The Other Arab Revolt: Emigre Arab Nationalism, Syrian American Soldiers, and an American Mandate for Syria, 1916–20

In 1916, the Hashemite Emir Faysal organized a confederation of Arab troops and declared his revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Pushing from the Hijaz into Syria over the next 18 months, Faysal’s Damascus campaign was supported by the Allied Powers as well as by Syrian collaborators raising resistance in Homs, Aleppo, and Damascus. Today, the Arab Revolt of 1916 is one of the most well-known stories of World War I in the Middle East, leading to the development of Faysal’s short-lived nationalist monarchy in 1918. What is less explored in narratives surrounding the Arab Revolt is the participation of Arab nationalists living abroad in Faysal’s movement, especially by Syrians in the Americas. In the United States, local Arab nationalist groups sponsored an enlistment campaign for Syrian immigrant men to fight to join the U.S. Army. Using recently-discovered diaries, memoirs, and press items written by Syrian American recruits who participated in this campaign, this paper situates emigrant soldiers between three powerful forces competing across transnational space: Emir Faysal’s Arab Nationalist movement, the French Foreign Ministry, and the U.S. Department of State. I argue that Syrian emigrant soldiers and political activists living in the U.S. provided important political, military, and fiscal support for Faysal’s Arab Revolt. After the War, they formed the ‘New Syria’ parties, political organizations that attempted to broker an alliance between Arab nationalists and the United States of America, including plans for an American Mandate over Syria. The American Mandate never came to fruition, but the flurry of party activism, petitioning, and soldiering constitutes an important, transnational dimension to the story of the Arab Revolt. During WWI, at least one road to Damascus led through New York.