The Pleiades

Reading Walter Johnson’s “On Agency” in the Journal of Social History made me rethink a lot of my responses to Stephanie Camp’s Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (2004). Camp’s goal is worthy, because she sought to disprove prevalent notions of slaves as accommodationist to their enslavement. Camp focuses on enslaved women to elucidate their living and working conditions, cultural experiences, and family life. She also shows how they engaged in acts of resistance to their enslavement in their daily lives. Camp’s book is about agency, a concept that Walter Johnson argues more historians need to use more carefully. He cautions historians against ascribing meaning to slave actions while actually obscuring “important questions about both the way in which enslaved people theorized their own actions and the practical process through which those actions provided the predicate for new ways of thinking about slavery and resistance” (Johnson, 118). One of Camp’s strengths is that she does ask these important questions about what the slaves thought and is careful in her analysis of the evidence. As for the evidence, Camp uses personal slave narratives, white planter papers, oral histories such as WPA interviews, and various other sources to construct a convincing picture of the lives of enslaved women.

Camp argues that male planters engaged in a “geography of containment” to control the slaves’ movement. This is a theme that runs throughout the book. For example, her chapter on “the bondage of space an time” demonstrates why planters sought to limit slaves’ movement to the plantations. Subsequent chapters look at modes of escape: truancy, the role of women in aiding slaves’ escape, and a hidden institution in the form of the illegal party. Camp further supports her thesis about the geography of space by examining the spaces within slave homes to see how bondswomen used abolitionist materials in their cabins to advance liberation ideology in the South.

Another main theme of the book is “the dissolving of common distinctions” between individual women and collective communities. She shows that pleasure and politics were not always separate in her discussion of how women “created ‘third bodies’ that were sites of pleasure and resistance” at their hidden parties. Her final chapter also dissolves the distinctions between “day-to-day” resistance and mass action (9). This chapter most compellingly shows that slave women did indeed engage in resistance and knew what it meant for themselves and their families.

Camp’s book came out a year after Walter Johnson’s 2003 essay. I see her book as a sort of direct response to the kind of work Johnson laments is widespread. She works directly against the “classic social scientific dichotomies” that characterize many of the works on agency. Johnson wrote in “On Agency”: “As I hinted above, the terms ‘everyday’ and ‘revolutionary’ have, at least in the literature on slavery, been allowed for too long to stand in unproductive opposition to one another rather than being thought of as dialectically interrelated” (118). Camp blurs the distinction between the political and the personal, the hidden and informal and the visible and organized. She argues against an understanding of resistance as primarily “public” because it “limits our understanding of human lives in the past, especially women’s” (3). Since much of Johnson’s argument is predicated on a critique of the idea that public resistance was a way to “preserve their humanity” (a very subjective concept), it is refreshing that Camp approaches the history of enslaved women with more nuance and shows that not engaging in overt resistance did not make some of these women any less human.

Barbara Fields’ essay titled “Ideology and Race in American History” seeks to completely delegitimize race’s status in American history as anything other than an ideological construct. Though it is increasingly common (at least in our academic circles) to acknowledge the utterly baseless idea of race and we can discuss it as a social construct, her essay that is only three decades old speaks to a generation that was still grappling with this. Even now, the average person on the street (and the typical Census worker) would have a hard time accepting that race has no scientific basis and is socially constructed, so this essay and the other works we looked at this week are still as relevant as ever.

Reading Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, I was again reminded that race may be imagined but that did not mean it was not a very real part of peoples’ lives. His book is in many ways a continuation of the work that Barbara Fields and others have done. He traces a genealogy of race and the creation of whiteness. Having recently read The Wages of Whiteness by David Roediger, I find these two works to be especially interesting because my main exposure to the issues of race typically focused on the experiences of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and others – the “minorities,” in other words. Yet, a close analysis of whiteness has shown me, even more convincingly, how arbitrary race is. Moreover, the obsession with whiteness is really at the root of so much racism – the differentiation that categorize people as white in opposition to others and then place them as superior is necessary to understanding the evolution of race in our society.

Jacobson’s work intervenes in a historiography on whiteness that is dominated primarily by historians of class and race. He acknowledges the deep connections between the two, but as Barbara Fields notes, class has some objective groundings in addition to ideological underpinnings, whereas race has only the latter. Jacobson thus seeks to focus primarily on other politics and cultural roots of racial ideology and whiteness. As he writes, “Since race is a kind of social currency, it seemed most useful to begin with an analysis of its public exchange” (11). Therefore, he uses cultural and social historical methods to build his argument. His analysis of books, films, newspapers, personal correspondence, scientific (or pseudoscientific) journals, court records, and immigration policies is impressive. These sources cannot tell the entire story of how whiteness was constructed, but Jacobson definitely offers many new insights into who was to be included in that very unstable category.

Image from the Montgomery Advertiser, Vol. LXXVII, Issue 21, p. 4.

Jacobson’s work also rests nicely within recent immigration historiography, since he has joined many scholars to call into question the acceptance of “modern notions of ‘ethnicity'” (9). The ethnic paradigm is inadequate because accepting that different immigrants were always part of discrete ethnic groups is to overlook the influence of race in creating whiteness. Thus, Jacobson focuses on groups from different nationalities to show how their own communities were ascribed certain racial identities; he also shows how they often adopted and reified these racial ideas for their own purposes. By looking at various immigrant groups, Jacobson looks at the “fabrication of race” – a subtitle to his introduction that points to how race is something that is both created and false. I appreciate that he notes that even though these different European ethnic groups were differentiated from other whites at times in American history, those “so-called white ethnics” cannot “conveniently dissociate themselves from the historic legacies of white privilege” (12).

His book is divided into three parts. His first chapters discuss the early Republic. Here, his overarching argument damages exceptionalist notions of the United States that view it as a truly democratic nation that merely devolved into a racist, elitist state for a short period of time. On the contrary, American citizenship was always predicated on “whiteness.” An obsession with the ability for self-rule (usually associated with skin color or place of origin) dominated discussions about new immigrants and the existing blacks and Native Americans.  Part Two focuses on perceptions of race by highlighting a key year, 1877, and using the experience of Jews to show the how tenuous the label of “whiteness” really was. Section Three discusses the “manufacture of Caucasians” by analyzing racial science in depth. In this section, Jacobson examines the role that empire and the immigration restrictions from the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924 had in creating Caucasian whiteness. He argues that the emerging civil rights movement after the first two decades of the twentieth century “hastened the reunification of whiteness or papered over its presumed fault lines” (202). He makes very compelling arguments, but I still feel the need to learn more about the history of race to see how much more there is to the story.

American Isolationism Cartoon, 1921 (Library of Congress)

Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2009)

The introduction of Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic notes that “The creation of a formal political system also clarified what stood outside it” (13). An essay by David Waldstreicher featured in that book collection discusses peoples’ “politicizing strategies” to make up for the limits of political systems. Our common reading for this week brought up points that gave me further insight into my individual reading, Alexander Keyssar’s The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. This extensive history of voting in the United States from the Revolutionary Era to the present details the multitude of ways that the founders and their political descendants formed government structures that reinforced elite power and excluded those who “stood outside the political system,” in Waldstreicher’s words. The Right to Vote highlights these outsiders’ persistent efforts to gain access to suffrage and participate in a supposedly democratic state. Keyssar criticizes prior works that describe the history of suffrage as progressive and increasingly inclusive. Quite to the contrary, he shows that voting has always been a “contested” right in the United States – to begin with, suffrage was not always even viewed as a right.

Keyssar notes continuities and changes in suffrage for blacks, women, and those without property. He includes a lengthy appendix that describes state suffrage laws from 1775 to 1920. Simply flipping through these pages makes it clear that Keyssar has done his research and has written a compelling synthesis of a very contradictory group of legislation.

One of Keyssar’s most important contributions to the historiography of political involvement is that he refutes teleological accounts and describes the extensive “backsliding and sideslipping” that occurred as voting rights evolved. Reforms in the antebellum period, for example, were not typically intended to expand the nascent industrial working class’ access to suffrage but instead to grant artisans and the middle class more of a stake in the government.

Class is an integral part of Keyssar’s story, as he argues that class tensions served as the greatest obstacle to voting expansion until the 1960s. This argument may seem strange to many readers who rightly recognize the history of suffrage as a story deeply tied to racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant nativism. Keyssar does not discount the importance of race, gender and ethnicity in his book, instead noting that race and ethnicity are typically “determinants of class” (p. xxv). He argues that class structures the periodization of his account, and thus breaks his book into four periods:

1) The pre- and early industrial era from the Revolution to 1850 that witnessed the expansion of voting rights

2) The 1850s to World War I, during which suffrage narrowed. The expansion of voting for blacks during Reconstruction was merely a temporary step forward before more backsliding due to the upper and middle classes’ growing “antagonism to universal suffrage” (p.xxv)

3) The postwar era until the 1950s, when little changed formally in voting laws

4) The period beginning with the civil rights movement that saw the breakdown of voting barriers

In all of these periods, class is prominent because the “integration of the poor and working people into the polity” was always at stake (xxv). Changes in class occurred with each step in the fight for increased suffrage. Moreover, each of these periods must be understood in a context of war, when the (often poor) men who rallied for war efforts then prompted efforts to let those who would die for their country at least cast a vote in the ballot box.

Finally, this book suggests a fifth period in the present, “an era of contestation” where people have broad access to suffrage but still feel more work is to be done. The election of 2000, which coincided with the publication of Keyssar’s book, shows that a large part of the electorate is calling into question our modern voting laws and practices, as well as the Electoral College system. Interestingly enough, Keyssar also notes in his introduction that voting participation is at an all-time low despite unprecedented access to suffrage. The United States has recently waged a multi-front “War on Terror” and is still entangled in Afghanistan in its most lengthy war ever. Since the financial crash of 2008, class struggles are again increasingly visible in the United States too. This book allows us to rethink our prior views of suffrage and can provoke many debates on suffrage in the years to come.

Hi!

Though I focus primarily on twentieth century US history, I am really looking forward to taking this seminar in nineteenth century America. I first created this blog for Caleb’s cultural history research seminar last spring. I ended up writing a paper on Arab-Americans’ political involvement and identities in the 1920s and 1930s. I hope that my dissertation will study Arab immigration to the United States by looking at their political ideology and activism through a cultural lens. I want to examine their multiple perspectives on nationalism – their loyalties to their home state as Syrians or Lebanese after the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire, their affinity for the greater Arab community, and their nascent American identities. These cultural and political ideals greatly impacted the Arab-American community’s activism relating to Zionism and colonial intervention in the Middle East, so it will be interesting to analyze the connections between these peoples’ homelands and their new homes to see how ideas interacted and evolved.

Since the earliest Arab immigrants came to the United States after civil wars in Lebanon during the late 1800s, understanding nineteenth century U.S. history is integral to studying the Arab-American community’s roots. These immigrants encountered new cultural and religious groups, observed and engaged in very different political worlds, and were greatly affected by the economic changes at the fin de siècle.

Last semester, I was a TA for the first part of the undergraduate survey course here at Rice. I was always interested in this period but had not really focused on it recently until assisting with grading and leading discussions in that class. Getting to listen to the lectures and do the readings reminded me of how I had once loved nineteenth century US history so much that I changed my major to history during undergrad. Thus, I am looking forward to focusing on certain topics in greater detail in a graduate environment. Moreover, since I mostly got into the field of history for my love of teaching, I want to take this class so I can teach the first half of the survey as a professor one day.

I have finally made the leap from endless researching to rough-draft writing, but I decided to post my comprehensive outline this week because it’s what I would most like to hear feedback on. I know many parts are redundant and I’m trying to talk about a lot of different concepts. However, these ideas keep popping up as I do my research and I hope I can find a way to incorporate them into this paper. I’d love to know everyone’s thoughts on how I could better organize or explain some of this. Basically, does this make sense? Thanks!

I. Introduction

A. Go into a brief history of the mandates after the Ottoman Empire broke up at end of WWI

1. Britain was in control of Palestine, Jordan, Iraq. Britain issued the Balfour Declaration and promised la homeland to Zionist Jews during the war, but also promised Sharif Hussein of Mecca and his son Faisal autonomy over Arab lands if they would foment Arab revolt during the war to damage the Ottoman Empire internally. At the same time, Britain had made a secret agreement with France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement that planned to carve up the Middle East after the war and establish their own control over the emerging states. The French would control Lebanon and Syria.
2. League of Nations provisions, especially Article 22 of The Covenant of the League of Nations: colonialism under a new name
3. Bilad ash-Shaam, or “Greater Syria” included Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine. They were divided into different nations but the emergence of nationalism was fraught with tensions, difficulties, and crises of identity.

B. Summary of basic history of Arabs in the United States

1. Earliest immigrants came after civil wars in Mount Lebanon in late 1800s, increased in numbers until WWI as Arabs (mostly Christian) sought to flee from the repression of the Ottoman Empire.
2. Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 limits Arab migration

C. Thesis (see point III for full explanation of my argument): Arabs in America during the 1920s and 1930s increasingly saw themselves as American while also identifying with new nations formed during the League of Nations mandates. Their views of the colonial powers varied, with some being pro-French in Syria and Lebanon while others being against all colonialism. Yet, there is a striking solidarity among many different Arab groups over the question of Palestine and their animosity toward the British regime’s treatment of Zionism. This solidarity was manifested into activists who lobbied the U.S. government to take a critical stance on Zionism. Despite the ultimate failure of Arab groups to convince the U.S. to oppose Zionism, the issue of Palestine helped unify what was often a very divergent Arab community in the US. Though the idea of Arab nationalism is very contested, solidarity over Palestine shows that immigrants were also creating a distinct “Arab” (rather than just “Syrian” or “Lebanese”) identity at this time.

II. Overview of historiography

A. Sarah Gualtieri’s book on Arab identity and racialization in Arab-American diaspora

B. Alixa Naff’s foundational study entitled Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience

C.  Philip Hitti’s early book: The Syrians in America

D. Discuss Rashid Khalidi’s work on the formation of Palestinian identity, 1917-1923.

E. Lawrence Davidson’s work on anti-Zionist activism in the United States and the mainstream political and media response, which has been almost consistently pro-Israeli.

F. Get into theories of nationalism, especially Benedict Anderson’s, to explain how nations are imagined and constructed; they’re not organic or inevitable, but in the Arab case, were formed specifically as a result of and in reaction to colonialism. Nationalisms in this time period were solidifying in the countries of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, etc. But there was a limited “Arab” nationalism in solidarity with Palestine, something most prevalent because there was colonialism of the British mandate and settler colonialism of the Zionist program.

III. Main argument (I will, of course, put more of this in the introduction, but here is a summary):

A. Though other scholars (especially Lawrence Davidson) have proven that the Israeli lobby did not indeed emerge in a vacuum, anti-Zionist voices in the United States were largely unsuccessful. Nevertheless, there was a prominent movement among Arab-Americans during the 1920s and 1930s that was critical of the British and Zionist power in Palestine and sought to convince the U.S to favor of Arabs in the conflict.

B. What is important is that these activists were not all Palestinians, but often immigrants from other areas of the Middle East. After the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire, national identities were not inevitable and always strongly associated with. This growing sense of nationalism was even more unique for Arabs in the United States who felt a connection to their homeland even if they had come to America before the division of the Ottoman Empire into different nation-states.

C. Palestine’s own national identity was being created at this time, mostly in response to Zionism (according to Rashid Khalidi).

D. The issue of Palestine formed an area of common ground for Arabs in America. Even those not from the territorial boundaries of Palestine felt an affinity for those experiencing the conflict. This was especially the case for Arabs from Syria and Lebanon who dealt with their anger at colonialism in those nations and feared that Zionist settlements would spread to surrounding nations.

E. Solidarity over Palestine, both in the United States and in the Middle East, was a necessary condition for later pan-Arab movements.

F. This solidarity superseded religion; Christians and Muslims engaged in this discourse of both their own individual nationalisms and their support for Palestine.

E. My source base primarily consists of articles from The Syrian World. I don’t propose to argue that ALL Arabs in America viewed nationalism, colonialism, or the Arab-Israeli conflict the same way. However, there is a lot I can say about the specific readers and contributors of The Syrian World.

IV. Identity in the United States and growing association with Palestinians

A. General background on Arab diaspora in the US: demographics, ideas about race and citizenship, assimilation, etc (draw from Gualtieri’s research).

B. The existing historiography generally argues that Arabs in the ’20s and ’30s increasingly conceived of themselves as white and became more cognizant of race as an identifier.

1. The typical argument is that the community of Arabs in America was very fragmented and tied to their homelands which were now under new national boundaries – Syria, Lebanon, etc.
2. I will include articles from The Syrian World which reinforces these claims because they discuss how Syrians should be proud of their own name and not be lumped under the title of “Lebanese” or the more inclusive term “Arab.”

C. But as I am arguing, the one issue which seems to go against this general trend of  fragmentation is unity relating to Palestine. Maronite Lebanese people in the United States (who were historically tied to the French and supported colonialism in Lebanon and Syria) may not have been very critical of the French mandates, but were quite scathing in their critiques of Britain in Palestine. There is even a sense of shared identity with Palestinians, as this quote by the new editor of The Syrian World, Ibrahim Katibah, shows:

“Possibly our critic thinks that Syria is a country quite distinct and separate from Palestine, that its racial heritage is different, that its people have nothing in common with the people of the little spot of land called the Holy Land. If so, he is utterly mistaken, and will find no solace or support from any serious biblical scholar. The history of Palestine and Syria are so intertwined that often it is hard to determine where one begins and the other ends.” (Ibrahim Katibah, “Syrian Culture or No Syrian Culture!” February 9, 1935, p. 5.)

 V. Anti-Zionist activity

A. Discuss the Palestine Antizionism Society and how it changed its name to the Palestine National League.

B. The name shift is symbolic of how any nationalisms are formed in opposition to something else (Benedict Anderson!).

C. The society included activists from a variety of Arab backgrounds, many of whom have prominent voices in content the Syrian World publishes.

VI. Conclusion

A. Using the work of Lawrence Davidson and some of my own research, note that this Anti-Zionist activity was largely a failure. The mainstream media rarely reported on Arab activism or ridiculed it, while favoring Zionist accounts. Zionists increasingly gained influence over the U.S. government through lobbying.

B. Nevertheless, this activism was important. It shows that America’s pro-Zionist and pro-Israeli stance did not develop in a “vacuum” as some have argued. Instead, there was a significant voice lobbying against U.S. support for British colonialism and the creation of Israel.

C. This activism was due to the growing sense of an Arab identity, however fractured it was, among different groups of Arabs in America. The cause of this new sense of affinity between different Arabs was very much dependent upon the concern that the Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians exhibited about Palestine.

Last week was full of a lot of progress, but the more I researched, the more confused I became as to what I should focus on. In the week since our last workshop, I have continued my research and am happy to say that my path for this paper has become a little clearer. I had considered dropping the discussion of Palestine at all in my paper since it’s often a touchy subject and sources are difficult to find, and focusing on the more general topic of how Arab identity coalesced during the 1920s and ‘30s. However, after I examined The Syrian World some more, especially as the journal moved into 1930, I decided to follow up on my original topic because I found a lot of interesting articles that will help me build an argument.

One major reason for this decision is that there are already a variety of great studies of Arab-American identity, including Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora by Sarah Gualtieri. One chapter in her book discusses Palestine and political activism and this has proven to be helpful for me.  The rest of the book focuses a lot on the creation of identity and a racialized self-image, and I do not feel like I have much more to add to that subject after reading this and other works on the subject. One relevant book that I started reading this week is America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood by Lawrence Davidson. He discusses many important matters in great depth but I feel like there is room to add some new insights from my research.

I want to redefine my research question to ask simply how the issue of Palestine became an area of common ground for most Arabs in the United States, and how Arab nationalism and the Arab-American identity solidified partially through identification with Palestine. There was often disagreement within the Arab-American community over the French and British mandates. To remind you all of the history, under the League of Nations, Britain was given a mandate over Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. France controlled Syria and Lebanon. A majority of Arabs viewed the mandates negatively (as the many revolts during the rule of the British and French demonstrate), but certain groups like Maronite Christians in Lebanon allied themselves with the French and therefore had an affinity with the mandatory powers. Therefore, though there is an overwhelmingly negative perception of the mandates in the Arab papers at this time, the Arab community still exhibits a diversity of opinion. However, it is interesting that almost across the board, Arabs viewed the growth of a Zionist state infrastructure and the displacement of Palestinians as an issue of great importance and a cause to actively rally around. I’ve found a lot of interesting cases of this activism that I look forward to incorporating in my research.

These two excerpts I found in The Syrian World from other Arabic papers in the U.S. demonstrate how various Arab groups felt this affinity with the Palestine issue.

From Syrian Eagle, a January 1930 article entitled “Unity Spells Success for Arabs”:

“…This same spirit characterizes the activities of the Palestinian Arabs these latter days. Whether the incentive is their own, or whether it is the Syrians who are showing such active interest in the Palestinian question lately, we do not pretend to discuss, because the Syrians seem to now be in control of the guidance of Palestinian destinies. But, whatever the case, we cannot fail to admit that the Palestinians are bound to succeed in their endeavors because of the strong determination characterizing their efforts.”

There is a lot to analyze here, such as the perception that it was inevitable that Arabs would prevail over Zionism. As it became increasingly clear over the next two decades that this would not be the case, the disenchantment of the Arab community is important to examine.

From Al-Bayan, a January 1930 article entitled “Jews of New York Being Disillusioned”:

“Now the former illusions of the American supporters of Zionism are being dissipated, thanks to organized Arab propaganda. Instead of the visionary homeland which they aspired to erect, they have come to realize that the Arabs have in the land sacred places which they hold inviolable, as well as traditions which surpass by far anything that the Jews may claim. Besides, the Arabs in Palestine are strong in numbers and have millions of their Arab brothers in neighboring countries who would never permit an alien people, whomsoever that people may be, to carry out its designs against Palestine which the Arabs hold so dearly.”

There is a lot to interpret in this as well, especially since the supposed “disillusioned” Zionists of New York are probably a mistaken image held by the writers of Al-Bayan that does not reflect reality. I look forward to doing more research in Zionist newspapers as well as mainstream news outlets like The New York Times to see perceptions on the other side.

This quote makes evident that regardless of the facts on the ground, there is a growing identification with Palestinians and a belief that Arabs will unite to prevent the creation of a Zionist state.

For next week, I will finish looking through The Syrian World since I have one more reel left (and I must return them by Monday). I’ll finish Davidson’s America’s Palestine for more secondary reading and delve into the writings of Arab figures I have previously mentioned and do some more research in The New York Times. I hope I can get some writing done for a few sections of my paper too.

(Sorry that my footnotes do not use superscripted numbers! I’ve been relying on TextEdit and really need to get another word processor ASAP…)

My research is progressing, though I cannot say I have a clear thesis yet. I feel like I haven’t found enough in my research to move into the writing stage; however, I will try to gather more sources and begin writing soon since a rough draft will be due before we know it.

What I think I would like some feedback on is how to interpret my sources to gain a sense of how political activism changes people’s self-images and identity. If anyone has any suggestions for readings on how to write a cultural history of political action, I would greatly appreciate it.

I finally received the microfilm reels for The Syrian World, an English-language journal edited by Salloum Mokarzel that ran from 1926 to 1935. Regarding the title “Syrian,” early Arab immigrants to the United States were often lumped under this category despite not actually being from what is known as Syria today. Under the Ottoman Empire, there was simply a region called “Bilad Ash-Shaam” or “Greater Syria” that encompassed what is today Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and Jordan. A majority of early immigrants came from the area around Mount Lebanon (in what is today – surprise – Lebanon) and from parts of modern-day Syria, but they were still all usually known as “Syrian.” I just want to point this out because even these terms for self-identification are not as simple as they may appear. Because the Middle East was broken into mandates and eventual states by the British and French along arbitrary border lines, how Arabs identified themselves at the same time that these nations were being created is very interesting. Therefore, The Syrian World features news and writings on a great deal of the Middle East outside of present-day Syria, especially relating to Palestine.

Having gone through the issues until 1931 thus far, I am struck by how well-written and profoundly interesting the content is. As the annotated guide to The Syrian World states, “Salloum decided in 1926 to establish a journal in English aimed to so much to the Arabic-speaking immigrant that Al-Hoda [an Arabic journal established by Salloum’s brother] but to that immigrant’s children. He wanted to help in the Americanization process of the young, to give them a sense of identity and worth, and pride in their heritage.”1

The newspaper is especially helpful because it also includes a section called the “Spirit of the Syrian Press” that collects articles from other American-Arab publications; this has allowed me to have access even to Arabic newspapers that I thought I would have difficulty reading (and even finding).

I have found a plethora of interesting articles in this journal arguing for an understanding of “Americanism” among Arabs that allows them to embrace parts of the new culture while retaining elements of the old. For instance, this passage illustrates a typical exhortation to young Arabs who are becoming American:

Can you not realize that Americanism which requires the renunciation of your former citizenship and allegiance does not necessarily require that you renounce also the virtues of your race and whatever you have of worthy customs and traditions? Can you not see that this nation which you so greatly admire is composed of nothing less than various racial elements extracted from the Old World from which you have come? THe Man who fails to appreciate the beauty spots of the nation of which he ‘was’ a part may never be expected to detect these spots in the nation of which he has ‘become’ a part, even though he were to sew the naturalization certificate into his skin!”2

I have found a variety of similar articles that will allow me to discuss in my paper how identity shifted among immigrants during this time period. The other part of my paper, however, deals with anti-Zionist activism (or, as these activists would later redefine the name of the movement, Palestinian national activism). Most of the articles from Arab presses in this time period exhibit suspicion toward Zionism in Palestine and much of the discussion centers on the Balfour Declaration. I am now in the process of reading New York Times reports on a delegation of Arab intellectuals and activists (most of whom had published in The Syrian World) who testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs regarding the Palestine question. I also plan to focus more on The Palestine National League now too, though finding sources on them has proven to be challenging.

1. John G. Moses, Annotated Guide to The Syrian World, 1926-1932, (Saint Paul, MN: University of Minnesota, 1994), xi.
2. “How they Understand Americanism,” quoted from Meerat-Ul-Gharb (N.Y., February 14, 1928), The Syrian World, March 1928, 43.