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Between 1923 and 1934, Britain and Italy waged war by proxy in the Middle East. Behind the appearance of European collaboration, relations between London and Rome in the Red Sea were notably tense. Although realistically Mussolini could not establish or maintain colonies in the Arabian Peninsula in the face of British opposition, his regime undertook a number of initiatives in the region to enhance Italo-Arab relations and to pave the way for future expansion once the balance of power in Europe had shifted in Italy's favour. This book examines four key aspects of relations between Britain and Italy in the Middle East in the interwar period: the confrontation between London and Rome for polit...
The story of Iraq is one of resistance. In this groundbreaking study, Johan Franzen offers a contextual modern history of the country, its creation and its struggle for sovereignty. Iraq's contemporary history is a tale of a diverse people thrown together into a nation-state by imperialist statecraft. From the state's inception as a League of Nations mandate in the 1920s, through wars, coups and revolutions, Iraqis have always resisted foreign domination. But the country, propelled by the quest for power, intense national pride and a zeal for sovereignty, was catapulted along a trajectory of violence. On one side stood imperialism, seeking to control Iraq for its own ends. Facing it, Iraqis ...
The 1930s policy of appeasement is still fiercely debated more than 70 years after the signing of the 1938 Munich Agreement. Less examined is the role of public opinion on the formation of British and French policy in the period between Munich and World War II. Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France is essential reading for scholars of the origins of World War II.
In 1948, Britain withdrew from Palestine, bringing to an end its 30 years of rule in the territory. What followed has been well-documented and is perhaps one of the most intractable problems of the post-imperial age. However, the long-standing connection between Britain and Palestine before May 1948 is also a fascinating story. This volume takes a fresh look at the years of the British mandate for Palestine; its politics, economics, and culture. Contributors address themes such as religion, mandatory administration, economic development, policy and counter-insurgency, violence, art and culture, and decolonization. This book will be valuable to scholars of the British mandate, but also more broadly to those interested in imperial history and the history of the West’s involvement in the Middle East.
Britain relied upon secret intelligence operations to rule Mandatory Palestine. Statecraft by Stealth sheds light on a time in history when the murky triad of intelligence, policy, and security supported colonial governance. It emphasizes the role of the Anglo-Zionist partnership, which began during World War I and ended in 1939, when Britain imposed severe limits on Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. Steven Wagner argues that although the British devoted considerable attention to intelligence gathering and analysis, they never managed to solve the basic contradiction of their rule: a dual commitment to democratic self-government and to the Jewish national home through immigrati...
Folk dancer, forester, poet and visionary, Rolf Gardiner (1902-71) is both a compelling and troubling figure in the history of twentieth-century Britain. While he is celebrated as a pioneer of organic farming and co-founder of the Soil Association, Gardiner's organicist outlook was not confined to agriculture alone. Convinced that a healthy culture and society could only flourish when it was rooted in the soil, Gardiner sought national regeneration too. One of the most colourful and controversial figures of the interwar period, Gardiner believed Britain's future lay not with its doomed empire, but in ever closer union with its 'kin folk, kin tongued' neighbours in Germany, the Netherlands an...
The first book to examine the interwar period origins of the present-day Arab-Iranian conflict.
The story of the dramatic collapse of the British and French colonial empires in the aftermath of the Second World War - now told for the first time as part of one global process
It is easy to forget, given the oppositional dynamic between Iran and the United States of the last 50 years, that these two countries once shared productive partnership. Tracing US-Iran relations over two turbulent centuries, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet considers when and how this relationship went awry. With careful attention to social and cultural as well as diplomatic developments, Kashani-Sabet shows that the rift did not originate in flashpoints of crisis, like the 1953 coup or the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but was instead long in the making. Drawing from a wealth of English and Persian-language sources, many of which were previously unavailable or unacknowledged, this book considers the relationship from the vantage point of Iranian society and the experiences of an evolving Iran that strived to accommodate American and great power politics. Following these two nations through wars, decolonization, and revolution, Kashani-Sabet presents an invaluable history of a diplomatic rivalry that informs geopolitics to this day.