The Nation And Its Imagined Past Among The Levantine Diaspora, 1900-1936

This thesis deals with the contingency and choice within “diaspora nationalism” as it manifested among Levantine communities overseas, in particular those in the United States, Brazil and Egypt. It examines the three dominant nationalist positions pertaining to the Levant; Lebanism, Syrianism and pan-Arabism. In order to better understand these positions, the writings of prominent diaspora nationalists are used to discuss the ideologies; Naoum and Salloum Mokarzel for the Lebanist position, Antoun Saadeh for the Syrianist position, and Jurji Zaydan and Ameen Rihani for the pan-Arabist position. The nationalists discussed here all imagined their respective homelands in two different senses; spatially and chronologically. This thesis illustrates and compares how they imagined their homelands, and what said imagining means for the study of diaspora and nationalism.