Pan-Arabism emerged in the mid-1800s, advocating for the unification of the tribes from North Africa, Western Asia and the Arabian Gulf.

The introduction of the printing press by Napoleon in Egypt allowed the codification and spread of Modern Standard Arabic as an official language, borrowed from Classical Arabic literature.

The ideology was a way to unite multi-sectarian tribes who spoke similar dialects, initially to free them from Ottoman control, and then to resist Western and Israeli influence in the region.

The Arab League was created in Cairo in 1945, by six founding countries, including Lebanon, as British and French military control in the region started to recede.

Over time, many also extended the ideology to a total political unification under one Arab nation. The borders of all states covering Arabic speaking tribes were perceived as artificial and needing to be dismantled.

The first attempt at unifying the Arab world began with the union of Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic. However, it only lasted three years, ending with a Syrian coup d’Etat in 1961 to restore the Syrian Republic.

After enthusiastically joining the political union, many Syrians found that they were now being governed under a highly centralized regime in Cairo that did not always take into account Syria’s domestic economic and cultural conditions.

Ever since then, Arabism has remained confined to regional cooperation within the Arab League, though it has been increasingly fragmented over the last couple of decades, unable to unify over common grounds.

Today, much of the Arabic world is going through a transition period, living in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, a transition away from the fossil fuel industry, and the rise of Iranian, Turkish, and Israeli influence in the region.

If the United Arab Republic fell, it must be that the principles of subsidiarity were not balanced enough. The structure of governance was simply not aligned with the laws of nature. Local issues are often better dealt with local solutions.

Since the attempts at unifying the Arab world under one political entity has failed, this does not imply that pan-regional cooperation cannot be greatly improved.

In fact, the rise of national identities and nation-states in Europe in the 17th century is exactly what enabled the European Union to thrive as an economic and political union today. Arabism should learn from the European experiment and re-examine the type of structure, values and vision it wants to implement.