5 - The Migration of Middle Eastern Christians and European Protection: A Long History

Summary

Introduction

The history of the ‘protection’ of Christian minorities in the Middle East cannot be reduced to a diplomatic issue. ‘Protection’ in an anthropological approach is a universal rhetoric, shared by almost everybody in Mediterranean societies, and the notion of dhimma, which is the basic principle underlying relations between Muslims on one hand and Christians and Jews on the other means contract, pact, protection and guarantee. But beyond this, in segmented societies with a weak state, patronage and clientelism appear in various shapes. Protection is an entangled issue, to which various players contribute on different scales: in this case, Eastern Christian individuals and congregations, local states and societies, Western opinion and Western States.

The history of protection first means one of circulations. From the sixteenth century onwards, a significant and increasing number of Eastern Christians, mainly members of the clergy, visited the ‘Christian Lands’ in order to claim support, collect alms and, sometimes, settle there. As a justification for their presence, they generally introduced themselves as victims of Islamic ‘tyranny’. On another level, Western consuls, merchants and missionaries settling in the Levant belonged to networks in which they benefitted from local ‘protections’. At the same time, they led complex systems of credit, advances on crops and tax-farming in which local Christians were involved. Occasionally, as early as at the beginning of the seventeenth century, local leaders such as Emir Fakhraddīn in Mount Lebanon could claim political and military support from Europe. Especially from the eighteenth century onwards, the so-called proteges of the European nations, benefitting from the berat which gave them exemption from Ottoman law, were an important element in this system.

Yet, ‘protection’ became an important diplomatic and ideological issue during the nineteenth century, when direct intervention by the European powers within the Ottoman Empire became heavier. At the same time, the ever-increasing anti-Christian tone of riots in the Ottoman cities and countries led to a mobilisation of international opinion through the press and to the first appearance of a humanitarian agenda for Mount Lebanon and Damascus after the massacres of 1860, followed by those in Anatolia (1894–96) and Crete (1897).