The Arabs: A History - Hardcover

Rogan, Eugene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465071007 ISBN 13: 9780465071005

Publisher: Basic Books, 2009

Synopsis

To American observers, the Arab world often seems little more than a distant battleground characterized by religious zealotry and political chaos. Years of tone-deaf US policies have left the region powerless to control its own destiny—playing into a longstanding sense of shame and impotence for a once-mighty people. In this definitive account, preeminent historian Eugene Rogan traces five centuries of Arab history, from the Ottoman conquests through the British and French colonial periods and up to the present age of unipolar American hegemony. The Arab world is now more acutely aware than ever of its own vulnerability, and this sense of subjection carries with it vast geopolitical consequences.

Drawing from Arab sources little known to Western readers, Rogan's The Arabs will transform our understanding of the past, present, and future of one of the world's most tumultuous regions.

About this title

About the Author

Eugene Rogan is a faculty fellow and university lecturer in the Modern History of the Middle East at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he serves as director of the Middle East Centre. His previous book, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire, was judged by the Middle East Studies Association of North America to be the best work on the Middle East in 2000 and awarded the Albert Hourani Prize. He lives in Oxford, England.

Reviews

Rogan, an Oxford University lecturer, comments that Western intellectuals and leaders have an inadequate grasp of how Arabs understand their own history, which generates many grievances. He accordingly offers this political history of Arab lands since 1517, the year the Ottoman Empire conquered Egypt, adopting as his theme the response of Arabs to foreign rule or influence. In succession, Rogan presents the imperial structures of the Ottomans, then those of colonizing European powers, and his discussion of their evolution is guided by narratives of the numerous revolts and wars that punctuated the era of colonization. With that era’s passing in the wake of World War II, leaving a legacy of boundaries drawn by the former empires, Rogan then focuses on the creation of Israel in 1948 as a point of protest for Arab leaders—though his accounts of intra-Arab wars and dictatorial governments underscore sources of conflict that have nothing to do with Israel. Framing modern history as viewed from the Arab world, Rogan eruditely furnishes Western readers with a background to current events. --Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465071007
• ISBN 13: 9780465071005
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592