Synopses & Reviews
Praise for the Prior Edition
This volume is history in the best sense. . . . A superbly written analysis of the social and political disruptions of the Middle East. This updated volume does an excellent job of weaving together various strands of a complex subject in a coherent narrative. It is recommended reading for all serious students who want to understand how the Middle East got to where it is today.” —Phebe Marr, author of The Modern History of Iraq and fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace
This is the best comprehensive survey of modern Middle East history in the literature. The authors excel at translating complex and controversial subject matter in a highly readable manner without sacrificing cogent and insightful analysis. I highly recommend it.” —David W. Lesch, professor of Middle East History, Trinity University
This comprehensive work provides a penetrating analysis of modern Middle Eastern history, from the Ottoman and Egyptian reforms, through the challenge of Western imperialism, to the impact of US foreign policies. After introducing the reader to the regions history from the origins of Islam in the seventh century, A History of the Modern Middle East focuses on the past two centuries of profound and often dramatic change. Although built around a framework of political history, the book also carefully integrates social, cultural, and economic developments into a single, expertly crafted account. In updating this fifth edition of the late William L. Clevelands popular introductory text, Martin Bunton provides a thorough account of the major transformative developments over the past four years, including a new chapter on the tumultuous Arab uprisings and the participation of Islamist parties in a new political order in the Middle East.
A new test bank and lecture slides are available for adopting professors.
The late William L. Cleveland was professor of history at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Vancouver, British Columbia.
Martin Bunton is an associate professor of history at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. He is the editor of Land Legislation in Mandate Palestine.
Review
"
A History of the Modern Middle East is a comprehensive work integrating social, cultural, and economic developments into a single, expertly crafted account.”
SirReadaLot
Praise for Prior Editions:
"This volume is history in the best sense.
A superbly written analysis of the social and political disruptions of the Middle East. This updated volume does an excellent job of weaving together various strands of a complex subject in a coherent narrative. It is recommended reading for all serious students who want to understand how the Middle East got to where it is today."
Phebe Marr, author of The Modern History of Iraq and fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace
"This is the best comprehensive survey of modern Middle East history in the literature. The authors excel at translating complex and controversial subject matter in a highly readable manner without sacrificing cogent and insightful analysis. I highly recommend it. "
David W. Lesch, professor of Middle East History, Trinity University
This excellent survey has been used in many colleges and universities as a standard text since its first edition
In this particularly turbulent period of history, this book should be of interest not only to students, but also to every citizen who has to make some judgment, one way or another, about the US role in the Middle East. "
Choice
"William L. Cleveland updates his text on modern Middle Eastern history in this third edition, focusing on political, social, economic, and ideological developments throughout the region. Cleveland makes it clear that this book is meant to be 'an examination of the past, not of the present or the future,' but reserves space in the Epilogue to discuss the ramifications of the September 11th terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Middle East Journal
"The book masterfully intertwines complex strands of historyfrom sectarian conflict in Lebanon to the Arab-Israeli conflicts, to the impact of oil wealth and the Iranian revolution. No other volume does this so well."
Elizabeth Thompson, History, University of Virginia
"Highly recommended for anyone interested in a remarkably well-crafted introduction to the history, politics, and international relations of the Middle East."
International Journal
"Lucidly written, well researched and an ideal work of introduction and reference for students of the region."
Middle Eastern Studies
"This survey of the history of the modern Middle East has been well received by scholars in the field. Sophisticated and stimulating
Cleveland has contributed a well-balanced, well-researched, and well-planned introductory text for the study of the modern Middle East."
Judith Mendelsohn Rood, Turkish Studies Association Bulletin
"The difficulties of writing an introductory text on the modern Middle East have largely been overcome by William Cleveland in this lucid and impartial history. Perhaps the greatest virtue of the book is the authors sympathetic detachment in his treatment of an ideologically charged history. Always measured in his assessments, Cleveland avoids lionizing and vilifying whether discussing the colonial experience, the rise of nationalism, the struggle for Palestine, the influence of Nasser or the Islamic resurgence."
Eugene Rogan, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
"Clevelands timely book is now the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the history of the modern Middle East, and it is likely to remain so for a good long while. He does a marvelous job of rendering intelligible the complex political and social changes that the Middle East experienced in the past two centuries. Readers will be grateful to Cleveland for blending much of the best recent historical scholarship into this fine book and for making it eminently readable."
Philip S. Khoury, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"An excellent overview of the history of the modern Middle East. Eminently clear, comprehensive, and insightful. A truly superior book."
James Jankowski, University of Colorado
"Cleveland has put his recognized expertise on Arab nationalism and modern Islamic movements to particularly good use in this learned, sensitive, and highly readable account of the past two centuries of Middle Eastern history. The formidable task of combining thematic with country-by-country treatment is accomplished remarkably well."
Donald M. Reid, Georgia State University
"With the accuracy and balance that the scholar would insist on and with the spirited readability that the student would hope for, this is a fine interpretive study of the Middle East during the past two centuries. A richly textured history, it handles the challenge of highlighting the cultural unity characterizing the Middle East while also demonstrating the regions diversity-political, religious, cultural, and economic."
L. Carl Brown, Princeton University
"Cleveland has written a cogent and comprehensive political history of the Middle East in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, prefaced by a concise and readable introduction to Islamic history. He is particularly successful in pointing to the persistence and strength of traditional modes of thought and belief in bringing about the reassertion of Islamic identity in the face of the moral bankruptcy of contemporary Middle Eastern regimes and the disempowering pressures of everyday life
this book should do much to demystify common misconceptions about this complex and frequently misunderstood region."
Peter Sluglett, Durham University
"A solid, well-written, and well-packed introductory text that will be easily accessible to inductees into modern Middle Eastern history
Careful readers of Clevelands text will discover that in a quiet and persuasive manner the author challenges many popularly held beliefs and (mis)perceptions."
International Journal of Middle East Studies
"Impressive political history
Provides a brief but useful exposition of Islam and what the faithful believe is expected of them."
New York Times Book Review
"Quite simply the best introduction to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Middle East available. Cleveland has set a new standard for Middle East historical synthesis that will be difficult to outdo."
Journal of Palestine Studies
"Clevelands informative and eminently readable text is the best available survey of the modern Middle East
. Cleveland avoids the simplistic view that the recent history of the Middle East is one of modernization, and sets the very real transformation of Middle Eastern societies in the context of efforts by their inhabitants to find genuine and sustainable identities
Highly recommended."
Choice
Synopsis
A survey of the history of the Middle East from the rise of Islam to the present, with an emphasis on the 20th century.
Synopsis
This definitive history of the modern Middle East includes significant new material covering major transformative developments over the past four years.
Synopsis
This comprehensive work provides a penetrating analysis of modern Middle Eastern history, from the Ottoman and Egyptian reforms, through the challenge of Western imperialism, to the impact of US foreign policies. After introducing the reader to the regions history from the origins of Islam in the seventh century, A History of the Modern Middle East focuses on the past two centuries of profound and often dramatic change. Although built around a framework of political history, the book also carefully integrates social, cultural, and economic developments into a single, expertly crafted account. In updating this fifth edition of the late William Clevelands popular introductory text, Martin Bunton provides a thorough account of the major transformative developments over the past four years, including a new chapter on the tumultuous Arab uprisings and the participation of Islamist parties in a new political order in the Middle East.
Synopsis
In 1914, the Middle East was still dominated, as it had been for some four centuries, by the Ottoman empire; by 1923, its political shape had changed beyond recognition as the result of the insistent claims of Arab and Turkish nationalism and of Zionism. This book examines that historic transformation, taking as its focus the work of three leaders. The Hashemite Emir Feisal hoped to head an Arab kingdom but was thwarted by the French. The Turkish war hero Mustafa Kemal defied the imperial ambitions of the European powers to inspire a new Turkish nationalism, founding a secular republic on the ruins of the defeated empire.and#160; The Russian-born scientist Chaim Weizmann seized the chance to secure the Balfour Declaration in favour of Zionism from the British in 1917, and then successfully argued for a British Mandate for Palestine which would carry this out.and#160;
These events set the pattern for what was to follow in much of the Middle East to the present day, including the popular uprisings witnessed in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011. This book, based on extensive research, is a clear account of how the region as we now know it emerged from World War One and its aftermath, with legacies which ought not to be ignored.
For the first time the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is not presented from one perspective, but approached from a transnational angle and set against a multi-faceted historical background.
Synopsis
A century ago, as World War I got underway, the Middle East was dominated, as it had been for centuries, by the Ottoman Empire. But by 1923, its political shape had changed beyond recognition, as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the insistent claims of Arab and Turkish nationalism and Zionism led to a redrawing of borders and shuffling of alliancesandmdash;a transformation whose consequences are still felt today.
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This fully revised and updated second edition of The Makers of the Modern Middle East traces those changes and the ensuing history of the region through the rest of the twentieth century and on to the present. Focusing in particular on three leadersandmdash;Emir Feisal, Mustafa Kemal, and Chaim Weizmannandmdash;the book offers a clear, authoritative account of the region seen from a transnational perspective, one that enables readers to understand its complex history and the way it affects present-day events.
About the Author
T. G. Fraser is professor emeritus of the University of Ulster and the author of Chaim Weizmann: The Zionist Dream.Andrew Mango [1926-2014] was a longtime manager of Turkish broadcasts for BBC External Services [now called BBC World Service]. He is the author of Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey, From the Sultan to Atatürk: Turkey, and The Turks Today.Robert McNamara is currently a lecturer in International History at the University of Ulster at Coleraine and the author of Britain, Nasser and the Balance of Power in the Middle East, 1952-1972: From the Egyptian Revolution to the Six-Day War.
Table of Contents
Part One: The Development of Islamic Civilization to the Eighteenth Century1. The Rise and Expansion of Islam
2. The Development of Islamic Civilization to the Fifteenth Century
3. The Ottoman and Safavid Empires: A New Imperial Synthesis
Part Two: The Beginnings of the Era of Transformation
4. Forging a New Synthesis: The Pattern of Reforms, 17891849
5. The Ottoman Empire and Egypt During the Era of the Tanzimat
6. Egypt and Iran in the Late Nineteenth Century
7. The Response of Islamic Society
8. The Era of the Young Turks and the Iranian Constitutionalists
9. World War I and the End of the Ottoman Order
Part Three: The Struggle for Independence: The Interwar Era to the end of World War II
10. Authoritarian Reform in Turkey and Iran
11. The Arab Struggle for Independence: Egypt, Iraq, and Transjordan from the Interwar Era to 1945
12. The Arab Struggle for Independence: Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia from the Interwar Era to 1945
13. The Palestine Mandate and the Birth of the State of Israel
Part Four: The Independent Middle East from the End of World War II to the 1970s
14. Democracy and Authoritarianism: Turkey and Iran
15. The Middle East in the Age of Nasser: The Egyptian Base
16. The Middle East in the Age of Nasser: The Radicalization of Arab Politics
17. Israel and the Palestinians from 1948 to the 1970s
Part Five: The Resurgence of Islam: the Middle East from the 1970s to the 1991 Gulf War
18. The Iranian Revolution and the Revival of Islam
19. Changing Patterns of War and Peace: Egypt and Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s
20. The Consolidation of Authoritarian Rule in Syria and Iraq: The Regimes of Hafiz al-Asad and Saddam Husayn
21. The Consolidation of Authoritarian Rule in Syria and Iraq: The Regimes of Hafiz al-Asad and Saddam Husayn
Part Six: Challenges to the Existing Order: The Middle East in the 1990s and 2000s
22. The Palestinian Intifada and the 1991 Gulf War
23. A Peace so Near, a Peace so Far: Palestinian-Israeli Relations Since the 1991 Gulf War
24. Patterns of Continuity and Change in Turkey, Iran, and Lebanon
25. Americas Troubled Moment in the Middle East
26. The 2011 Arab Uprisings