Rethinking Nationalism In The Arab Middle East

The fourteen original essays in this volume explore the psychological, political, and cultural bases of Arab nationalism since World War I and are arranged around broad themes of study: academic constructions of nationalist history, nationalist presentations of Arab histories, conflict among competing nationalist visions, and more.

Rethinking Middle East Politics considers a range of debates on the character of political and socioeconomic development in the Middle East, focusing on the linked processes of state formation and capitalist development. Simon Bromley seeks to reformulate the central questions involved in the study of state formation. He builds a comparative framework based on an examination of key developmental processes in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran and offers a range of substantive theses on the place of democracy and Islam in the region. His findings explain a very large part of what appears to be significant in the emergence of the modern Middle East. Rethinking Middle East Politics presents a new way of analyzing politics in the Middle East, offering a perspective that has major implications for rethinking Third World politics more generally and for the social and political theory of modernity.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of figures -- Avant-Propos -- 1 Introduction: a critique of Arab nationalism -- 2 The trials and tribulations of the poet Fu'ad al-Khatib: a biographical essay on the origins of Arab nationalism -- 3 Holding up the mirror: imperialism and the poetics of cultural pan-Arabism -- 3.1 Saladin the Victor: national Saints, Great Men, and the rise of the individual -- 3.2 From the glory of conquest to paradise lost: al-Andalus in Arab historical consciousness -- 4 Of Kings and Cavemen: museums and nationalist museology in twentieth-century Egypt -- 5 Damascus transfers: dead bodies and their translocal meanings -- 6 Nearly victorious: the art of staging Arab military prowess -- 7 Arab nationalism, fascism, and the Jews -- 8 Epilogue and conclusion: broken narratives -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

During the crucial decade of the 1950s in Egypt, both Gamal Abdel Nasser and the idea of Arab nationalism were assuming more and more influence in Egypt and the greater Arab world. Exploring this phenomenon, James Jankowski also offers important insights into the political context in which Nasser maneuvered. Jankowski focuses on the period from the 1952 Revolution in Egypt to the dissolution of the short-lived union of Egypt and Syria in 1961 - and on the outlook and actions of Nasser, the dominant figure in Egypt's new revolutionary regime. Concisely and convincingly, he identifies the unique blend of ideological and practical considerations that led Egypt to a progressively deeper involvement in Arab nationalism. He draws on newly available materials from the U.S. and British archives and on the memoir literature now available in Arabic to present a detailed reconstruction of this formative period in Egyptian political history. Jankowski traces Egypt's - and Nasser's - movement from a peripheral to a central position in Arab nationalist politics.

Based on a decade of research, including in-depth interviews with many leading figures in the story, this edition is essential for anyone who wants to understand the roots of the turmoil engulfing the Middle East, from civil wars to the rise of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Contributors, including C. Ernest Dawn, Mahmoud Haddad, Reeva Simon, and Beth Baron, provide a broad survey of the Arab world at the turn of the century, permitting a comparison of developments in a variety of settings from Syria and Egypt to the Hijaz, Libya, and Iraq.

The first systematic comparative analysis of political behavior throughout the entire Arab world, from Morocco to Kuwait. In an attempt to explain why the Arab world remains in ferment, Hudson discusses such crucial factors as Arab and Islamic identity, ethnic and religious minorities, the crisis of authority, the effects of imperialism, and modernization. "An impressive work of scholarship on the political culture and changing society of the entire Arab World. The author gives us a good picture of each country as he pursues his general themes of legitimacy, nationalism, Arabism, and the inevitable 'modernization.'"-- Foreign Affairs "Hudson has succeeded brilliantly in surveying and analyzing the entire range of contemporary Arab politics."-- Library Journal "Here for the first time is a really good general textbook of Middle Eastern politics. . . . Hudson has managed to provide detailed information about each Arab country within a sophisticated overall analytical framework, which substantially explains the situation in each country."-- Malcolm H. Kerr, Middle Eastern Studies Association Bulletin "What can be said with certainty is that all those professionally concerned with the Middle East will have to cope with this book in one way or another. . . . What is outstanding is its combination of rigorous analysis and breadth of coverage. If the book's immediate concerns are those of the political scientist, its findings and implications are important to all of us."-- Alan W. Horton, The Middle East Journal