From the Holy Land to the New World and Back : Transnational Arab Feminism in the Early Twentieth Century

In his most famous work, The Syrians in America 1924 , historian Philip Khuri Hitti, expert in Islamic Studies, and pioneer of the academic study of Semitic languages and Arab culture in the United States, wrote: “Syria has always been an inhospitable place to live in and a splendid place to leave” 49 . Through this humorous note, he expressed the dilemma faced by many his fellow citizens, who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, reluctantly made the decision to flee their homeland. A Maronite Syrian Christian, Hitti was in fact recounting the story of the Christian communities who lived under the yoke of Ottoman imperialism. Inhospitality, at the time, resulted partly from the inferior status that such Christians had been forced to endure by the Ottoman governors since the sixteenth century. However, in the first decades of the twentieth century, geopolitical frictions were also compelling many people in the Near East to venture abroad. The Syrian provinces of the empire were indeed chronically beleaguered by religious strife, much of which European nations instigated. Whereas the French vied for control of the Catholic congregations and the Maronites in particular, the British supported the Druze community.