Struggle for Domination in the Middle East

Struggle for Domination in the Middle East PDF

Author: Shai Har-El

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9789004101807

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This two-part volume offers a comprehensive account of the conflict between the Ottoman and Mamluk Empires. Part One explores Ottoman-Mamluk relations from their inception in the middle of the fourteenth century to the laying of the foundations of the conflict in the second half of the fifteenth century. Part Two offers a detailed description of the actual war of 1485-91, and analyzes it from various angles including military, economic, and diplomatic. Based largely on Ottoman, Mamluk and Italian primary sources - documentary and narrative - the volume helps to understand the second and final war between the Ottomans and Mamluks in 1516-17, which resulted in the downfall of the Mamluk Empire and the firm establishment of Ottoman power in the Middle East.

Sowing Crisis

Sowing Crisis PDF

Author: Rashid Khalidi

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780807003107

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From "the foremost U.S. historian of the modern Middle East" ("L.A. Times") comes a powerful argument that the global conflicts now playing out explosively in the Middle East were significantly shaped by the Cold War era.

Empires of the Sand

Empires of the Sand PDF

Author: Efraim Karsh

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2001-04-02

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0674254767

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Empires of the Sand offers a bold and comprehensive reinterpretation of the struggle for mastery in the Middle East during the long nineteenth century (1789-1923). This book denies primacy to Western imperialism in the restructuring of the region and attributes equal responsibility to regional powers. Rejecting the view of modern Middle Eastern history as an offshoot of global power politics, the authors argue that the main impetus for the developments of this momentous period came from the local actors. Ottoman and Western imperial powers alike are implicated in a delicate balancing act of manipulation and intrigue in which they sought to exploit regional and world affairs to their greatest advantage. Backed by a wealth of archival sources, the authors refute the standard belief that Europe was responsible for the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the region's political unity. Instead, they show how the Hashemites played a decisive role in shaping present Middle Eastern boundaries and in hastening the collapse of Ottoman rule. Similarly, local states and regimes had few qualms about seeking support and protection from the "infidel" powers they had vilified whenever their interests so required. Karsh and Karsh see a pattern of pragmatic cooperation and conflict between the Middle East and the West during the past two centuries, rather than a "clash of civilizations." Such a vision affords daringly new ways of viewing the Middle East's past as well as its volatile present.

Wars of Ambition

Wars of Ambition PDF

Author: Afshon Ostovar

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-05

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0190941006

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A gripping narrative history of one of the most complex and important conflicts in the world--the battle to dominate the Middle East regional order, from 2003 to the present When President George W. Bush took office in January 2001, America's influence in the Middle East was relatively strong, and adversarial states were largely marginalized and contained. The September 11 attacks upended all of this and prompted the Bush administration's bold plan to remake the Middle East through a war in Iraq. By bringing liberal democracy to Iraq, Bush hoped that the country would be a springboard for the spread of democracy to neighboring authoritarian states, aiming to make the region not only more stable, prosperous, and amenable to Western values but also more friendly and accepting toward Israel. Yet the vast disruption that the war caused created an opportunity for Iran to advance its own opposing ambitions. Iran strove to turn the Middle East into a bastion of resistance to Western hegemony and bring an end to Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The resulting clash over the future regional order not only intensified the Iraq war, it reverberated in states across the region. With the Arab Spring and the outbreak of new conflicts, the US-Iranian showdown became entwined in a much more complex struggle, one which drew in other regional and foreign powers that all pursued differing agendas. Emerging from the chaos was an empowered Iran and a deeply unsettled broader region in which nominally pro-Western states began to recalibrate their relations with Washington even as they welcomed deeper roles for its key rivals: Russia and China. In Wars of Ambition, Afshon Ostovar explores the evolution of the long and metastasizing conflict as it unfolded over a span of more than two decades. Not just a sweeping account of the dynamic interaction between America's Middle East policies and ambitious regional states on the receiving end, it also provides a powerful analysis of conflicting visions of the future that transcend regional politics. With Iran's rise and its revisionist campaign running in concert with those of Russia and China, the contest for the Middle East has become a microcosm of a larger geopolitical battle between those aiming to preserve the American-led global order and those seeking to overturn it. Ostovar's vivid history of this enormously complex conflict shows how the battle for the Middle East reflects the politics and dividing lines of an emergent multipolar world.

Lords of the Desert

Lords of the Desert PDF

Author: James Barr

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781541617414

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"Within a single generation, between 1945 and 1970, America replaced Britain as the dominant power in the Middle East. By any standard, it was an extraordinary role reversal and it was one that came with very little warning. Starting in the nineteenth century, Britain had first established themselves as protector of the sheikhdoms along the southern shore of the Persian Gulf, before acquiring Aden, Cyprus and then Egypt and the Sudan. In the Great War in the twentieth century they then added Palestine, Jordan and Iraq by conquest. And finally Britain had jointly run Iran with the Soviets since 1941 to defeat Hitler. The discovery of vast oil reserves in Saudi Arabia, at a time when the United States' own domestic reserves seemed to be running low, made America's initial interest commercial. But trade required political stability. Its absence led the United States to look more critically at the conduct of her major ally in the region. Added to this theatre of operations, the Zionists in Israel after World War One actively pursued a policy to establish and win an independent state for the Jews - which spurred on by thousands of Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe enabled them to build up the forces necessary to achieve power. How would Britain manage both Arab and Jewish positions and still maintain power? In 1943 they came up with an ambitious plan do so, and in 1944 put it into action.Somewhere East of Suez tells this story."--Publisher's description.

Shadow Wars

Shadow Wars PDF

Author: Christopher Davidson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-10-06

Total Pages: 672

ISBN-13: 1786070022

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For more than a century successive US and UK governments have sought to thwart nationalist, socialist and pro-democracy movements in the Middle East. Through the Cold War, the ‘War on Terror’ and the present era defined by the Islamic State, the Western powers have repeatedly manipulated the region’s most powerful actors to ensure the security of their own interests and, in doing so, have given rise to religious politics, sectarian war, bloody counter-revolutions and now one of the most brutal incarnations of Islamic extremism ever seen. This is the utterly compelling, systematic dissection of Western interference in the Middle East. Christopher Davidson exposes the dark side of our foreign policy – dragging many disturbing facts out into the light for the first time. Most shocking for us today is his assertion that US intelligence agencies continue to regard the Islamic State, like al-Qaeda before it, as a strategic but volatile asset to be wielded against their enemies. Provocative, alarming and unrelenting, Shadow Wars demands to be read – now.

Asad of Syria

Asad of Syria PDF

Author: Patrick Seale

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 584

ISBN-13: 9780520066670

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"This is a book in the finest tradition of investigative scholarship. The research is awesome. . . . Seale’s great strength is his ability to explain the confusing kaleidoscopic nature of Middle Eastern diplomacy. He understands the game being played and also knows the players. . . . [An] impressive book.”--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Struggle for Domination in the Middle East

Struggle for Domination in the Middle East PDF

Author: Har-El

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-09-29

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 9004660860

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This original study of pre-modern Middle East history, provides fascinating new information about the conflict relations between the two great Muslim empires, the Ottomans and the Mamluks, and military confrontations between Eastern medieval armies.

The international politics of the Middle East

The international politics of the Middle East PDF

Author: Raymond Hinnebusch

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2013-07-19

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1847795226

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This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This text aims to fill a gap in the field of Middle Eastern political studies by combining international relations theory with concrete case studies. It begins with an overview of the rules and features of the Middle East regional system—the arena in which the local states, including Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Israel and the Arab states of Syria, Jordan and Iraq, operate. The book goes on to analyse foreign-policy-making in key states, illustrating how systemic determinants constrain this policy-making, and how these constraints are dealt with in distinctive ways depending on the particular domestic features of the individual states. Finally, it goes on to look at the outcomes of state policies by examining several major conflicts including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Gulf War, and the system of regional alignment. The study assesses the impact of international penetration in the region, including the historic reasons behind the formation of the regional state system. It also analyses the continued role of external great powers, such as the United States and the former Soviet Union, and explains the process by which the region has become incorporated into the global capitalist market.

The End of Modern History in the Middle East

The End of Modern History in the Middle East PDF

Author: Bernard Lewis

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2013-09-01

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0817912967

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Bernard Lewis looks at the new era in the Middle East. With the departure of imperial powers, the region must now, on its own, resolve the political, economic, cultural, and societal problems that prevent it from accomplishing the next stage in the advance of civilization. There is enough in the traditional culture of Islam on the one hand and the modern experience of the Muslim peoples on the other, he explains, to provide the basis for an advance toward freedom in the true sense of that word.