Interlopers of empire : the Lebanese diaspora in colonial French West Africa / Andrew Arsan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Arsan, Andrew, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lebanese--Africa, West--History.

Lebanese.

Lebanese--Africa, West--Social conditions.

France--Colonies--Africa, West--History.

France.

France--Colonies--Africa, West--Race relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (362 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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, Cote 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 metro

Contents:

Introduction : moving peoples, entangled histories

A tale of two mountains

Roots and routes : the paths of Lebanese migration

Fears of a 'Syrian Guinea' : commerce, contagion and race in French West Africa, 1898-1914

Failing to stem the tide : Lebanese migration and the competing prerogatives of the imperial state

Merchants and magpies : the trading lives of eastern Mediterranean migrants

Here, there and everywhere : the lives of Lebanese migrants in AOF

The ties that bind : diasporic political culture in AOF

Coda : the making of postcolonial selves.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-025745-8

0-19-938820-2

0-19-025717-2