OTHERNESS AND BELONGING IN “DEMOCRATIC EMPIRES”: THE SYRIAN DIASPORA AND TRANSATLANTIC DISCOURSES OF IDENTITY, 1890s-1930s by BRYAN A. GARRETT DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Arlington August, 2016 Supervising Committee: Kenyon Zimmer, Supervising Professor Sarah Rose Robert B. Fairbanks Copyright © by Bryan A. Garrett 2016 All Rights Reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS August 8, 2016 Though writing can be a lonely process, this dissertation represents a collaborative effort. There are many I would like to thank for their contribution to this work. I am grateful to my dissertation advisor, Kenyon Zimmer, who tirelessly scoured my work in its most disjointed state and provided fresh eyes when mine faltered. He has helped to make the dissertation worth writing, and despite my best efforts, hopefully easier to read. Students of all levels, but especially doctoral candidates at the University of Texas at Arlington, should count themselves fortunate to have Kenyon as their advocate and advisor. I would also like to thank the other members of the dissertation committee, Sarah Rose and Robert Fairbanks, for their advice in providing me new avenues for exploration and their suggestions for improving the document as a whole. I am indebted to Mustaq Ahmad and the Festival of Ideas Global Research Institute for providing the support necessary to undertake research at numerous archives on multiple continents. Any researcher knows the tremendous expense in time and money required for just one trip, but undertaking a number of them can only be done with the support of generous sponsors who share in the pursuit to understand and appreciate the past more fully. I would also like to thank W. Marvin Delaney, who as chair of the History Department at UT Arlington gave his steadfast support and allowed me to undertake numerous follow-up research trips and present at academic conferences. iii Also, I am appreciative of Dean Les Riding-In and Dean Elizabeth Cawthon for finding the funding necessary to complete this process. This work was also supported by the Carrizo Dissertation Fellowship. I simply could not have been accessed the archival resources without the help and guidance of the staff members at the Immigrations History Research Center at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, USA), the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University (Detroit, USA), the National Archives of the United Kingdom (Kew, England), the Centre des archives diplomatiques de Nantes (Nantes, France), and the Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinamericanos and the Archivo General de la Nación Argentina (Buenos Aires, Argentina). A number of unnamed individuals contributed to the writing process as well. I presented parts of this dissertation at the Shifting Tides/Anxious Borders transatlantic history conference at Binghampton, New York in April 2014, at the Northwest and California World History Association Joint Meeting in Seattle, Washington in February 2015, and at the American Historical Association’s annual conference held in Atlanta in January 2016. I am grateful for all of the comments and advice fellow panel members and those in the audience provided. Last, but certainly not lease, I am thankful to my wife, Isabelle, who spared me a few more grey hairs and sleepless nights with her unswerving commitment to make this document an accessible text. I accept the responsibility for all errors, arguments, and conclusions herein. iv ABSTRACT OTHERNESS AND BELONGING IN “DEMOCRATIC EMPIRES”: THE SYRIAN DIASPORA AND TRANSATLANTIC DISCOURSES OF IDENTITY, 1890s-1930s Bryan A. Garrett, PhD The University of Texas at Arlington, 2016 Supervising Professor: Kenyon Zimmer This dissertation examines the arguments that Syrians in diaspora at the turn of the twentieth century used in constructing their group identity. It traces the transnational and transimperial discourses that centered on the pack-peddler mythology, or rather, it traces the diaspora intelligentsia’s narrative for the business diaspora. Their narrative framed the business elites as the quintessence of upward mobility in the modern world. The historiography of this subfield has been separated into two camps: one that takes for granted the assimilation of the business class into Western societies, and the other that offers a more critical rendering of Syrian migrant entrepreneurship. This dissertation bridges the gap between the two by offering a cultural study of the meaning of wealth and mobility. v This study takes into account a broad array of analytical lenses through which to view the Syrian diaspora: migration studies, business history, the history of science and technology, medicine, disability studies, race and whiteness studies, while maintaining a critical eye toward cultural symbolism and meaning across time and space. It takes into account how the transnational movement of peoples, goods, and ideas, clashed with the emergence of nations-states and the continually shifting national identities underpinning them. The elites of the Syrian migrant community maintained vigilance in self-portrayal as they crisscrossed national borders and confronted agents of state institutions. They formulated various proto- national identities for the entire diasporic community that centered on the agenda of the intelligentsia, and fitted other members of the diaspora into that mold. In the process, Syrian migrants would play different imperial powers and nation-states against one another to maintain their group’s social status and business connections. Moreover, they simultaneously committed to redefining the boundaries of the region that increasingly became to be seen as the “Middle East.” By adopting modes of modern capitalism, rendering free-trade practices as intrinsically Syrian, and then exporting those practices to the imperial periphery in areas that included Madeira and the Philippines, Syrians attempted to “assimilate” to modernity. Syrian migrants, however, became enmeshed in a state of in-betweenness both in their adopted receiving societies and in their sending societies in the Eastern Mediterranean. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................... III ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... V LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................................. IX INTRODUCTION................................................................................................. 1 PART I: SYRIANS IN THE MODERN GLOBAL ECONOMY ................... 29 Chapter 1: Situating “Syria” ....................................................................................................... 29 1.1 Ottoman Syria and Economic Integration............................................................................ 30 1.2 The Syrian Mahjar ............................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 2: Syrian Businesses and Workers in New York City ................................................ 57 2.1 The Syrian American Business Community of New York .................................................. 57 2.2 Syrian American Laborers and the Underbelly of Desirability ........................................... 73 PART II: RACIALIZING SYRIANS ............................................................... 94 Chapter 3: Racialization in the Diaspora ................................................................................... 94 3.1 An Early Test Case in Pre-World War I South Africa ......................................................... 99 3.2 Syrian Identity and Belonging during WWI ...................................................................... 111 3.3 The Tenuousness of Belonging in Latin “Ameerka” ......................................................... 121 3.4 Experiences of Otherness in Africa and the South Pacific ................................................ 140 3.5 An Imposed View of the Mahjar from Above ................................................................... 145 Chapter 4: Racialization in the United States .......................................................................... 147 4.1 Fantasy, Myth, and the Frontiers of Western Civilization ................................................. 156 4.2 Court of Public Opinion I: Syrian Americans and Public Displays of Violence ............... 161 4.3 Court of Public Opinion II: Philanthropy and the Syrian Cause in WWI .......................... 166 4.4 Legal Ramifications of Geographical Exclusion and Inclusion ......................................... 171 4.5 American Skepticism in an Era of Immigration Restriction .............................................. 176 Chapter 5: Diseased Syrians: Trachoma, Tuberculosis, and Madness .................................. 180 5.1 Return Migration and Tuberculosis ................................................................................... 205 5.2 East, West, and Insanity .................................................................................................... 210 5.3 Westernization of Syrians .................................................................................................. 217 vii PART III: SYRIAN IDENTITY FORMATION ........................................... 218 Chapter 6: Positive Identity Formation...................................................................................