A note on Lebanese/Syrian settlement in New England

Many early Lebanese migrants arrived in Australia with only a suitcase full of supplies. Walking their way into regional areas, they established businesses that would help many country towns thrive. Yarad's Store Taree. Photo ABC 

Fascinating piece on ABC Mid North Coast (10 November) by Emma Siossian, Jennifer Ingall and Lauren Pezet, Hawkers, haberdashery and hospitality on the history of the Lebanese community in country NSW. Two New England towns, Moree and Taree, were featured.

Before going on, a definitional note. I have used the term Lebanese, but as I have commented before in the context of Germany, the application of labels based on nationality can be misleading. Lebanon did not exist as a country until after the First World War. The first Lebanese settlers in New England came from the then Ottoman province of Syria and were classified as Syrian.

Dan Bros Hawker Van, Taree?, nd, photo ABC

A useful overview of the history of Lebanese  settlement in NSW can be found in Paul Convy, Dr. Anne Monsour, Settlement in
 New South Wales  A Thematic History (Migration Heritage Centre, July 2018).

This paper provides a framework for understanding chain migration, a process similar to that seen with many other groups including the Chinese. It also provides a snapshot of some elements of the Lebanese community and its culture and history.

The Australian Lebanese Historical Society website provides some interesting material on individual Lebanese stories, while the UNE's Heritage Futures data base in  Different Sights - Immigrants in New England provides basic information on many individual stories including those from Lebanon.

One of the challenges in writing a local or regional history and especially a broader regional history is how to place each immigrant thread into a locally or regionally focused context. The broader story of the Lebanese community such as the influence of Sydney's Redfern is only relevant to the extent to which it affects the local or regional story.

I suspect that one common theme lies in the way in which small communities attempted to maintain their culture and links in the face of isolation. It's also interesting in the context of inland New England how the Chinese came to dominate one niche, the Lebanese a second, the Greeks a third. These niches overlapped.