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The first two-thirds of the book necessarily deals with diplomacy during the war. "Broken promises" is a central theme in the post-war new order in the Middle East. Fresh off reading Ulrichsen, I could hurry this part. The final 200 pages look at the emergence of each new country up to the general Middle East settlement of 1922.
Did Fromkin, not a historian by trade, rely too much on official sources? How relevant is this book to understand the modern Middle East ? I only qualify to offer an opinion on the second question.
The book is unquestionably relevant, especially in understanding the roots of the Israeli conflict, but the cutoff date leaves me in 2014 with an incomplete picture of Iraq & Syria. The new afterword to the 2009 edition is an equal tease, dating back to just before the outbreak of the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war.
Still, it was convenient to have this book republished just when we were again forced to ask ourselves "Why do some people in the Middle East keep telling us that it's our own fault for what we did a good century ago?". Nation-building in the former lands of Mesopotamia certainly has not gotten easier, so in yet another 100 years we might face blame akin to the French & British policy makers. In the spirit of the time, open and total colonial mastery mastery was acceptable, in spite of the wartime moral defence of the rights of small nations such as Belgium. However, imperial exhaustion and technological limitations made this unsupportable in the long run. Today, we find ourselves with opposite obstacles.
Did Fromkin, not a historian by trade, rely too much on official sources? How relevant is this book to understand the modern Middle East ? I only qualify to offer an opinion on the second question.
The book is unquestionably relevant, especially in understanding the roots of the Israeli conflict, but the cutoff date leaves me in 2014 with an incomplete picture of Iraq & Syria. The new afterword to the 2009 edition is an equal tease, dating back to just before the outbreak of the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war.
Still, it was convenient to have this book republished just when we were again forced to ask ourselves "Why do some people in the Middle East keep telling us that it's our own fault for what we did a good century ago?". Nation-building in the former lands of Mesopotamia certainly has not gotten easier, so in yet another 100 years we might face blame akin to the French & British policy makers. In the spirit of the time, open and total colonial mastery mastery was acceptable, in spite of the wartime moral defence of the rights of small nations such as Belgium. However, imperial exhaustion and technological limitations made this unsupportable in the long run. Today, we find ourselves with opposite obstacles.