Reconstructing the fiscal accounts that France was obliged to submit each year to the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission, Abi-Rached and Diwan trace where money raised in Lebanon and the four Syrian states actually went between 1920 and 1943. Their tables show territories taxed heavily by the standards of France's African and Asian possessions, with the proceeds absorbed by the army, the security services and the administrative apparatus rather than roads, clinics or schools. Health and schooling were left to missionaries and private societies, so the real expansion of education ran through Christian institutions and left Muslim districts badly served. Comparison with the North African colonies sharpens the point, since Lebanon paid more and received less. The authors then read the consequences forward, arguing that the thin public foundations laid in these years produced a state whose essential services were privatised from the beginning and whose inequalities followed communal lines.