This thesis will bring to light the Maronite Christian argument that, in its waning days, the Ottoman Empire conducted a well-planned genocidal policy vis-à-vis the Christian subjects of its...Show moreThis thesis will bring to light the Maronite Christian argument that, in its waning days, the Ottoman Empire conducted a well-planned genocidal policy vis-à-vis the Christian subjects of its Eastern Mediterranean provinces, and expressly suppressed or silenced the history of this policy. In particular, this thesis will focus on the Maronite Christians of the Ottoman Province (Sanjak) of Mount-Lebanon, and the crimes perpetrated against them, as part and parcel of the better known Ottoman policies against the Armenians, the Assyrians, and the Pontus Greeks during the Great War period. This thesis will stress the importance of studying and remembering history, including the minorities’ perspective and experience of it, admitting it into “official” histories, and explaining how official histories may have consequences in unresolved and recurring issues of memory and identity in modern Lebanon. This thesis will bring to bear recent scholarship and recently released archival sources relative to Ottoman Lebanon, in order to help illuminate a time period that is still shrouded in obscurity. I rely on numerous primary and secondary sources such as memoirs, biographies, histories, historiographies, and lyrical accounts. These sources are varied in perspective as some are written by Eastern Christians themselves, other Ottoman subjects, and both local and foreign bystanders privy to the events on Mount-Lebanon between 1914 and 1918. This thesis will be organized into three chapters, which will attempt to shed light on the historiographical debate, the Christian memories of the Great Famine of Mount-Lebanon, the Christian perspective of an Ottoman genocidal policy vis-à-vis Mount-Lebanon; attempt to explain the reason for the silenced history, and the consequences faced today, in a modern (Greater) Lebanon that is in many ways the outcome of the events of 1914-1918.Show less