With the exception of the French Protestant parish of Beirut established during the interwar period, the presence of French Protestant organizations in mandatory Syria and Lebanon has been given little attention. Explanations for this neglect include the lack of a significant indigenous French protestant community associated with these organizations; and the difficulty to place French protestantism within the geopolitics and sectarian institutional organization of the mandate. Indeed, the epithet “French” could be a practical cover for international social, humanitarian or missionary work in a colonial setting, rather than an apt characterization for these organizations. French Protestant activities developed out of the circumstances created by the departure of German Protestant missions in 1918, and the establishment of the French mandate. It revolved around two poles. The first one, established in 1922, was the Strasbourg-based Action Chrétienne en Orient (ACO), an offshoot of the German Hilfsbund für christliches Liebeswerk im Orient that could no longer access Syria and Lebanon. The ACO prioritized humanitarian help to Armenian refugees, and missionary work within Armenian Protestant communities and towards Muslim. The second pole included the French Protestant Parish of Beirut and the Oeuvres Protestantes Françaises en Syrie et au Liban, which had been created to occupy the buildings of former German missions, in keeping with the terms of the Versailles treaty. This second pole was connected with the Protestant colonial missionary circles in Paris, and was much closer to the mandatory power. This rough description seems to locate both streams of French Protestantism vis-à-vis the colonial authorities, one keeping a distance from them while the other worked in synergy with the French. Yet this simplistic characterization fades for a host of reasons: time, which led the ACO to develop connexions with the colonial authorities; the influence of Catholic organizations over the mandatory authorities; the links between both Protestant circles; and the type of work they did (education, protection of women and children, YMCA-style concern for labor laws, dispensaries, handwork for refugee women…). These organizations present a contrasted outlook on the mandate indeed, but one which helps understand how the colonial authorities subcontracted social matters to a number of organizations, French and otherwise, who could therefore maintain a certain margin of autonomy in the choice of their fieldwork and sources of funding.