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‘Connecting the narrative across centuries and borders’

By Sally Bland - Jul 24,2016 - Last updated at Jul 24,2016

A History of the Modern Middle East: Rulers, Rebels, and Rogues
Betty S. Anderson
US: Stanford University Press, 2016
Pp. 520

It is a daunting task to cover over seven centuries of Middle East history in a readable, handy-sized book, especially for a region so complex and still so little understood by the general public in the West. Yet, this is what Betty Anderson, Associate professor of Middle East History at Boston University, sets out to do. Based on her years of research and teaching, and intimate knowledge of new scholarship, she succeeds in producing a book that can serve as a university-level textbook or a source of information for anyone interested in knowing the background for breaking news.

Excellent maps, photos and boxes defining pivotal groups, places, phenomena and events, from Sufism, Janissaries and the Mamluks to the Alawi, Jerusalem and Hamas, supplement and enrich the text. 

How so much history can be condensed into a manageable form is due to Anderson’s approach. Starting with the Ottoman and Safavid empires, moving on to the emergence of the modern states, their development and then near demise in some cases in recent years, Anderson carefully identifies crucial themes, trends and continuities. Chief among these, she foregrounds “state governance as the core thread connecting the narrative across centuries and borders”. (p. xv)

The emphasis is not on single events but on the interaction between the governors and the governed over time — the stuff of which history is made. 

Human agency is of prime importance as denoted by the book’s subtitle, and the preface defines ruling, rebel and rogue actors. The first category is self-evident, referring to sultans, kings and presidents. Rebels, on the other hand, are those who “completely opposed the leadership and systems of governance ruling over them… For example a diverse group of rebels appeared throughout the Middle East in the years immediately after World Wars I and II because in those moments it was unclear… what type of government would result from the shifting events”. 

They wanted control over their local domains or leadership of the new states in the making. Examples include those who joined ‘Urabi’s rebellion in the 1880s, and the Free Officers and Baathists whose military coups ushered in new regimes in Egypt, Syria and Iraq in the 50s and 60s. Rebels also include “the Kurds, the Armenians, and the Palestinians who continually rejected the national claims of the governments ruling them”. (p. xviii)

Rogues, on the other hand, did not seek to overthrow the system but challenged their leadership to reform state governance, in order to gain positions in the state or access state resources. Examples range from the Jabal Nablus notables in the 18th century who pledged loyalty to the Ottomans, but acted independently in the economic sphere, to most participants in 21st century protests in Iran, Turkey and Arab countries. Even without overturning the system, rogues could be great change-makers as proven by Mehmet Ali. 

Despite the emphasis on human agency, there are no personality sketches of leaders, but a lot about their policies and how these impacted on the populations under their rule. Recurring patterns and dynamics are traced, most prominently how the expansion of education, urbanisation and economic change affected politics, by creating new social strata who time after time challenged rulers to fulfil promises of genuine independence from colonial powers, more participatory decision-making and economic justice. 

The book’s geographic reach allows for interesting comparisons — between the Ottoman Empire and the rule of the Safavid and Qajars in Iran, commonalities among the states that emerged from the colonial division of the region, and among the regimes established by military coups, as well as comparisons of the economic trajectories and their results in all these states right up to the present era of neoliberalism. 

While the book begins with empires, ensuing chapters focus more on social transformations and increasingly include a broadening scope of social and political actors — peasants, workers, students, women, nationalists, communists, clerics, notables, merchants, professionals and army officers. One sees how they reacted to and were affected by the world wars, foreign intervention, the oil industry, the Cold War, the Palestinian/ Arab conflict with Israel, recurring US invasions of Iraq, etc. 

There are explanations for why the Lebanese civil war assumed a religious form, for the rise of Islamism, indeed, for why the region seems to be in perpetual conflict. Throughout, Anderson avoids speculation and sticks to realism and objectivity in her analysis, finally concluding: “Because of these conflicts and crisis, it is difficult to determine in what direction the Middle East might go in the next decades.” (p. 455)

 

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