First Published in 1986. The Arab League, founded in 1945, was regarded by many as a ploy of the British to secure the cooperation and goodwill of the Arabs during the Second World War and as an instrument to ensure the British presence in the Middle East after the war. This book presents a different picture. The British policy was a far cry from supporting the Arab unity movement. On the contrary, the British Government tried to forestall that movement or, at least, to postpone its implementation until after the end of the Second World War. Anthony Eden's famous Mansion House speech of May 1941 was not intended to signal a drastic change in the British Middle Eastern policy, but rather to fore­ stall a strongly pro-Zionist proposal which had been put forward by Winston Churchill. It is true that there were some British personalities (mainly unofficial) who supported the Arab unity trend, but the thrust of their positive argument was that a broader framework of Arab federation would be instrumental in helping to solve the intractable problem of Palestine. What might surprise some readers is the fact that some highly important Zionist leaders were the main protagonists of that idea, believing that if the Arabs were to obtain satisfaction of their national aspirations through unity they {the Arabs) would adopt a much more moderate attitude towards the Zionist movement in Palestine. The Arab leaders and rulers tried to bring about a higher degree of cooperation or even a federation of their countries, either for dynastic or political reasons. But the British negative reaction was not always crystal clear, owing to the more favourable attitude typical of many, including the top, British representatives in the Middle East.

First Published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The struggle between Egypt and Iraq over Arab hegemony constitutes the main theme of this study. Focussing on the struggle over Middle Eastern defense between 1945-58, and culminating in the conflict over the Baghdad Pact (1955-58), it sheds new light on Arab politics during the period under review. This research concentrates predominantly on the regional actors. The underlying assumption is that policies were not necessarily formulated in Washington and London, and that — often enough — major decisions taken in Ankara, Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, Amman and other Arab capitals affected decision-makers in Western capitals. The Quest for Hegemony in the Arab World is based on newly-released British, American and Israeli documents, as well as on all available Arab sources. The study's value rests upon its discussion of the Baghdad Pact, a significant event which was hitherto neglected, yet marked a watershed in modern Arab history. This study's approach offers an analytical framework with which the present struggle for hegemony in the Arab world may be examined.

This volume is limited to contributions by Professor Kedourie's previous students. It reveals the far-reaching range of his interests and the immense expanse of his horizons. The first part deals with philosophy, political thought and ideology and the second with history and politics.

Britain emerged from World War II dependent economically and militarily upon the US. Egypt was the hub of Britain's imperial interests in the Middle East, but her inability to maintain a large garrison there was clear to the indigenous peoples. These essays track the decline of the empire.

Like a great dynasty that falls to ruin and is eventually remembered more for its faults than its feats, Arab nationalism is remembered mostly for its humiliating rout in the 1967 Six Day War, for inter-Arab divisions, and for words and actions distinguished by their meagerness. But people tend to forget the majesty that Arab nationalism once was. In this elegantly narrated and richly documented book, Adeed Dawisha brings this majesty to life through a sweeping historical account of its dramatic rise and fall. Dawisha argues that Arab nationalism--which, he says, was inspired by nineteenth-century German Romantic nationalism--really took root after World War I and not in the nineteenth century, as many believe, and that it blossomed only in the 1950s and 1960s under the charismatic leadership of Egypt's Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir. He traces the ideology's passage from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire through its triumphant ascendancy in the late 1950s with the unity of Egypt and Syria and with the nationalist revolution of Iraq, to the mortal blow it received in the 1967 Arab defeat by Israel, and its eventual eclipse. Dawisha criticizes the common failure to distinguish between the broader, cultural phenomenon of "Arabism" and the political, secular desire for a united Arab state that defined Arab nationalism. In recent decades competitive ideologies--not least, Islamic militancy--have inexorably supplanted the latter, he contends. Dawisha, who grew up in Iraq during the heyday of Arab nationalism, infuses his work with rare personal insight and extraordinary historical breadth. In addition to Western sources, he draws on an unprecedented wealth of Arab political memoirs and studies to tell the fascinating story of one of the most colorful and significant periods of the contemporary Arab world. In doing so, he also gives us the means to more fully understand trends in the region today. Complete with a hard-hitting new and expanded section that surveys recent nationalism and events in the Middle East, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century tells the fascinating story of one of the most colorful and significant periods in twentieth-century Middle Eastern history.

In The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World, Cyrus Schayegh takes up a fundamental problem historians face: how to make sense of the spatial layeredness of the past. He argues that the modern world’s ultimate socio-spatial feature was not the oft-studied processes of globalization or state formation or urbanization. Rather, it was fast-paced, mutually transformative intertwinements of cities, regions, states, and global circuits, a bundle of processes he calls transpatialization. To make this case, Schayegh’s study pivots around Greater Syria (Bilad al-Sham in Arabic), which is roughly coextensive with present-day Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. From this region, Schayegh looks beyond, to imperial and global connections, diaspora communities, and neighboring Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey. And he peers deeply into Bilad al-Sham: at cities and their ties, and at global economic forces, the Ottoman and European empire-states, and the post-Ottoman nation-states at work within the region. He shows how diverse socio-spatial intertwinements unfolded in tandem during a transformative stretch of time, the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and concludes with a postscript covering the 1940s to 2010s.