The most under-told branch is West Africa

A century in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria, with the difficult parts kept in.

Lebanese traders began arriving in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria more than a century ago, a good number of them originally bound for the Americas and diverted. They settled into commerce, and across generations built substantial positions in trade, manufacturing, construction and property throughout the region.

It is a real achievement and it is complicated, and an honest record has to carry both.

Lebanese communities in West Africa frequently occupied the middle position, between European capital and African labour and customers. That position produces wealth and it produces resentment, and there have been periods where the resentment became policy, expulsion or violence. There are also Lebanese families who have been in Freetown or Abidjan for four generations and are from there in every sense that matters.

Neither the romantic account nor the hostile one is accurate. The romantic one erases how that wealth was positioned. The hostile one erases people who built everything and lost it in wars that were not theirs.

This branch is barely present in how Lebanese people talk about themselves, and it is among the oldest and largest there is. It will be on the record, with the difficult parts kept in.