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“Armenian Refugees in French Mandate Syria: Statelessness and Nation-Building in the Middle East,”
In the aftermath of the First World War, the Armenian Genocide, and the Turkish War of Independence, Syria became host to thousands of Armenian refugees. In this comprehensive history covering the period from 1920 to 1948, Victoria Abrahamyan foregrounds the experience of the Armenian refugees in the Syrian Jazira as they navigated competing state-building efforts led by the French mandatory power, Syrian nationalists, and Soviet Armenia.
Abrahamyan reveals the refugees’ agency amid internal conflicts and diverse loyalties and sheds light on the intricate power struggles over their status and belonging—particularly through competing French and Soviet post-war refugee settlement schemes—in a critical frontier between Western imperialist powers, the Soviet bloc, and Turkey. Using Armenian, Arabic, Russian, and French language sources, she explores how the Armenian refugee community responded to the rise of Arab nationalism in Syria, complicating simplistic sectarian interpretations of their place and reception in interwar Syria.
