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.

Kirkus Reviews

A straightforward, careful primer on Arab political history from the rise of the Ottoman Empire to the forging of modern fundamentalist Islamic entities. Rogan (Modern History of the Middle East/Oxford Univ.; Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire, 2000) traces the significant modern themes of nationalism, imperialism, revolution, industrialization, migration and women's rights over the past five centuries within the Islamic states, stretching from North Africa to the Sinai, the Middle East to South Asia. With the conquest of the Cairo-based Mamluk Empire by the Ottomans in 1517, the vast Turkish-speaking Islamic empire would now rule from foreign capitals over the globe, "a political reality," Rogan writes, "that would prove one of the defining features of modern Arab history." Managing the multi-ethnicity of the empire was a challenge, and by the mid-18th century local leaders such as Zahir in Palestine and Ali Bey in Egypt challenged Ottoman autonomy, while the rise of the Wahhabi sect called for a return to the strictures of religious orthodoxy. Further currents of reform and nationalism, as in the Balkans, weakened the central state, while the waves of Franco-Anglo colonialism undermined Ottoman authority, from North Africa to Palestine. By the end of World War I the European powers negotiated their settlements in terms of "divide and rule." Rogan, who regards Arab history from the viewpoint of Arabs, concentrates on the postwar collapse of the Ottoman Empire, as British and French domination ebbed, Israel was established, the greed for oil transformed the region and a new generation repudiated the era of nationalism and ineffectual leadership and looked to an earlierproud history of Islam. A sweeping history that dwells on political rather than artistic or cultural developments within diverse Arab countries. Agent: Felicity Bryan/Felicity Bryan Literary Agency

Biography

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.