[Currently in the drafting stage.]

The First Wave

In the 1880s, the first big wave of Arabic-speaking migrants joined Italians, Poles, East European Jews, and other groups from southern and eastern Europe bound for the United States. The Arab migrants were from what was then referred to as Greater Syria, a territory encompassing modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine. This entire region was part of the Ottoman empire. At its height in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman (sometimes called the Turkish) Empire controlled vast territories across eastern Europe, western Asia, and North Africa. Although the Ottoman Empire had by the late 19th century lost much of its former power, it still controlled much of the Arab-speaking world. It was primarily an Islamic empire, but its subjects consisted of a diverse mix of religious and ethnic groups, including Christians, Jews, Armenians, Kurds, and various Slavic peoples.

Between 1889 and the beginning of World War I, about one hundred thousand immigrants came to the U.S. from Mount Lebanon. The majority were Christian, especially Melkite and Maronite Catholics and others were Eastern Orthodox. One common narrative is that the migration was driven by the desire to escape religious persecution at hands of the Ottomans. However, prominent scholars have pointed out that this narrative exaggerates a truth that is much more complicated. For example, Aminah Al-Deen has pointed out that Arab Christians in the Ottoman Empire “were protected and enjoyed a limited amount of religious freedom.” However, “while they were free to worship in their churches, they could not build new ones and had to get permission to repair those that had stood for centuries.” Moreover, under Islamic law, Christian Arabs also had to pay a tax that Muslims did not have to pay.^[1]

But it was really a combination of many factors that eventually motivated many Arab Christians to migrate. The increasingly burdensome taxation was certainly one factor. The sense of being second-class citizens was undoubtedly another. At the same time, two major events occurred, creating economic crises that disrupted the livelihoods of many farmers across the region. First, there was the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 through the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt. The canal connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, and hence to the Indian Ocean, which enabled faster and cheaper transport of goods between Europe and East Asia. Consumer goods, such as silk from Japan, for instance, became more inexpensive. As a result, the demand for Middle Eastern silk decreased, driving many farmers out of business. Secondly, the spread in the 1890s of microscopic lice devastated grape farms in Mount Lebanon, a region where grape cultivation was a critical component of the local economy, confronting grape farmers with a similar hardship. Thus, the first wave of Arab men immigrated to the United States primarily seeking greater economic possibilities.^[2]

The Peddling Life

The earliest Arab immigrants were, for the most part, not only poor and uneducated, but they lacked the skills needed to fill the niches in the rapidly industrializing American labor force. Arab farmers who tried to make a go of farming found the lands more difficult to cultivate and the weather harsher than they were accustomed to in their homelands. When they failed at farming, a great many turned to peddling.^[3]

Peddling was not as lucrative as farming had been in the good days back home, and it was hard work too. It could also be dangerous as peddlers were vulnerable to theft and violence. But a good peddler could still make a lot of money for his effort. Peddlers often earned as much as $1,000 a year at a time when the annual income for laborers was only about $650. Moreover, like many economic migrants from southern and eastern Europe, Arab migrants at the time saw themselves only as sojourners. They intended to work hard for two or three years and return home with substantial savings.^[4]

Peddling was a get-rich-quick enterprise in the minds of many Syrians, and it became a magnet for many who immigrated before 1910. They entered the country through New York or some other major port of entry, heading for a particular peddler settlement in some well-chosen location. Veteran peddlers in these locations often recruited relatives and villagers from his native village in the “old country.” Peddling networks reached into every corner of America. Working from an established home base, peddlers covered great distances on foot and were often away for days and weeks at a time, traveling on foot from place to place. They sold ready-made school clothes, men’s work clothes, fabrics, towels, jewelry, tablecloths, bedspreads, and much more. The peddler was in essence a mobile department store.^[5]

By 1910, the era of peddling had largely ended as American consumers turned increasingly towards the new department stores and mail-order houses like Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck. At the same time, immigrants were confronting the reality that they would not return to their villages. French and British colonial expansion in the Middle East had only further undermined traditional livelihoods and continued to create economic instability across the Middle East. Many former peddlers gave up on the idea of returning home and decided it was time to settle down and make permanent homes in the United States.^[6]