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"Certainly the best general history available in English."--Times Literary Supplement.
The Middle East is a continuing crisis area in world politics. This crisp and penetrating book, first published in 1971, analyses the historical development of the major issues in Arab politics, explains the conflicting interests now at stake in the Middle East and how the politics of the area were likely to develop. It examines, among other topics, the Palestine Liberation Movement, the prospects for Arab unity, and Great Power interference, and was written by one of the world’s leading scholars writing on the Middle East.
What does revolution mean in the Middle East? Can the Middle East experience be compared with revolution in China, Latin America and East Europe? These questions are the focus of this book, first published in 1972, which examines the revolutionary significance of the major economic, social and political changes in the Middle East over the last fifty years. The special feature is the consideration of the changing connotation of the word ‘revolution’ and a recognition of a certain continuity in the political style of Middle Eastern societies which limits the use of the term in analysing the political change.
This book brings together expert essays on the social and political forces and personalities that have shaped modern Egypt, and the economic, political and diplomatic dilemmas facing the country.
Examining the theoretical problems which arose when the modern European ideology of nationalism was adopted by Muslim societies organized into formally modern states, this book, first published in 1987, also deals with the practical difficulties arising from the doctrinal incompatibility between Islam and the non-Muslim concept of the territorial nation-state. It illustrates this conflict with a consideration of the record of several states in the Islamic world. It suggests that whereas the state, an organization of power, has been a most durable institution in Islamic history, the legitimacy of the nation-state has always been challenged in favour of the wide Islamic Nation, the "umma", which comprises all the faithful without reference to territorial boundaries. To this extent too, the more recent conception of Arab nationalism projects a far larger nation-state than the existing territorial states in the Arab world today. This title will be of interest to students of Middle Eastern studies.
New expert essays on the social and political forces and personalities that have shaped modern Egypt - and the economic, political and diplomatic dilemmas facing the country.
The first major political biography of General Ioannis Metaxas, who assumed dictatorial power in Greece in 1936 and oversaw the resistance to the Italian invasion in the Second World War. As a political portrait of the man, the book puts much emphasis on the early career of Metaxas and his journey to state power, from 1920 to 1936. Drawing heavily on original Greek sources, the book makes extensive use of Metaxa's diary, his correspondence, and the evidence of his close friends and associates.
Revolutions are difficult to understand and almost impossible to predict. Egypt’s 2011 revolt was no exception. The military’s abandonment of Mubarak—a turning point for the revolt—confounded many observers, who assumed that the leader and the generals stood or fell together. The officers, it was thought, ruled from behind the scenes and simply swapped the figures in the spotlight to preserve the status quo. In a challenge to this conventional view, Hazem Kandil presents the revolution as the latest episode in an ongoing power struggle between the three components of Egypt’s authoritarian regime: the military, the security services, and the political apparatus. A detailed study of the interactions within this invidious triangle over six decades of war, conspiracy, and sociopolitical transformation, Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen is the first systematic analysis of how Egypt metamorphosed from a military into a police state—and what that means for the future of its revolution.
Confronting Fascism in Egypt offers a new reading of the political and intellectual culture of Egypt during the interwar era. Though scholarship has commonly emphasized Arab political and military support of Axis powers, this work reveals that the shapers of Egyptian public opinion were largely unreceptive to fascism, openly rejecting totalitarian ideas and practices, Nazi racism, and Italy's and Germany's expansionist and imperialist agendas. The majority (although not all) of Egyptian voices supported liberal democracy against the fascist challenge, and most Egyptians sought to improve and reform, rather than to replace and destroy, the existing constitutional and parliamentary system. The...