1 - Repositioning Armenians in Newly Post-colonial Nation-states: Lebanon and Syria, 1945–1946

Summary

Introduction

This is the first of four chapters investigating how Armenians in Lebanon re-situated themselves and re-imagined their place in that Middle Eastern country and in the world more broadly during a sensitive, transitional time of change: the early post-colonial period. This chapter focuses on the mid-1940s. Existential political questions shaped those years. Lebanon was manoeuvering from de jure independence, in 1943, to its de facto independence, which it gained ‘only’ in 1946. This path was strewn with political and military mines; in fact, the ultimate shape of independence and hence of the Lebanese polity was not self-evident ahead of time, which is to say before 1946. External powers, principally France and Britain, maintained an interest and kept troops in Lebanon (and Syria) through 1946. In Lebanon and beyond, some intellectuals and politicians persistently advocated alternatives to Lebanese independence, including a union with Syria if not with other countries in the Arab East.

This chapter digs deep into the manifold triangulations and balancing acts constitutive of Lebanese Armenians’ changing views of their place in and vis-à-vis the complex making of the Lebanese state and its wider Arab environment as well as vis-à-vis the Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic (ASSR). It pursues this inquiry by closely analysing two ideologically opposed newspapers, the leftist, Hnchak Ararad and the firmly right-wing, Dashnak Aztag. These press outlets also became responsible for issuing political statements even though these political parties enjoyed civil representation, unlike other sites with an active Armenian press, such as Istanbul. These papers reflected the issues of interest in this chapter implicitly, that is not in what they said, but how; I will open the chapter with a note on this dimension. More importantly, they explicitly reflected on these balancing acts. I will explore four themes. The first is Armenians’ position in and vis-à-vis the Lebanese polity, as well as vis-à-vis Syria. A second concerns language, and specifically the multiple roles of Arabic. The next has to do with the ambiguities of spaces relevant for Armenians in and beyond Lebanon. And a last concerns the fascinating political positioning of the Armenian church that, although conservative, felt forced to support communist Armenia and the USSR as the ASSR's protector.