A “Weapon of the Weak” Electric Boycotts in the Arab Levant and the Global Contours of Interwar Anti-Imperialism Stephen Pascoe “After the Great War, a violent wind blew through the East and shook it from indolence. ” So began an opinion piece penned in February 1935 by the Lebanese journalist and poet Karam Melhem Karam, which appeared in Beirut newspaper Al-Aḥwāl. 1 The experience of the war, Karam continued, had provoked among the colonized peoples of the East a thirst for liberty and for equality with the foreign powers who ruled them. Had not the dominated fought alongside their rulers, enduring the same dangers in the trenches, drinking from the same cup and eating from the same bowl? If anything, the “the children of the colonies” had given more, in blood and life, than had their political masters. How, then, could foreigners rule them and declare themselves superior, Karam asked, when the colonized had made the same sacrifices and committed to the same struggles? With the awakening of desires for independence, colonial authorities thereafter appeared in an unmistak- able light as intruders. Among the peoples demanding independence, India and Egypt had taken the lead. In turn Syria, then Iraq, revolted, while Palestine revolted against injustice, and Syria returned to take up arms once more. Until this point, Karam’ s account was conventional, following the established script of mainstream Arab nationalism then emerging: a narrative of collective suf- fering during wartime, unrealized political sovereignty, and heroic struggle through armed uprising. 2 But he then took an unexpected turn in his argument. None of the Radical History Review Issue 134 (May 2019) DOI 10.1215/01636545-7323432 © 2019 by MARHO: The Radical Historians’ Organization, Inc. 116 Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/article-pdf/2019/134/116/571040/116pascoe.pdf by BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN CC, thomasharbison@gmail.com on 31 May 2019