New Texts Out Now: Simon Jackson, 'Diaspora Politics and Developmental Empire: The Syro-Lebanese at the League of Nations'
Jadaliyya, 8 May 2013.
This particular article concentrates on the role of the Syro-Lebanese diaspora in the political economy of the Mandate, from the end of World War I into the 1930s. I show how members of the diaspora, notably in the Americas, organized, petitioned, campaigned, and volunteered to change the emerging political economy of Lebanon and Syria. I explain how diverse the diaspora was politically, but also how important to shaping events in and perceptions of the French Mandate. Whether from Rio de Janeiro, Detroit, or elsewhere, distance was no barrier to diaspora participation in Syrian and Lebanese socioeconomic development, a conclusion with implications for methodological nationalists, but also for scholars for whom colonial empire has become the privileged unit of analysis.