Reddit reviews A History of the Modern Middle East, 5th Edition

To give you the short and obscenely over-simplified version:

1. For hundreds of years the Muslim world was scientifically and culturally more advanced than the West.
   
   
2. However at one point this changed. The West leapt forward during the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution while the Muslim world, then ruled by a vast decaying empire, fell behind.
   
   
3. The Ottoman Empire borrowed immense sums of money from the French and English in an attempt to catch up. Not only did this not work, it also crippled the Empire financially.
   
   
4. During WWI the Ottomans decided to join the war on the side of the Germans. When they lost the victors forced the Ottoman Emperor into exile and divvied the empire up between themselves essentially arbitrarily. They put in place governments that were sympathetic to their interests, and generally cared more about pleasing their colonial masters than effectively serving the people they governed
   
   
5. During this time there is a movement within Europe's jewish community to establish a jewish home state. Through a rather astonishing effort at collective organization this movement facilitates a massive migration of (mostly poor, eastern european) jews to the then British administered Palestine. The local muslim arabs see what's going on and get pissed, but there is little they can do to stop the process. At their behest the British try (and fail) to stem the flow of new immigrants. Sectarian violence breaks out, which the British are again unable to suppress. Eventually the Brits pull out and a full civil war ensues. The jewish forces are victorious, and the state of Israel is born. Arab civilians flee from their homes, many becoming refugees in neighbouring Jordan.
   
   
6. Elsewhere, public opinion against the colonial governments has soured. Uprisings and coups break out across the region, resulting in takeovers by anti-Western military dictatorships. Many of these (e.g. Nasser in Egypt, Saddam in Iraq) are secular, but a religious faction manages to take over in Iran. In places like Jordan and Saudia Arabia the monarchies survive.
   
   
7. The Cold War is raging at this time, and the nations of the Middle East turn to one superpower or the other to support their regimes. The anti-Western regimes obviously side with the Soviets, while the US supports the rest. Meanwhile Israel has secured the support of the US, and is furiously preparing its military against assault from its neighbours whom it perceives to be hostile.
   
   
8. In 1967, war breaks out between Israel and the allied forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel wins an overwhelming victory, capturing territory from each of its enemies. The Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank from Jordan. The loss of the West Bank, with its many important religious sites, is especially crucial for Jordan, who had previously relied on the tourist income the region generated. The West Bank was also home to a huge number of the Palestinian arabs who had previously fled their homes in what is now Israel. The UN declares these territorial acquisitions to be illegal (alright, it's more complicated than this. More on that here).
   
   
9. Lots of sectarian violence and civil war ensues over the next 50 years. Marxist revolution in Afghanistan results in civil war, followed by an attempted Soviet invasion beaten back by 10 years of US-funded resistance that leaves the country in tatters (further civil war will eventually result in takeover by the Taliban). Lebanon devolves into civil war between religious factions, until Syria steps in to establish peace. Israel eventually agrees to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, but refuses to return the West Bank or Golan Heights. "Radical Islam" begins to grow and take root, nourished by poverty, violence, hopelessness, and anti-Western sentiment. Palestinians fight back against Israel through use of guerilla warfare and terrorism, to which Israel responds with periodic military aggression and oppressive security measures. Peace talks between the two are impeded by disagreements over possession of various important religious sites and the "right of return" (i.e. the right of displaced Palestinian families to return to their homes in what is now Israel, or at least be compensated for the land which has now been appropriated). The Kurds, a distinct ethnic and cultural group, were split between Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey when the borders for these countries were drawn, and factions pushing for Kurdish independence have at times clashed with the governments of each of these nations (Saddam Hussein is infamously charged with using chemical weapons against the Kurds for this very reason).
   
   
   That's some cliff notes. I tried to keep things neutral, though I suspect that many would still take issue with my interpretations.
   
   edit: I should point out that the above almost completely leaves out the influence of conflicts between various religious groups in the region. The whole Sunni/Shi'a conflict, for instance. "They exist and hate each other" is a gross oversimplification that you see bandied around all the time, but I suppose isn't all that far from the truth. Essentially know that Islam, like Christianity, has several subgroups that are distinct, discrete demographic groups, and in some regions are often in conflict. Like Protestants and Catholics have very often been in conflict.
   
   EDIT2: I'm thrilled that so many people appreciate the effort I put into this post. However, given the amount of attention it is receiving I feel obligated to mention that I am by no means an expert on this subject, merely an enthusiastic student of history and politics in my free time. So I hope that people don't take my word as gospel, and are inspired to read more about the region on their own.
   
   If you're looking for places to expand upon your knowledge, William Cleveland's A History of the Modern Middle East is the book I started with, and was a great primer to understanding the region.
   
   Edit3: Wow, thanks for the Gold!

If you want to understand the Geo-politcs better I'd recommend maybe digging into the history a bit. If you read some good survey books about the ME a lot of things/groups in Syria gain context.

Also no need for a foreigner to 'pick a side' -- it's a tragedy not a sporting event.

Actually, I have kind of been following the comments and there are some fine texts that have been suggested in the comments. If you are interested in the topic:

• Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.
  
• The Prize by Daniel Yergin.
  
• A History of the Modern Middle East: Fifth Edition by William Cleveland.
  
  I would also say that part of my perspective is from somewhere else. I have read 26 biographies of American Presidents. Most are boring but there are two people who shaped US political ideology much more than others: Theodore Roosevelt and John Adams. They defined the century that followed (particularly Roosevelt). In telling their stories, the authors must describe the context--you learn a lot about history by simply seeing the people and the ideas that did not win. The other thing that modern biographers do--they tell the truth about the real goals. Once a person has the power... what do they do with it and why.
  
  
  
  

Rather than giving you foreign policy/political-science books; the two books I highly recommend for interested people, to getting a proper understanding of today's Middle East, would be these two books:

"The Arabs: A History" Eugene Rogan

A History of the Modern Middle East William L Cleveland, Martin Bunton

If you want to understand the situation today, its important to take a historical approach to it, rather than a political-science one, written by pundits and politicians, who carry a lot of the interests of their respective backers.

They are standard University texts, very well written, and updated as well. To understand the "present", one must first understand the "past". And so if you want a truly unbiased understanding of the Middle East in 2015, its important to understand how events got to there.

Read this book

In college, Cleveland's History of the Modern Middle East was my favorite history book about the Middle East. A little clinical and textbook-y but I thought it was very objective with a good level of detail.

Edit - I also thought From Beirut to Jerusalem was excellent. This was before Friedman became his current hacky self, and is very different from his work the last 10+ years. This book was very enjoyable and easy to read, and therefore would be very accessible for somebody just treating it as pleasure reading. The big downsides are that it may be a bit outdated and it isn't comprehensive or complete - it largely focuses on covering the highlights of the Israel-Palestine conflict and Lebanese civil war; it also isn't as academic.

My sources? History books on the modern middle-east!

Here's a good start: http://www.amazon.com/A-History-Modern-Middle-East/dp/0813348331

You know, a book that contains a vast comprehensive analysis of the entire issue from the beginning and not just an opinionated news article?

http://www.amazon.com/A-History-Modern-Middle-East/dp/0813348331

its a little left leaning, but will give you a good general picture of the history of middle east.

This book is one of the most valuable tools in learning about the context of modern events in the middle east

https://www.amazon.com/History-Modern-Middle-East-5th/dp/0813348331

I recently read this book and it is really what you are looking for.

How far back do you want to go? Because the West began "intervening" in the Middle East in a major way since the late 18th century. Are you interested in military interventions, diplomacy, colonization, or just economic dominance? In all honesty, I am hesitant to recommend specific materials relating to the role of Western nations in the Middle East because I believe it will give you a distorted view of the political developments of the region, (e.g. that you will walk any with an assumption that a West imposed its will on a hapless region or that the current issues in the region are caused by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, when local actors have had a far greater influence on events that are frequently far more complicated).

If you are new to the Middle East, I would urge you to begin with getting a basic understanding of the region and its history before you venture into more specific topics. Start with Hourani or Rogan (William Cleveland and Martin Bunton's book A History of the Modern Middle East is also a good place to start). They will place the West's interaction with the Middle East in a larger context, as well as provide a much greater understand of the different ways that they did, both before and after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Indeed, there is a lot of history to it. Essentially it's all about oil and geo-politics. I recommend reading this book if you're interested in middle east politics.

A History of the Modern Middle East

> This comprehensive work provides a penetrating analysis of modern Middle Eastern history, from the Ottoman and Egyptian reforms, through the challenge of Western imperialism, to the impact of US foreign policies. After introducing the reader to the region’s history from the origins of Islam in the seventh century, A History of the Modern Middle East focuses on the past two centuries of profound and often dramatic change. Although built around a framework of political history, the book also carefully integrates social, cultural, and economic developments into a single, expertly crafted account. In updating this fifth edition of the late William Cleveland’s popular introductory text, Martin Bunton provides a thorough account of the major transformative developments over the past four years, including a new chapter on the tumultuous Arab uprisings and the participation of Islamist parties in a new political order in the Middle East.