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Author Schayegh, Cyrus, author.

Title The Middle East and the making of the modern world / Cyrus Schayegh.

Publication Info. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Summary This book is a socio-spatial history of the Middle East, and uses that case to reflect more broadly on the making of the modern world. Pivoting around Bilād al-Shām (Greater Syria) - alternatingly zooming in on cities and nation-states and zooming out to neighboring countries, imperial and transnational links, and overseas diasporas - it asks: Why, how, and in which stages did well-rooted cities and regions mold a dynamic modern world economy and powerful modern states, and how were they remolded in return? Covering culture, the economy, and administration from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century in five chapters, each prefaced by one person's illustrative story, the book identifies three key developments in the late Ottoman period. Cities were transformed but remained powerful; interurban ties grew stronger; and Bilād al-Shām became more integrated. These developments did not end in 1918 but, as is shown next, deeply shaped post-Ottoman times. While quartered, Bilād al-Shām became an umbrella region for Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon, and forced French and British rulers to coordinate policies. And while cities lionized their weight in transnational circuits as well as reimagined themselves as national places to assert their rank in new nation-states, the latter were from the start multi-urban and transnationalized spaces. Building on the Middle Eastern case, the book argues that the modern world cannot be truly grasped by studying globalization or state formation or urbanization, as many histories do. Rather, the modern world's most fundamental socio-spatial feature is what can be called transpatialization: the intertwinement of cities, regions, states, and global circuits in faster changing and more mutually transformative ways than before in history.-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Prelude 1. Khalil Sakakini has a dream -- Rise of an urban patchwork region: 1830s-1914 -- Prelude 2. Rafiq al-Tamimi and Muhammad Bahjat make a tour -- Crucible of war: 1914-1918 -- Prelude 3. Alfred Sursock keeps busy -- Ottoman twilight: 1918-1929 -- Prelude 4. Hauranis migrate to Palestine -- Birth of a region of nation-states: 1929-1939 -- Prelude 5. Eliahu Rabino's war -- Empire redux: 1939-1945 -- Postscript: The more things change ...?: 1945-2016.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Middle East -- History -- 1517-
Middle East.
History.
Chronological Term 1517-
Subject Human geography -- Middle East.
Human geography.
Rural-urban relations -- Middle East -- History.
Rural-urban relations.
Civilization, Western -- Middle Eastern influences.
Civilization, Western -- Middle Eastern influences.
Chronological Term Since 1517
Genre/Form Electronic books.
History.
Other Form: Print version: Schayegh, Cyrus. Middle East and the making of the modern world. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017 9780674088337 (DLC) 2017001309 (OCoLC)973199741
ISBN 9780674981096 (electronic book)
067498109X (electronic book)
9780674088337
0674088336