Buṭrus al-Bustānī (1819–83) is one of the most prominent figures of the Nahḍa: “the project of Arab cultural and political modernity” (El-Ariss, 2018, xv). A public intellectual and literary magnate, he is celebrated for advocating the formation of a secular civil society based on a shared cultural heritage. This paper examines his twenty-plus-year career as the first dragoman at the US Consulate in Ottoman Beirut and reads his contributions to Arab modernity in light of his privileged political and legal status as a protégé of a foreign power. This paper engages with scholarship on dragomans in the Ottoman Empire (Rothman, 2009; Laffan (diss), 2011; and Keskinkiliç and Ceylan, 2015), the American consular presence in the Middle East (Kark, 1994), and al-Bustānī’s profile as a translator of modernity (Issa, 2023). Al-Bustānī served American interests in Syria and Palestine from about 1850 to 1872. The Consular Dispatches from Beirut at the US National Archives reveal that in addition to being a translator and interpreter, he was a tour guide and legal consultant. He also served as a valuable informant on politics, culture, and commerce. It must be noted that from April 1857 to July 1858, he singlehandedly financed and managed consular operations in town. As a reliable employee of the US, al-Bustānī enjoyed “all the privileges of [American] citizenship without its burdens,” thanks to the Capitulations (imtiyāzāt; literally “privileges”), which conferred extraterritorial rights to foreign powers and their protégés (Hay to Hunter (15. Jan. 1872) USNA RG 59, T367, r. 7). The Nahḍa icon Buṭrus al-Bustānī benefited from American protection for most of his literary and intellectual career. This historical fact complicates our understanding of him as “an Ottoman Arab” (Hanssen and Safieddine 2019; Arsan 2021). A loyal subject of the Sultan and ardent supporter of High Porte policies, he was also a privileged intellectual with, what we in the twenty-first century call, diplomatic immunity. He could write and say (practically) whatever he wanted with impunity. It is hoped that future research considers more fully the political and economic benefits that many Nahḍa figures in the late Ottoman period garnered from their work at American and European consulates.