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Former Ottomans in the ranks: pro-Entente military recruitment among Syrians in the Americas, 1916–18*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Stacy D. Fahrenthold*
Affiliation:
Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

For half a million ‘Syrian’ Ottoman subjects living outside the empire, the First World War initiated a massive political rift with Istanbul. Beginning in 1916, Syrian and Lebanese emigrants from both North and South America sought to enlist, recruit, and conscript immigrant men into the militaries of the Entente. Employing press items, correspondence, and memoirs written by émigré recruiters during the war, this article reconstructs the transnational networks that facilitated the voluntary enlistment of an estimated 10,000 Syrian emigrants into the armies of the Entente, particularly the United States Army after 1917. As Ottoman nationals, many Syrian recruits used this as a practical means of obtaining American citizenship and shedding their legal ties to Istanbul. Émigré recruiters folded their military service into broader goals for ‘Syrian’ and ‘Lebanese’ national liberation under the auspices of American political support.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Devi Mays, Akram Khater, Beth Baron, Chris Rominger, and a supportive audience at North Carolina State University’s Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies for their critical insights made on early drafts of this work. My further gratitude goes to the editors at the Journal of Global History and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable commentary. The National Endowment for the Humanities 2014 Summer Seminar ‘World War I in the Middle East’ provided valuable research support.

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27 The French funded the CCS in Paris at similar levels: see Tauber, Arab movements, p. 209.

28 al-Nahda, ‘Ila al-Watan’, p. 4. The Lebanon League kept two doctors on retainer: Rashid Baddur and Najib Barbur in New York.

29 Ibid., p. 4.

30 NARA, RG 59, M367, roll 475, 763.72119/9557, Hugh Cleveland to Bainbridge Colby, Secretary of State, ‘Reason for creation of Eastern Legion’, 10 March 1920, pp. 4–5.

31 Bakhash, Shukri, ‘al-Wizarat al-Harbiyya al-Fransawiyya wa-l-Firq al-Sharqiyya (The French War Ministry and the Légion d’Orient)’, al-Fatat 19 December 1917, p. 2Google Scholar.

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33 al-Nahda, ‘Ila al-Watan’, p. 4.

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36 Tauber, Arab movements, p. 211.

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39 Yusuf and Karam, ‘al-Suriyyun wa-l-khidma al-‘askariyya’, p. 3.

40 ‘al-Tajnid al-Inklizi huna (The British recruitment here)’, al-Bayan, 2 June 1917, p. 1.

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47 See, for instance, New York State Archives, Adjutant General’s office, Abstracts of World War I military service, 1917–1919, series B0808-85, draft cards for Alex Assa, service number 1929681, 25 September 1917, and for Taufik Hazaz, service number 3194840, 28 May 1918.

48 Naʿum Mukarzil, ‘al-Lubnaniyyun wa-l-Suriyyun tujaha al-khidma al-ʿaskariyya (The Lebanese and Syrians facing military service)’, al-Huda, 1 June 1917, p. 3.

49 Ibid., p. 3.

50 Gualtieri, Between Arab and white, pp. 58–61, 84.

51 Mukarzil, ‘al-Lubnaniyyun wa-l-Suriyyun’, p. 3.

52 Naʿum Mukarzil, ‘Fi kull yawm khitab’.

53 ‘Syrians loyal to United States’, Christian Science Monitor, 28 May 1917, p. 9.

54 Ibid.; NARA, RG 29, T626, roll 957, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Massachusetts Census of Populations, Suffolk County, Boston City, District 13-514, Ward 20, page 9b, line 81, Elias Shannon.

55 Bilingual Liberty Loan advertisement, ‘La tathabbat marra wahida innaka Amriki bal miʾa marra / Prove you are 100% American’, al-Nasr, 30 September 1918, p. 5.

56 Moroso, ‘Fall of Damascus’; Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI, Evelyn Shakir Collection (henceforth AANM, ES), Syrian American Club of Boston Records, 1, 5.

57 Mukarzil, ‘Fi kull yawm khitab’.

58 ‘Asas manh al-shʿub huquq taqrir mustaqbaliha (The foundational rights of peoples to determine their future)’, al-Huda, 2 June 1917, p. 2. See also Manela, Wilsonian moment, pp. 28–30.

59 Khater, ‘Becoming “Syrian”’, p. 300.

60 Ward, Kitab al-jundi al-Suri, p. 11.

61 On Costa Najour, see Gualtieri, Between Arab and white, pp. 60–2.

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68 Bakhash, ‘Nahu Suriya’.

69 NARA, RG 59, M367, roll 381, 763.72119/1686, E. Tabet and Mikhail Naimy to President Wilson, 10 May 1918. See also Makdisi, Ussama, Faith misplaced: the broken promise of American–Arab relations, 1820–2001, New York: Perseus Books, 2010, pp. 136146Google Scholar.

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74 Bakhash, ‘Nahu Suriya’.

75 Ibid.

76 NARA, RG 65.2.2, M1085, Investigative reports of the Bureau of Investigation, case no. 84061, Perkins, ‘Naoum Mokarzel—French Consul—Spanish Consul, alleged interference of Spanish Consul with Selective Draft of Syrians in the United States’, 28 January 1918, pp. 16–17.

77 NARA, RG 65.2.2, M1085, roll 751, case no. 329549, Busha, ‘Alli Muharem, alleged representing himself as Turkish consul’, 19 November 1918. See also ‘Gross frauds on draft suspected: follows arrest of Joseph Solomon and Said Joseph’, Boston Daily Globe, 15 January 1918.

78 Ford, Americans all, p. 56.

79 See ‘Alien slackers may not escape service’, New York Times, 22 April 1917, p. 3; ‘Deportation of alien slackers’, Christian Science Monitor, 1 August 1917, p. 1.

80 War Department organizational records, 77th Division records, Office of the Chief of Staff, memorandum no. 79, 21 May 1918, cited in Ford, Americans all, p. 63.

81 Ford, Americans all, p. 64.

82 AANM, ES, Syrian American Club Records, 1, 6, Shukry Yusuf, ‘Syrian American Association bylaws’, 10 October 1914. See also Gualtieri, Between Arab and white, p. 85.

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86 Saʿab, ‘Hawl harakat al-tatawwuʿ al-wataniyya (About the national voluntary recruitment movement)’, al-Huda, 5 May 1917, p. 5.

87 Ford, Americans all, pp. 37–9.

88 Tauber, Arab movements, p. 201. Such was the case of Melham George, investigated for draft evasion in 1918 but subsequently cleared because he was ‘fighting the Turks in Palestine’ with the French: NARA, RG 65.2.2, M1085, roll 692, case 277009, Dunn, ‘Visa investigation, Melham Maroum George’, 30 August 1918.

89 ‘Organize “foreign legions” at Devens: War Office experiments with new scheme’, Daily Boston Globe 17 August 1918.

90 Winship, Laurence, ‘Camp Devens foreign legion presents a Babel of tongues: Slav and Italian and Greek and Armenian, but all Americans at heart’, Daily Boston Globe, 25 August 1918, p. 32Google Scholar.

91 NARA, RG 21, Records of the US District Court, M1368, roll 99, Petitions and records of naturalizations of the U.S. District and Circuit Courts of the District of Massachusetts, Petition for naturalization of James Habib Attara, 22 November 1918.

92 Ward, Kitab al-Jundi al-Suri, p. 112.

93 Ibid., p. 101.

94 Beşikçi, Ottoman mobilization, p. 259.

95 NARA, RG 59, M 367, roll 381, 763.72119/1707, William Yale to Leland Harrison, Department of State, ‘Report #2 dealing with Arabia and Hedjaz situation’, 5 November 1917, pp. 18–19. See also Beşikçi, Ottoman mobilization, pp. 257–64; Eugene Rogan, The fall of the Ottomans: the Great War in the Middle East, New York: Basic Books, 2015, pp. 302–5.

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99 Ward, Kitab al-jundi al-Suri, p. 10.

100 Ibid., p. 122. Bishara’s derisive terminology, ‘the nations of Genghis Khan’ (al-dawla al-jankiziyya), was a common soldier’s idiom referring to the German forces. In Syrian usage the epithet also captured notions about the Ottomans as Turkish hordes.

101 AANM, ES, Syrian American Club Records, 1, 5, Gabriel Ward to Syrian American Club of Boston, 23 November 1918; Ward, Kitab al-Jundi al-Suri, p. 70.

102 ‘Ahad jabarat al-Suriyyun (One powerful Syrian)’, Abu al-Hawl, May 1917, and ‘Jundi yadaʿu al-Suriyyin wa-l-Lubnaniyyin ila-l-tatawwuʿ (A soldier calls on Syrians and Lebanese to volunteer)’, al-Huda, May 1917, reproduced in Ward, Kitab al-jundi al-Suri, pp. 125–9.

103 Ward, ‘ʿAr an la-tasil damaʾuna illa ʿala khanja al-saffah’.

104 NARA, RG 147, M2097, roll 185, Selective registration cards, World War II, no. 1753, fourth registration for George A. Matook, 1942.

105 Shakir, Wadiʿ and Maʿtuq, Jurj, ‘Risala jundi Suri (A Syrian soldier’s letter’, Fatat Boston, 3 March 1918, p. 1Google Scholar.

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107 Shakir and Maʿtuq, ‘Risala jundi Suri’.

108 AANM, ES, Syrian American Club Records, 1, 5, Jurj Maʿtuq to Syrian American Club of Boston, 4 June 1918.

109 Ibid.

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