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Empire and Imperialism

Middle EastConclusion

The most lasting legacy of Anglo-French imperialism in the Middle East and North Africa following World War I was the creation of states where none had existed previously, the boundaries drawn to suit Anglo-French interests. Out of the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire emerged Iraq, never unified previously, a Syria truncated by France's taking its land for the expanded Lebanon, Palestine (intended to become Israel), and, as a result of wartime alliances and tribal rivalries, the creation of Saudi Arabia and the sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. In addition, Turkey became a state by repelling a British-encouraged Greek invasion and establishing its independence in the Anatolian heartland of the former Ottoman Empire.

These new states, other then Turkey, Iran, and the newly formed Saudi Arabia, remained under foreign occupation or, in Iraq's case, tied to the former occupier, until the decolonization area following World War II. Their sociopolitical trajectories were quite different, starkly contrasted in Turkey's secularization process undertaken by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) and the creation of the fundamentalist Wahabbite Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

As a result, the nature of national identity and the basis of allegiance to these new states has varied and occasionally been challenged, leaving open the question of Islam as the ongoing basis of loyalty for most Muslims. Turkey itself has seen since World War II the renewed strength of Islam in the public sphere, in part a byproduct of its democratization process. Iran, whose Pahlavi dynasty sought to follow Ataturk's example, experienced an Islamic revolution in 1979 seen by many Iranians as repudiation of American imperial influence on the late shah. Syria and Iraq underwent strenuous secularization driven by Baathist socialist regimes, but the American overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the name of democracy may lead to a new regime strongly influenced by Shii Islam and strengthened ties to Iran, which the U.S. has designated as part of the "Axis of Evil."

These experiences illustrate the ongoing complexity of the process of state formation and creation of national and religious loyalties, processes set in motion before World War I but only fully attempted afterward. They demonstrate that the impact of European imperialism on the broader Middle East has persisted and has yet to be resolved, with new dynamics put in place by the United States' intervention in Iraq whose consequences will be far-reaching and possibly contrary to the goals articulated by Washington before the invasion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aldrich, Robert. Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion. London: Macmillan, 1996. Overview of French imperial ideology.

Andrew, Christopher, and A. S. Kanya-Forstner. The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914–1924. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1981. Study of French domestic policy debates over imperial goals during World War I.

Cain, P. J., and Anthony Hopkins. British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction. New York: Longman, 1993.

——. British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688–1914. New York: Longman, 1993.

Chaudri, Nupur, and Margaret Strobel, eds. Western Women and Imperalism: Complicity and Resistance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Clancy-Smith, Julia. "European Empires, Settler Colonialism, and Sources of Knowledge about Women in Islamic Cultures." In Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. 6 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004. Critical discussion of questions of gender in imperial context.

Cloarec, Vincent. La France et la question de Syrie, 1914–1918. Paris: CNRS, 1998. The best study of French imperial policy and Anglo-French rivalries for the period.

Deguilhem, Randi. "Turning Syrians into Frenchmen: The Cultural Politics of a French Non-Governmental Organization in Mandate Syria—The French Secular Mission Schools." Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 13, no. 4 (2002): 449–460. Good case study of the variations found in applying the mission civilisatrice.

Kent, Marian, ed. The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire. 2nd ed. London and Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 1996. Survey of the views of all combatants during the war.

Khoury, Philip S., and Joseph Kostiner, eds. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. While ranging well beyond World War I, the essays engage conceptual variables such as the state and chieftancy.

Lieven, Dominic. Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Comparisons of the Russian, British, Hapsburg, and Ottoman Empires with extensive bibliography.

Monroe, Elizabeth. Britain's Moment in the Middle East, 1914–1971. 2nd ed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1981. Updated edition of the classic account (first published 1963) of British imperial policy in the region.

Owen, Roger. The Middle East in the World Economy. New York: Methuen, 1987.

——. State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. Overview of the subject that engages theoretical perspectives.

Owen, Roger, and Robert Sutcliffe, eds. Studies in Theory of Imperialism. London: Longman, 1972.

Saul, Samir. La France et l'Egypte de 1882 à 1914: Intérêts économiques et implications politiques. Paris: Comite pour l'Histoire Economique et Financiere de al France, 1977.

Thobie, Jacques. Ali et les 40 voleurs: Impérialismes au Moyen-Orient de 1914 à nos jours. Paris: Messidor, 1985. Thobie is the leading scholar of French imperialism in the late Ottoman period and after World War I.

——. Intérêts et impérialisme français dans l'Empire ottoman: 1895–1914. Paris: Impr. nationale, 1977.

Tignor, Robert L. Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire: State and Business in Decolonizing Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, 1945–1963. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Charles D. Smith

Additional topics

Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Electrophoresis (cataphoresis) to EphemeralEmpire and Imperialism - Middle East - Global Imperialism, Europe, And The Ottomans To 1914, The Causes, Ideology, And Theories Of Imperialism