Sectarianism in the Syrian Jazira: community, land and violence in the memories of World War I and the French mandate (1915- 1939)

Abstract

This thesis is a historico-anthropological study of the transformations in the understandings of self and community among the Armenian, Syriac, and Kurdish refugees in the French Jazira in the post-genocide world. (1915- 1939). It explored the processes of change in self-identification and the terms of communal belonging of these groups by delving into the (post) memories of 1915 and the French mandate period, the political regimes under which the survivors came to live following their compulsory displacement from their homelands in present-day Turkey. It displayed the seminal role of French colonial governance in laying the foundations of the citizenship regimes of the post-colonial Syrian states. As well as this, it demonstrated the sectarian appropriations of official forms as a means of unburdening from the colonial period and as an interplay between “powerlessness and empowerment” in 2000s Syria.Through a reading of various archival material from the 1930s in juxtaposition with the (post) memories, and through tracing the colonial period in today’s discourses, this thesis has attempted to offer novel perspectives on two significant issues in Syria: state–society relations and the Kurdish issue.