The Making of the Modern Middle East: A Personal History

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Clear throughout is Bowen's deep understanding of the political, cultural and religious differences between countries as diverse as Erdogan’s Turkey, Assad’s Syria, Netanyahu’s Israel and Palestine, whether Hamas-controlled Gaza or the West Bank, and his long experience of covering events in the region.

The Making of the Modern Middle East: A Personal History

to assemble the material necessary to support this argument, and to organize and present it in a coherent and persuasive way. To underscore this point, he even includes a photo of himself chatting with Jordanian Brigadier Ata Ali Haza’a.States of Separation tells how the interwar Middle East became a site for internationally sanctioned experiments in ethnic separation enacted through violent strategies of population transfer and ethnic partition.

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern

Born in the two decades before 1900, some experienced and later lead multiple genocides against local minorities while establishing from 1914 to 1918 a German-Ottoman axis and from 1939 to 1945 a Nazi-Islamist axis. The Six Day War occurred well-over a half-century ago, but the struggle is ongoing, and is a daily lived experience for many. It was made official by the Allied Powers of the first world war with the San Remo Conference in 1920. The agreement provided a general understanding of British and French spheres of influence in the Middle East.While this is a major contribution, a discussion of the revolutionary culture of the late Ottoman elite is curiously absent in the book, especially given Provence’s argument about the centrality of violence to the political outcome of the insurgencies. Unlike what the nationalist historiographies have come to claim, we now know that Ottoman institutions, elites, and political culture actually survived well beyond the First World War and left behind a fragmented but resilient legacy.

The Making of the Modern Middle East by Jeremy Bowen

Sorry final paragraph of this turned into a political rant that was waaay outside the scope of this book, although Bowen touches on similar themes. His newest book Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide was published by Random House on June 23, 2015. This is a study of this crucial period in Middle Eastern history, tracing the period through popular political movements and the experience of colonial rule. The line across a map of the Middle East it drew created colonial spheres of influence that cut directly and artificially across a region that had previously been divided along ethnic, linguistic and religious lines. He speaks about everything from the birth of Israel to the ongoing problems in Gaza, and comes to the conclusion that its the fault of the western meddling, coupled with bad or corrupt, or both, governments which then causes more western meddling followed by bad/corrupt/both government.This book] is a definitive study of this crucial period in Middle Eastern history, tracing the period through popular political movements and the experience of colonial rule.

The Making of the Modern Middle East - Pan Macmillan The Making of the Modern Middle East - Pan Macmillan

All this played out as part of the larger Cold War, with Arab countries generally backed by the Soviet Union, and Israel supported by the United States.Yet, in a book that set out to challenge the very parameters of nation-centered narratives, the lack of engagement with the Ottoman backgrounds of the Turkish and Jewish elite is equally problematic. Each expected the land to remain in their hands, which seems to have been what the British promised them. While many observers were caught up in optimism that the Arab Spring would lead to the overthrow of dictators and the spread of democracy, Bowen offered caution in his reporting, highlighting a crisis of governance in the region. Truth be told, this is a bit on the dry side, which is also a function of Oren compressing a lot of information into a relatively short book.