
This work is the first comprehensive history of the Lebanese migrant communities of colonial French West Africa, a vast expanse that covered present-day Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Guinea, Benin and Mauritania. Where others have concentrated on the commercial activities of these migrants, casting them as archetypal middlemen, this work reconstructs not just their economic strategies, but also their social and political lives. Moreover, it examines the fraught responses of colonial Frenchmen to the unsettling presence of these interlopers of empire--responses which, with their echoes of metropolitan racism, helped to shape the ways in which Lebanese migrants represented themselves and justified their place in West Africa. This is a work which attempts not just to reshape broader understandings of diasporic life-of Janus-like existences lived in transit between distant locales, and de- pendent on the constant to-and-fro of people, news, and goods--but also to challenge the way we think about empires, and the relations between their constituent territories and diverse inhabitants.
This book investigates the social, economic, and political integration of Lebanese migrant communities within the colonial framework of French West Africa. Andrew Arsan utilizes archival research and historical analysis to challenge the reductionist view of these migrants as mere commercial middlemen, instead presenting them as complex actors navigating the racialized hierarchies of the French colonial administration.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars recognize this work as a significant contribution to the study of colonial diasporas and the complexities of imperial administration. Readers frequently note the academic rigor and the nuanced approach the author takes in deconstructing the economic and social identity of the Lebanese migrant community.
Page Count:
359
Publication Date:
2014-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190257458
ISBN-13:
9780190257453
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