Conclusion

Abstract

The conclusion returns to the need to reexamine the history of Lebanon and its Armenian population. To understand Lebanon in the years following independence one must engage deeply with their Armenian inhabitants and explore how they fashioned and refashioned belonging in the everyday in a variety of spheres: social, religious, cultural, and political. To understand Armenians one does not have to consider them as part of a larger diaspora, but rather as active local inhabitants engaged in layered power struggles. To grasp the complexity of the Cold War in the Middle East, one must examine not only how American and Soviet powers and state proxies engaged with one another, but also how this environment was used and manipulated by societal actors. Taken together, all this demonstrates not only the importance of studying Armenians in Lebanon but also the very necessity of doing so. Armenians Beyond Diaspora pushes Armenians from the margins into the center, not to insert them artificially into a larger history that has already been written, but into a space that calls for additional explorations of marginal populations, power struggles, changing notions of belonging, and the adaptability of the nation.