Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon their Own(Alternative Histories: Narratives from the Middle East and Mediterranean)

This book argues that Armenians around the world in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial 1940s and 1950s. Tsolin Nalbantian explores Armenians' discursive re-positioning within the newly independent Lebanese nation-state; the political-cultural impact (in Lebanon as well as Syria) of the 19468 repatriation initiative to Soviet Armenia; the 1956 Catholicos election; and the 1957 Lebanese elections and 1958 mini-civil war. What emerges is a post-Genocide Armenian history of principally power, renewal and presence, rather than one of loss and absence.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1 - Repositioning Armenians in Newly Post-Colonial Nation-States: Lebanon and Syria, 1945/1946 Chapter 2 - The Homeland Debate, Redux: The Political-Cultural Impact of the 1946-1949 Repatriation to Soviet Armenia Chapter 3 - Cold War, Bottom-up: The 1956 Catholicos Election Chapter 4 - Making Armenians Lebanese: The 1957 election and the ensuing 1958 conflict Conculsion Bibliography

About the Author :
Tsolin Nalbantian is Lecturer in Modern Middle East History at Leiden University. She is co-series editor of Critical, Connected Histories (Leiden University Press) and has published articles in Mashriq & Mahjar, MESA Review of Middle East Studies and History Compass. She has written the entry ‘Armenians in the Middle East’ for the Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East (2018).

Review :
What emerges (from this book) is a post-Genocide Armenian history of - principally - power, renewal and presence, rather than one of loss and absence. While “diaspora,” as Khachig Tololyan has written, is useful to “think with,” what would it be to think without? Or, as Tsolin Nalbantian urges in her remarkable new book, to think beyond? Armenians Beyond Diaspora is an important contribution to both Armenian Studies and Lebanese historiography, and through it, Nalbantian offers an exciting new path for how minority communities, rather than serving as footnotes to national or regional histories, can be better understood as socially and politically integral parts of those same histories. Armenians Beyond Diaspora is a major contribution to the field of Middle Eastern Studies. Nalbantian situates Armenians of Lebanon in the larger context of the Middle East during the Cold War period. Through her unique ability of analyzing the political discourse of the time, Nalbantian demonstrates how the bi-polar system had serious ramifications on Lebanon and its Armenian citizens. In this journey between time and space, the local and global, Nalbantian weaves together a narrative that combines history and anthropology in telling the story of a community which has been marginalized in the mainstream historiography of the Middle East in general and Lebanese historiography in particular.