At the turn of the nineteenth century, as a result of economic and social crises, tens of thousands of people migrated from the Levant to Brazil. There, they constituted the largest Arab diaspora outside the Middle East. Mostly hailing from present-day Syria and Lebanon, they published newspapers and magazines in Arabic, founded literary associations, created philanthropic organizations, and fostered a movement of long-distance nationalism. Despite the economic, intellectual, and political contributions they remitted to their homelands, those migrants and their descendants are still relegated to the footnotes in the histories of the Levant. In my contribution, I will draw on the historical experiences of Arabic-speaking migrants in Brazil to argue that the diaspora was a fundamental part of the region they left. I will also claim that we cannot understand the political and intellectual histories of the Levant without integrating its diasporas. Historians of Syria and Lebanon have notably struggled with incorporating diasporas in their understandings of the region. In part, because they tend to take the nation-state as a fundamental unit of analysis. Migration is a transnational phenomenon and, as such, cannot be approached solely through area studies. Historians of Brazil have also failed, to a certain extent, to properly contextualize the lives of the Arabic-speaking peoples who arrived while the country was transitioning from an empire to a republic. Relying on social science frameworks, these scholars were focused solely on the integration of Syrians and Lebanese (or lack thereof) into society. By taking these two historiographies together, scholars can finally have a more comprehensive picture of what–I argue–was one of the transformative events of Levantine and Brazilian history.