This paper explores the relationship of Syrian-Lebanese émigrés to the League of Nations surrounding the Syrian Revolt of 1925. Looking at the records of the League of Nations one finds a plethora of petitions from all over the mahjar both in support and against the French mandatory power. Based in Geneva and Cairo, the Syro-Palestinian Congress in particular sent regular petitions to the League, claiming to represent the aspirations of Syrians and Lebanese back home. Nevertheless, the pan-Syrian nationalism of the Syro-Palestinian Congress was especially countered by Lebanese nationalist groups in the diaspora. Indeed, members of the eighth session of the Permanent Mandates Commission (especially set up to discuss the Syrian question) expressed surprise at finding that little to none of the petitions came from inside the mandate itself. The long-distance politics of diaspora activists and intellectuals thus sought to transcend geography. Nevertheless such long-distance politics were not transnational in the sense that they superseded national understandings, but were more an expression of transborder, and yet particular, loyalties. Set against the backdrop of a new international system which ideally organized itself around the principle of sovereign nation-states, this paper seeks to understand the relationship of diaspora to homeland by looking at these contentious petitions, and asks to what extent émigré politics and activism sought to influence the political affairs back home. Looking at the triangular relationship of Syrian-Lebanese around the world to the French mandatory power and to the League of Nations thus provides a fuller picture of the Syrian Revolt of 1925. By decentering the study of the revolt, this paper is part of a broader attempt to shed new light on the development of nationalist identifications formed in part through a dialectical relationship between diaspora and homeland.