Contemporary Middle Eastern history: 1820-2020

About this programme

This course provides an overview of the contemporary history of the Middle East and North Africa, from the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, the subsequent rise of a new global order under Euro-American direction after World War I, the Cold War and then the Arab Spring of 2011. It adopts both a chronological and a thematic perspective, in order to outline the most relevant dynamics that the regions included in the expansion of European imperialism at the expense of stability in the Ottoman Empire, with a particular focus on political and legal structures, socio-economic transformations and relations with Euro-American powers such as Russia, the Habsburgs, Germans, Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. The purpose is to enable the students to outline regional dynamics within the Middle East over the course of the last two centuries that witnessed the rise of modern forms of state rule, a global mechanism to organize interstate relations and a corresponding global economy informed by industrialization and the rise of petroleum-based economies. In this respect, the course adopts a global perspective that links the Middle East and North Africa to other regions during a period of capitalist imperialism and corresponding efforts to resist it. Corresponding to this process, this course will also help students understand the emergence of the major elements of social and political transformation that led to Arab nationalism and political Islam while other arenas of social mobilization, from labor activism, parliamentarism, socialist/communist party devel