Armenian Refugees in French Mandate Syria

Victoria Abrahamyan has succeeded in providing a distinctive and original contribution to scholarship. Her impressive book, drawing meticulously and sensitively upon primary sources in a wide array of languages, deserves close attention from anyone interested in armed conflict, refugees and state formation, and the entangled relationships between multiple actors, whether in the Middle East or beyond. * Peter Gatrell, Professor, The University of Manchester, UK * Abrahamyan’s study is a powerful exploration of how Armenian genocide survivors forged (provisional) new lives in Mandate Syria. It highlights their agency, resilience and ability to collaborate in the face of competing pressures—from the mandatory authorities, Ankara, Syrian nationalists, and the Soviets. This is historical scholarship at its finest: deeply researched, innovative, fine-grained, and eye-opening even for seasoned experts. * Hans-Lukas Kieser, Professor, The University of Newcastle, Australia * In this important new work, Abrahamyan tells the compelling story of post-genocide Armenian survivance in the Modern Middle East. Drawing from a wealth of sources, she weaves together the building of an Armenian diaspora national community with interwar French colonialism, rising Arab nationalism, and the politics of Soviet Armenia. In her account Armenians are active agents in creating a new community, not just beneficiaries of international humanitarianism or tools of European colonialism. Armenians come alive as complex actors in the social and ideological tumult of that period in a way no other historian of the interwar era has been able to accomplish. * Keith David Watenpaugh, Professor, University of California Davis, USA * Armenian Refugees in French Mandate Syria is a fascinating account of a displaced community’s resettlement into a fluid and uncertain emerging regional and global order, and in particular of refugees’ efforts to manage their own movements and direct their own political lives. It will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of migration and refugeehood in the interwar Eastern Mediterranean. * Laura Robson, Professor, Penn State University, USA *