Syria’s Transnational Rebellion

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.