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Copyright by Joseph Walker Leidy 2016 The Thesis Committee for Joseph Walker Leidy Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Antun Saadeh in the mahjar, 1938-1947 APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Yoav Di-Capua Tarek El-Ariss Antun Saadeh in the mahjar, 1938-1947 by Joseph Walker Leidy, B.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Acknowledgements I want to express my sincere gratitude to my committee, Professors Yoav Di-Capua and Tarek El-Ariss, for their time and comments. My thanks in particular go to Professor Di-Capua, whose encouragement and guidance have meant a great deal to me. Additionally, I am lucky to have found at UT and in the Middle Eastern Studies department an extremely kind and supportive group of colleagues, staff members, and faculty whose impact on this thesis is, if indirect, significant and gratefully acknowledged. I could not have conducted the research for this thesis without Professor Steven Hyland Jr, whom I wish to thank for his generosity in helping me arrange my research trip to Argentina. I am grateful as well to the gracious and patient staff of the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno in Buenos Aires. I owe my parents more thanks than I could possibly express here. Their support for my academic pursuits has been as unwavering as it has been deeply meaningful for me and for that I am eternally grateful. iv Abstract Antun Saadeh in the mahjar, 1938-1947 Joseph Walker Leidy, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Yoav Di-Capua Antun Saadeh (1904-1949), the founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, has often been labelled a political and ideological imitator of European fascism. This association has led many to gloss over an important feature of his career: the mahjar, or Arab diaspora, particularly in Argentina and Brazil where he spent much of his life. This thesis contends that Saadeh's illiberalism emerged not as a mere echo of European fascism but from a diverse set of ideas and experiences. Central among these was his experiences and perceptions of the mahjar, which became a symbolic foil for Saadeh’s Syrian Social Nationalism. On the one hand, Saadeh conceived of the mahjar in terms that paralleled the historicist ideal of Phoenician trading colonies in Lebanese nationalism. However, Saadeh also had reservations about the dedication of migrant communities to the national cause. Reflecting this ambiguity, Arabic-language periodicals published in Argentina show how Saadeh was received in 1940s migrant society, where he found both supporters and detractors. There, Saadeh’s initially positive reception was followed by a turn against him in public debates. Nonetheless, Saadeh and his party had some success in establishing their movement in the mahjar, where younger supporters connected Saadeh to local discourses of national liberation. Viewing Saadeh from the perspective of his transnational influences and migrant audiences allows us to see him not as an exception in midcentury Levantine politics but within the wider context of nationalist politics in Lebanon, Syria, and the mahjar at the end of the Mandate era. v Table of Contents Introduction: Antun Saadeh in the mahjar, 1938 – 1947 ...................................... 1 Migration, diaspora nationalism and the historiography of the mahjar ........ 6 Antun Saadeh in the context of mahjar society ......................................... 10 The mahjar in Antun Saadeh’s thought, 1919 – 1938 ........................................ 17 The Saadeh family: mahjar and nahda ...................................................... 18 Materialism, integration, and the national cause in Syrian Brazil............... 23 Diaspora and civilization in Saadeh’s Nushū’ al-umam ............................. 28 Antun Saadeh in Argentine Arab Migrant Society ............................................. 39 Receiving Saadeh: José Moisés Azize and the Club Siriolibanés ............... 40 “Clarifications:” public defections against Saadeh .................................... 50 Migration and infiltration: Ad-Difah’s critique of Saadeh .......................... 54 Syrian Nationalist Recruitment in Argentina and Beyond, 1939-1947................ 63 First encounters with Saadeh: Farīd Nuzhā and Jubrān Massūḥ ................. 64 Syrian nationalist networks in the mahjar ................................................. 70 “Nuestro Zaím:” Syrian nationalism in Spanish and Portuguese ................ 75 Conclusion: Legacies of Migration in Middle Eastern Politics ........................... 84 References ......................................................................................................... 92 vi Introduction: Antun Saadeh in the mahjar, 1938 – 1947 The Syrian and Lebanese migrants who formed the late 19th and early 20th century mahjar, literally “land of emigration” in Arabic, had long been linked intimately with their homelands. The majority, particularly of the large numbers who arrived between the 1890s and the end of the First World War, were Christians originating from the Mt. Lebanon region.1 Local inhabitants sometimes called them “Turks” because of their Ottoman documentation; later, the term Syro-Lebanese – siriolibanés in Spanish – appears to have evolved to accommodate a space of ambiguity after the formation of the Syrian and Lebanese states. Apart from questions of identity, the mahjar also had to consider its relationship with the political ideologies and cultural trends of its Levantine and Arab homelands: anti-imperialism, pan-Arabism, communism, and the many legacies of the nahḍa, or Arab renaissance of the late 19th century. The mahjar, despite the distance, was immersed in the Arab world and its politics. Among these many debates and discourses linking the Syrian and Lebanese diaspora with their homeland was the Syrian nationalism of Antun Saadeh (1904-1949) founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). Saadeh spent much of his adolescence and early adulthood in Brazil with his family during much of the 1920s before returning to Beirut to found the SSNP and advocate for Syrian nationalism. He found himself in South America again in the late 1930s in an attempt to recruit support among the members of the mahjar and to avoid persecution in Lebanon. Thus given the 1 Khater, Akram Fouad. Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870- 1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, 1-2. 1 cross-regional nature of Levantine politics and his background in the South American Arabic-speaking diaspora, Saadeh brought his nationalist project to the mahjar in the late nineteen thirties and early forties as a continuation of the work he had begun in Lebanon. At the same time, the experience of migration and diaspora also set mahjar communities apart as participants in the field of Arab politics. Migrants developed a variety of social institutions to ensure a stable and comfortable place in their new homelands. Thus Saadeh engaged with local mahjar thinkers on subjects of Middle Eastern politics but in a context conditioned by migration, minority status, and local society. Saadeh’s mission to the mahjar ended like his project in the Levant: while he garnered a good deal of support and created a strong party structure, Saadeh failed to dominate mahjar political, social, and cultural life. Saadeh’s mahjar background is, however, pivotal to understanding his place – and legacy – in mid-twentieth Levantine politics. Saadeh came from a family whose social and political life was fundamentally shaped by migration. Following his father, the young Saadeh spent the nineteen twenties in Brazil. A significant portion of his intellectual development took place in São Paulo. Likewise, in the 1940s, Argentina became a base of operations and thus formed an important context for SSNP operations, which continued covertly in the Levant while the party openly branched out into various countries in the Western hemisphere. Members of the mahjar dedicated crucial financial support and personal time to Saadeh. Saadeh even married while in Argentina. The mahjar is thus an important key to understanding the figure of Antun Saadeh. 2 Saadeh’s attempts to bring about a Syrian nationalist revival among Arabic- speaking migrants in the Americas are an equally important part of mahjar history. The debates that Saadeh inspired and participated in were not just about identity and homeland political affiliation, but also about social norms, class, economic activity, and the family. At stake were the social organization of the mahjar and the often contradictory meanings of migration. What was the migrant’s responsibility to his or her homeland? How should migrant communities be organized and represented? On the other hand, what place did the mahjar occupy in the metanarrative of modern Syrian, Lebanese, and Arab history? In the late 19th and early 20th century, the mahjar had often conceived itself as being proof of the “civilized” character of Arabs abroad, therefore of their potential in their homelands.2 Once freed of the strictures of their traditional and colonized societies, the thinking went, Arab migrants found great success as businessmen and citizens in their newly adopted homes. Saadeh’s father Khalil was himself a major proponent of this view, which encouraged assimilation and an almost paternalistic