The Syrian Peril: Middle Eastern Migration to Haiti

As editors of the Haitian newspaper Le Soir celebrated the upcoming centennial of the country’s independence, they also warned of an impending crisis. Migrants from the Middle East were flocking to Haiti. Justin Lhérisson, the main editor of Le Soir, captured the increasingly negative public sentiment through two stories respectively entitled “The Syrian Question” and “The Syrian Peril.” If fêting the country’s first one hundred years of existence served to strengthen the nation, Syrian and Lebanese migrants challenged its very roots. From Haiti’s founding in 1804, the country had stood as a bastion against colonialism and racism. Heads of state had supported the migration of African Americans from the United States and protected runaway slaves from Jamaica. However, this policy of asylum did not extend to migrants from the Middle East in the early-twentieth century. This paper will explore how Haitian intellectuals and politicians navigated what Lhérisson termed “the Syrian Peril,” and how this wave of migrants created a national crisis at a time of national celebration. Part of the Arab Diaspora, these migrants catalyzed a renewed debate on national identity at a time of heightened racism, biological determinism, and increased European and American imperialism. According to matriculation registers kept by the French Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Syrian and Lebanese migrants entered Haiti between 1895 and 1941. They frequently settled in cities and became part of Haiti’s middling class. Their economic power was one element that particularly troubled Haitian intellectuals and politicians. Thus, following leads in the Haitian press, I will examine the first decade, approximately 1895-1905, of contentious debates over Middle Eastern emigration to Haiti. This emigration unleashed a wave of xenophobia that undercut Haiti’s strong established tradition—inscribed in multiple nineteenth-century constitutions—of embracing persecuted peoples.