Beirut is made capital of a vilayet…

Beirut is made capital of a vilayet in Syria, including the sanjaks Latakia, Tripoli, Beirut, Akka and Bekaa, in 1888.

The center of Arab intellectual activity in the nineteenth century, provided with water from a British company and gas from a French one, the city thrives on exporting silk grown on nearby Mount Lebanon.

This industry has made the region wealthy, but also dependent on links to Europe.

Because most of the silk is exported to Marseille, the French begin to have a great impact in the region.

French engineers will establish a modern harbor in 1894.

Following the capture of the more southerly town of Akka (Acre) by Ibrahim Pasha in 1832, Beirut had begun its early modern revival to become a very cosmopolitan city with close links with Europe and the United States, as well as a center of missionary activity, which had generally been very unsuccessful in conversions (a massacre of Christians in 1860 had been the occasion for further European interventions), but had built an impressive education system.

This includes the Syrian Protestant College established in 1866 by American missionaries. (It will become the American University of Beirut in 1920.)