Shemlan, a small, once unknown village in the hills overlooking
Beirut, became notorious throughout the Middle East when Bertram
Thomas chose it as the location for the Middle East Centre for Arab
Studies (MECAS) in 1947. The knowledge that a western government
was taking pains to teach its citizens Arabic and inform them of
Arab history, society and religion made the Arabs suspicious. The
success of MECAS in producing specialists who were the envy of
other governments produced doubt and anxiety. The power of MECAS to
attract British but also foreign diplomats and businessmen should
have made it a profitable enterprise; instead there was constant
penny-pinching and reluctance to invest. In retrospect it looks
like an excellent idea developed by improvisation through its early
troubles which was then allowed to die in its prime. Was it yet
another example of a British invention unexploited?
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