The Arab Spring was a political movement which began towards the very end of 2010, but which really played out in its most consequential phase in 2011 across much of the Arab world in the Maghreb and the Middle East. It began in Tunisia in response to economic turmoil and disillusionment at the longstanding dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and then spread to other Arab countries. Mass protests, often peaceful but sometimes violent, led to political reforms being made in countries like Jordan, Morocco and Algeria, but major revolutions and changes of leadership or bitter civil wars ensued in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. The term Arab Spring is derived from the fact that the revolutions echoed the revolutions of 1848 that swept across Europe in the spring of that year and are often referred to as ‘the springtime of the peoples’. In the long run the Arab Spring led to the mass movement of millions of people, particularly so as the Syrian Civil War that was sparked by the unrest in that country created one of the largest refugee crises in modern history.[1]
Research your ancestors on MyHeritage
Arab Spring chronology of events

The Arab Spring came about owing to a wide range of issues, some of which were broadly applicable to the countries of the Maghreb and the Middle East and some of which were country-specific. In the former category, there were issues concerning endemic poverty in numerous countries that experienced protests and revolutions, along with disapproval of longstanding dictatorships, corruption and human rights violations. In the latter category there were more nuanced issues. For instance, in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, the primary concerns of the protestors surrounded the extreme corruption of the ruling regime in a country which was otherwise one of the most affluent and liberal in the Arab world prior to 2011. In neighboring Libya the situation was very different and the revolt here was the by-product of entrenched, though seldom previously expressed, opposition to the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator of the country since 1969.[2]
Underlying all of this were technological changes attendant on the Digital Age which allowed for the rapid spread of information and videos in the countries involved beyond state-controlled media and the organization of mass protests through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms.[3] Price rises in basic foodstuffs and commodities was also the issue which tipped unrest over the edge into revolution, much the same way that rising bread prices in France in 1789 led to the French Revolution.[4]

The unrest began in Tunisia in December 2010 when a fruit-seller by the name of Mohamed Bouazizi in the town of Sidi Bouzid set himself on fire after his goods were confiscated by corrupt local police. This was just the latest episode in a lengthy campaign of intimidation of Bouazizi by local police. He survived the initial act of self-immolation but died three weeks later in hospital from his injuries. Bouazizi’s actions quickly ignited a torrent of unrest in Tunisia, a country which had long struggled under the corrupt dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In mid-January 2011 he and his wife fled to Saudi Arabia after weeks of protest against the regime, the first government to topple as a result of the Arab Spring. This became known as the Jasmine Revolution.[5]
From Tunisia the protests spread in the late winter and spring of 2011. The Tahrir Square protests in Cairo against the regime of Hosni Mubarak became a lightning rod for wider discontent throughout the Arab world. Mubarak resigned amid the protests on the 11th of February 2011.[6] Meanwhile, Libya descended into civil war as Gaddafi and his followers refused to countenance any relinquishing of power. Similarly, in mid-March 2011 a ferocious civil war began in Syria where various groups sought to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad, whose family had controlled the country for 40 years.[7] Unrest would occur in many other countries, though of a less dramatic kind. For instance, in the Kingdom of Jordan protests were held in the capital Amman throughout most of 2011 and 2012 about corruption, unemployment and the lack of real democracy in the country. These led to reforms and the replacement of many senior government ministers to assuage public sentiment, but there was never any likelihood of an overthrow of the monarchy itself. Similarly moderate protests were recorded in numerous other countries.[8]

Ultimately the enthusiasm of 2011 gave way to the harsh realities of war and foiled aspirations in 2012 and the years that followed. In both Egypt and Tunisia, religious tensions were exacerbated and in both instances the revolutions seem to have ended in the long run under new dictatorships. In other countries reforms were promised but not delivered upon, though overall the Arab Spring was probably a net positive for some countries like Jordan. However, in three countries, Syria, Libya and Yemen, bitter civil wars were the ultimate result of the Arab Spring. These wracked these countries through the remainder of the 2010s, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and displacing millions of people. The Syrian Civil War, in particular, led to one of the largest refugee crises in modern history. All three countries continue to experience very difficult conditions today, thirteen years after the Arab Spring.[9]
Extent of migration caused by the Arab Spring

The Arab Spring led circuitously to huge waves of migration, though not for benign reasons. These are the result of the wars which shook Syria, Libya and Yemen from 2011 onwards. The Syrian Civil War has been especially brutal in this respect. At its height in the mid-2010s, when the Islamic State established their short-lived caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq, at least five million Syrians left their country and sought asylum elsewhere. This flow of migrants out of Syria continued in the years that followed and there are some 14 million Syrians displaced as of early 2024, half externally beyond Syria’s borders.[10] Many headed for Europe, leading to the European Union migration crisis of the mid-2010s, though the much larger proportion of these refugees actually ended up being given sanctuary in Turkey and other Muslim countries nearby. Similar waves of refugees, though not on the same scale, have fled Libya and Yemen over the last thirteen years.[11]
Demographic impact of the Arab Spring
The demographic impact of the Arab Spring has been felt worldwide in terms of the refugee crises it created as civil wars erupted in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The epicenter of this is Turkey, where an estimated four million people of Syrian descent now live, a huge proportion having arrived there during the Syrian Civil War that resulted from the Arab Spring. Lebanon, Jordan and several other Arab states also took in hundreds of thousands of Syrians.[12] In Europe, most countries accepted significant numbers of refugees from Syria from the mid-2010s onwards. The Syrian diaspora community in these countries is generally proportionate to the overall population, though not always. For instance, countries like Germany and Sweden agreed to take in a particularly large number of Syrian and Libyan refugees in the crisis years of the mid-2010s, but other countries like Hungary were much more reluctant to do so and have a far smaller refugee population resulting from the Arab Spring today. Be they Syrian, Libyan, Yemeni or otherwise, these refugees will set down roots in these countries and in decades to come their children and grandchildren will be able to trace their genealogical roots to ancestors who left the Middle East or the Maghreb during the Arab Spring and the years that followed it.[13]
Explore more about the Arab Spring
- How the Arab Spring Engulfed the Middle East at The Guardian
- Arab Spring at History
- The Arab Spring at Ten Years: What's the Legacy of the Uprisings? at Council on Foreign Relations
- Researching Egyptian Family History at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/arab-spring
- ↑ https://theconversation.com/arab-spring-after-a-decade-of-conflict-the-same-old-problems-remain-154314
- ↑ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-responsible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/17/bread-food-arab-spring
- ↑ https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2011/nachi-tunisia-revolution
- ↑ https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/crown-conversations/cc-5.html
- ↑ https://www.cfr.org/article/syrias-civil-war
- ↑ https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/05/world/jordan-protest/index.html
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2021/jan/25/how-the-arab-spring-unfolded-a-visualisation
- ↑ https://www.unrefugees.org/news/syria-refugee-crisis-explained/
- ↑ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35806229
- ↑ https://www.unhcr.org/tr/en/refugees-and-asylum-seekers-in-turkey
- ↑ https://www.unrefugees.org/news/syria-refugee-crisis-explained/