The migrant Arab communities of North America, South
America, and West Africa have been the subject of significant scholarly examination
in English and continue to get attention, as recent
conference proceedings demonstrate.
But often research about these groups has foregrounded the national
dimensions of their experience, erasing the Ottoman connections which many migrants continued to cultivate, exploit, and, the most important and controversial verb
when it comes to citizenship, feel.
In this document, we catch a glimpse of some of these
dynamics in a translation into Ottoman Turkish of an Arabic newspaper article from “Al-Brazilia”,
published in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1900 by a man named Kaysar Ibrahim Maluf, who
likely hailed from Mount Lebanon. What is perhaps most interesting is how the writer presents his community within a squarely Ottoman frame of reference. The
writer begins by defining himself as “among those Ottoman citizens born in the
royal domains.” The local
community of “Ottoman migrants”, meanwhile, is pegged at 40,000. Moreover, the newspaper’s purpose is described as
“to serve the spread…of the resolution of the Ottoman peoples that are
here.” (buradaki akvam-i usmaniyyenin
ihlası) And the occasion of
the request is perhaps the most Ottoman of all, the twenty-fifth anniversary of
Sultan Abdül Hamid II’s accession to the throne. These points are significant given
the emphasis on Arab, Syrian, or Lebanese identity that pervades most of the secondary
literature on this topic.
Source: BOA Y-MTV 209/19 (3 S 1318)
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