56 Exit from Authoritarianism improve their collective treatment. When US Senator David Reed called them “Mediterranean trash,” Syrian American clubs pressured Reed to walk back his comments (Younis 1995: 216). So too did the Syrian American Federation of New York defend the naturalization rights of Syrians and lobby President William Taft for citizenship (Gualtieri 2009: 110–11). And although Syrians’ allies in the white Protestant church argued that “they do not carry revolutionary theories or propensities” (Younis 1995: 123), Syrians did mobilize from the United States on matters of national independence. The Suriya el-Fetat (Young Syria Party) was founded in 1899 to support a free homeland and recruit fighters in the struggle. During the turn of the twentieth century, media reports described how “revolutionists on lower Washington Street” in Manhattan plotted against Ottoman power (Younis 1995: 140). According to historian Adele Younis, they also lobbied the US government to help free Syria from the “Mohammodan [sic] Government of Damascus” (1995: 385). Syrian American organizations from states such as Massachusetts and Oklahoma also participated in the first Arab Congress, which convened in Paris in 1913 (Gualtieri 2009: 88). Elites in the community sparred in the press about whether the immigrant community was really “for” or “against” the Turkish Sultan (Fahrenthold 2013), but they nevertheless professed a kind of long-distance nationalism that bridged sectarian labels (Fahrenthold 2019; Gualtieri 2009: 83–84). Later, Syrians in New York formed the National Independence Party of Syria to inspire resistance to French occupation, and the New Syria Party (Gualtieri 2009; Pennock 2017). Syrian presses also highlighted attacks, including the bombing of a Syrian’s home in Georgia in 1923 (Younis 1995: 245) and the lynching of a Syrian man in Florida and the killing of his wife by a police chief (Gualtieri 2020: 27). They advertised the community’s achievements, campaigns by elite women’s groups for charity, and assimilation-related activities such as literacy classes. Federations in the 1950s also agitated on behalf of the Palestinian refugee issue, as when the National Association of Syrian and Lebanese American Federations met with US President Truman in 1951 to convince him to attend to the problem (Gualtieri 2020: 83). During World War I, a secretive accord between Britain and France called the Sykes–Picot Agreement was drawn up in 1916 and forged the modern-day boundaries of Syria. At the end of the war in 1918, Syria came under French control as per this arrangement and, as sanctioned by the League of Nations, became a mandated protectorate of the French. Battles for territorial control continued, which prompted the emigration of Christians in large numbers to the West. Battles also ensued against French rule, after which Syrians and the French agreed upon a treaty of independence in 1936. Hashim al-Atassi became Syria’s first president under the new constitution. After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, Syria came under the rule of the Vichy regime. Later, the Free French and the British regained territory, but this did not upend colonial control until 1946. At this time, Syrians came to be distinguished from the Lebanese and https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press