Between the Ottomans and the Entente

In 1914, a half million Arab migrants across the Americas watched uneasily as the geopolitical ground trembled beneath their feet. As subjects of an Ottoman Empire then at war with the Triple Entente, Syrian and Lebanese migrants living in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States faced new demands for political loyalty. From Istanbul, the Ottoman state commanded Syrian migrants to maintain diasporic fealty and to resist European colonialism. Living in a largely pro-Entente hemisphere, Syrian migrants daily grappled with political suspicion, travel restriction, and outward displays of support for the war against the Ottomans. Between the Ottomans and the Entente tells how the Syrian and Lebanese mahjar (diaspora) became a geopolitical frontier between the Young Turk Revolution and the early French Mandate. Stacy D. Fahrenthold examines how empires at war--from the Ottomans to the French--embraced and claimed Syrian migrants as part of the state-building process in the Middle East. In doing so, they transformed this diaspora into an epicenter for Arab nationalist politics. Employing a uniquely transnational set of indigenous archives written between and among migrant activists, this book reveals the degree to which Ottoman migrants "became Syrians" while abroad, bringing their politics home to the post-Ottoman Middle East.