The Modern Middle East: A History

by James L. Gelvin

• ISBN13: 9780197800195
• ISBN10: 019780019X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197800201
• Edition: 6th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-10-15
• Publisher: Oxford
• More Book Details

Summary

Extensively revised and updated in this sixth edition, The Modern Middle East explores how the forces associated with global modernity have shaped the social, economic, cultural, and political life in the region over the course of the past 500 years.

Beginning with the first glimmerings of the current international state and economic systems in the sixteenth century, this book examines the impact of imperial and imperialist legacies, the great nineteenth-century transformation, cultural continuities and upheavals, international diplomacy, economic booms and busts, and the emergence of authoritarian regimes and the varied forms of resistance to them and to imperialism in an area of vital concern to us all.

The text is engagingly written--drawing from the author's own research and other studies--and enriched with maps and photographs, original documents, and other supplementary materials.

Author Biography

James L. Gelvin is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. An award-winning teacher, he is the author of The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (2021), The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know (2015), Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (1998), and numerous shorter works. He is also editor of The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval (2021) and co-editor of Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print (2013).

Table of Contents

Each Part ends with suggested readings.

Vignettes and maps
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
New to this Edition

Introduction

PART I. THE ADVENT OF THE MODERN AGE
Chapter 1. From Late Antiquity to the Dawn of a New Age
Chapter 2. Gunpowder Empires
Chapter 3. The Middle East and the Modern World System
Chapter 4. War, Diplomacy, and the New Global Balance of Power
Documents
Evliya Chelebi: Seyahatanamé(1)
Evliya Chelebi: Seyahatanamé (2)
Draft Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the Ottoman Empire and France, February 1535
The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies (1)
The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies (2)

PART II. THE QUESTION OF MODERNITY
Chapter 5. Defensive Developmentalism
Chapter 6. Imperialism
Chapter 7. Wasif Jawhariyyeh and the Great Nineteenth-Century Transformation
Photo Essay: The Great Nineteenth-Century Transformation and Its Aftermath
Chapter 8. The Life of the Mind
Chapter 9. Secularism and Modernity
Documents
Commercial Convention (Balta Liman): Britain and the Ottoman Empire
The Hatt-i Sharif of Gulhane
The Islahat Fermani
The d'Arcy Oil Concession
Algeria: The Poetry of Loss
Huda Shaarawi: A New Mentor and Her Salon for Women
Rifaca Rafic al-Tahtawi: The Extraction of Gold or an Overview of Paris
Muhammad cAbduh: The Theology of Unity
Namik Kemal: Extract from the Journal Hürriyet
The Supplementary Fundamental Law of 7 October 1907

PART III. WORLD WAR I AND THE MIDDLE EAST STATE SYSTEM
Chapter 10. State-Building by Decree
Chapter 11. State-Building by Revolution and Conquest
Chapter 12. The Invention and Spread of Nationalisms
Chapter 13. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Documents
An Arab Soldier in the Ottoman Army
Resolution of the Syrian General Congress at Damascus, 2 July 1919
Theodor Herzl: A Solution of the Jewish Question
The Balfour Declaration, 2 November 1917
Mahmud Darwish: Eleven Planets in the Last Andalusian Sky

PART IV. THE CONTEMPORARY ERA
Chapter 14. The Autocratic State
Chapter 15. Oil in the Age of Fossil Fuel
Chapter 16. The United States and the Middle East
Chapter 17. Resistance
Conclusion. A New Middle East?
Documents
Speech Delivered by President Gamal cAbd al-Nasser at Port-Said on the Occasion of Victory Day on 23 December 1961
Zakaria Tamer: Tigers on the Tenth Day
Ali Shariati: The Philosophy of History: The Story of Cain and Abel
Ayatollah Khomeini: Islamic Government
Sayyid Qutb: Milestones
"Statement of the April 6 Movement Regarding the Demands of the Youth and the Refusal to Negotiate with Any Side"
Yassir al-Manawahly: "The International Monetary Fund"

Timeline
Biographical Sketches
Glossary
Credits
Index