Developed by British officer Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941) in 1907, scouting was first introduced into the Middle East in 1912, a history analyzed in Jennifer Dueck’s The Claims of Culture at Empire End (2010). It became more known after World War I, with the largest groups first forming in Damascus and Beirut. In the latter, a Sunni, Muhyi al-Din Nusuli, in 1920 founded al-Kashshaf al-Muslim, which in 1922 was recognized by the International Scout Federation (ISF) as the Muslim Scouts of Syria. Earliest recruits were at the school of the American University of Beirut, though most enrolled at the Islamic College (Kulliya Islamiyya) and the schools of the Maqasid Islamic charity organization. During the 1925-1927 anticolonial Syrian Revolt, the French Mandate authorities disbanded the scouting groups, though they soon recovered. In 1927, too, the pro-French Catholic Scouts de France were founded, and small secular French and Jewish units came to life as well. Moreover, scouting picked up speed also outside the French Mandate, e.g. in Egypt and Palestine, as Arnon Degani’s “They were prepared: the Palestinian Arab Scout Movement 1920-1948” (2014) shows.

Back in the French Mandate, the Muslim Scouts of Syria and Lebanon joined ranks in 1931. In 1933, there were 45 troops involving 3,000 members. But in 1934 the French authorities clamped down on them, concerned about support for Syro-Lebanese unity. Lebanese and Syrian scouts split. If in the 1930s especially Muslim scouts formed part of a widening organizational involvement of youth in anticolonial nationalist politics, they had seen themselves as nation-building pioneers already in the 1920s. As the below text shows, in their eyes scouting allowed (male) youngsters to develop physical strength, be outdoors and get to know “their” nation’s natural habitat, and hone self-help, leadership skills, and team spirit, among other desirable traits. In this sense the below text, which was printed without a byline in the Beiruti journal al-Kashshaf (The Scout), was complex, not unlike Baden-Powell’s beliefs as expressed in his seminal Scouting for Boys (1908). It meant to strengthen individuals’ self-reliance while simultaneously serving a collective end, in Baden-Powell’s case the British Empire, here the Lebanese-Syrian nationalist cause.

In 1866, US Presbyterians who had been working for half a century in the Ottoman city of Beirut founded the Syrian Protestant College (SPC), to compete with Arab and French endeavors in higher education. Chartered in the State of New York, the American University of Beirut (AUB), as the SPC has been called since 1920, came to employ American, European and Arab professors. It soon turned into a foremost institution of higher education for Arab Christians and Muslims alike from Greater Syria (present-day Syria, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan), and especially after World War I attracted more and more students also from other Arabic-speaking countries, a history told in Betty Anderson’s The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education (2011). AUB’s educational quality and missionary institutional bedrock gave it some clout in the United States.

Hence, when the New York-based Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation in 1924 added an international layer to a US-centered social science grant program it had been running since 1922, it in 1925 asked the AUB president, Bayard Dodge, whether his institution would apply for such a grant. AUB did. Making its case in a way that reflected the establishment of League of Nations Mandates in the post-Ottoman Iraq and Greater Syria and the rise of anticolonial nationalisms there, AUB received a US$39,000 grant to develop its social science offerings in 1926-1931, and three additional grants through 1940.

The text published here is a letter written by Bayard Dodge to senior officials in the Rockefeller Foundation. The letter was sent from the AUB office in New York, United States, which Dodge visited periodically.

In 1866, US Presbyterians who had been working for half a century in the Ottoman city of Beirut founded the Syrian Protestant College (SPC), to compete with Arab and French endeavors in higher education. Chartered in the State of New York, the American University of Beirut (AUB), as the SPC has been called since 1920, came to employ American, European and Arab professors. It soon turned into a foremost institution of higher education for Arab Christians and Muslims alike from Greater Syria (present-day Syria, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan), and especially after World War I attracted more and more students also from other Arabic-speaking countries, a history told in Betty Anderson’s The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education (2011). AUB’s educational quality and missionary institutional bedrock gave it some clout in the United States.

Hence, when the New York-based Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation in 1924 added an international layer to a US-centered social science grant program it had been running since 1922, it in 1925 asked the AUB president, Bayard Dodge, whether his institution would apply for such a grant. AUB did. Making its case in a way that reflected the establishment of League of Nations Mandates in the post-Ottoman Iraq and Greater Syria and the rise of anticolonial nationalisms there, AUB received a US$39,000 grant to develop its social science offerings in 1926-1931, and three additional grants through 1940.

The text published here is a letter written by Bayard Dodge to senior officials in the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 1866, US Presbyterians who had been working for half a century in the Ottoman city of Beirut founded the Syrian Protestant College (SPC), to compete with Arab and French endeavors in higher education. Chartered in the State of New York, the American University of Beirut (AUB), as the SPC has been called since 1920, came to employ American, European and Arab professors. It soon turned into a foremost institution of higher education for Arab Christians and Muslims alike from Greater Syria (present-day Syria, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan), and especially after World War I attracted more and more students also from other Arabic-speaking countries, a history told in Betty Anderson’s The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education (2011). AUB’s educational quality and missionary institutional bedrock gave it some clout in the United States.

Hence, when the New York-based Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation in 1924 added an international layer to a US-centered social science grant program it had been running since 1922, it in 1925 asked the AUB president, Bayard Dodge, whether his institution would apply for such a grant. AUB did. Making its case in a way that reflected the establishment of League of Nations Mandates in the post-Ottoman Iraq and Greater Syria and the rise of anticolonial nationalisms there, AUB received a US$39,000 grant to develop its social science offerings in 1926-1931, and three additional grants through 1940.

The text published here is an excerpt of an initial report by AUB professors to Rockefeller Foundation grant officials.

A telegram from Charge d’Affaires Murazumi to the Foreign Minister summarizing a meeting between with the State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Pelletreau regarding the American hostages in Lebanon.

In the notes for a meeting between Japanese and Syrian Foreign Ministers at the UN, Japan urges Syria to continue assisting in the release of the American hostages and assures Syria they are putting pressure on Israel to release the Lebanese hostages held in Israel.

In this telegram, Ambassador Kuroda of Japan summarizes the main points of a meeting between Japanese and Syrian foreign ministers where they discuss the growing friendship between Japan and Syria, the American hostages in Lebanon, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shamir’s visit to Japan.

A telegram from Japanese Ambassador Matsunaga to the Foreign Minister summarizing a meeting between the Ambassador and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs McFarlane about the American hostages in Lebanon.

A telegram from Ambassador Kato to the Foreign Minister summarizing a meeting between Special Envoy Nakayama and Foreign Minister Shara on the future of the relationship between Japan and Syria and the American hostages held in Lebanon.

A telegram from Japanese Ambassador Kato to the Foreign Minister summarizing a meeting between Special Envoy Nakayama and President Assad about the relationship between Syria and Japan and the American hostages in Lebanon.