more proud and fashionable for "sticking it to the man" (ie, the western world and Zionists) with a radical republican regime, but the everyday reality would fall short?
If any of those Arab monarchies we still have today, had been overthrown between 1946 and the present, would any of them become a parliamentary democracy, with peaceful transfers of power on the regular, or at least as frequent a democratic record as Turkey, instead of immediately turning into Party-led or Military-led executive dictatorships with rubber-stamp legislatures?
*but they still came, because it was more money than home, more often than not
