Syria’s Transnational Rebellion (diaspora Politics And The Revolt Of 1925-1927)

By (author) Bailony, Reem
Short description/annotation:
The first transnational study of the Syrian Revolt of 1925-1927.
Description:
This book brings to light the little-known story of Syrian-Lebanese migrant mobilizations around the 1925 Syrian Revolt against the French Mandate. Situated within the wider context of the emergent post-World War I international system, the book centres Syrian-Lebanese transnational efforts as central to understanding the fluid era of the 1920s. From the League of Nations in Geneva to the banquet halls of Detroit, global Syrians acted as synapses connecting networks within and beyond the French Mandate as they clamoured to create change back home. Syrian-Lebanese diaspora networks drew in and entangled a French colonial infrastructure that became vulnerable to migrant mobilizations, prompting the French to combat the rebellion outside of Mandatory borders. Syria''s Transnational Rebellion shows how the diasporic activities challenged the emerging postwar order even as it helped solidify its norms, crystallized a separatist Lebanese nationalism, and tested the limitations of nation-states in formation.
Description:
This book brings to light the little-known story of Syrian-Lebanese migrant mobilizations around the 1925 Syrian Revolt against the French Mandate. Situated within the wider context of the emergent post-World War I international system, the book centres Syrian-Lebanese transnational efforts as central to understanding the fluid era of the 1920s. From the League of Nations in Geneva to the banquet halls of Detroit, global Syrians acted as synapses connecting networks within and beyond the French Mandate as they clamoured to create change back home. Syrian-Lebanese diaspora networks drew in and entangled a French colonial infrastructure that became vulnerable to migrant mobilizations, prompting the French to combat the rebellion outside of Mandatory borders. Syria’s Transnational Rebellion shows how the diasporic activities challenged the emerging postwar order even as it helped solidify its norms, crystallized a separatist Lebanese nationalism, and tested the limitations of nation-states in formation.
Table of contents:
List of Figures Acknowledgements Timeline of Events Cast of Players Introduction: Diaspora Mobilisation and a Changing World Order 1. Geneva: The Mahjar, the Mandate and the Syro-Palestinian Congress 2. Damascus: Global Reverberations of a City under Bombs 3. Rashaya: Transnational Suffering and the Making of Lebanon 4. Detroit: Uncle Sam and Amir Shakib Arslan 5. Al-Azraq: Refugees, Rebels and the Children of the Desert Conclusion: Reckoning with Revolutionary Echoes Bibliography Index
Review quote:
Immensely readable and meticulously researched, this book charts the post-World War I Syrian fight for independence and statehood in new and thought-provoking ways. Placing the 1925 Syrian Revolt against the French Mandate at the centre of her analysis, Bailony writes a compelling story of how diaspora politics, and the patriotic aspirations of migrants, reverberated across the Middle East, Europe and the United States — shaping insurgent geographies, past and present.
Review quote:
This magnificent new book shows that Syrian revolutionaries and their diaspora allies have a century of history and memory from which to draw. Reem Bailony, making use of archives in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, shows vividly and with great originality that Syria''s 1925 Revolution involved a complicated mix of rebels, revolutionaries, exiles, migrants and activists at home and abroad, and that their efforts have escaped notice or understanding, until now. This book is a spellbinding triumph of transnational history.
Biographical note:
Reem Bailony is an Associate Professor of Middle East History at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She is previously a Druze