Fragile Nation, Shattered Land
The Modern History of Syria
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- USD 54.99
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- USD 54.99
Descripción editorial
The Syrian state is less than 100 years old, born from the wreckage of World War I. Today it stands in ruins, shattered by brutal civil war. How did this happen? How did the lands that are today Syria survive incorporation with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century and the trials and vicissitudes of the Sultan's rule for four centuries, only to collapse into civil war in recent years? Arguably it was the Ottoman period that laid the fragile foundations of a state that had to endure a turbulent twentieth century under French rule, tentative independence, a brutal and corrupt dictatorship and eventual disintegration in the twenty-first. Across a diverse cast of individuals, rich and poor, James Reilly explores these fractious and formative periods of Ottoman, Egyptian and French rule, and the ways that these contributed to the contradictions and failings of the rule of the Assad family; and to a civil war which produced the so-called Islamic State.
In charting Syria's history over the last five centuries in their entirety for the first time, Reilly demonstrates the myriad historical, cultural, social, economic and political factors that bind Syrians together, as well as those that have torn them apart. Based on primary sources, recent historiography in English, French and Arabic and more than 30 years' experience living and working in the region, this is the essential book for understanding modern Syria and the Middle East.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reilly, a historian at the University of Toronto, distills half a millennium of conflict and shifting alliances into a clear, eminently readable work that demystifies the origins and fault lines of the current crisis in Syria. The region, defined by an accident of geography more than a strongly articulated national identity, was part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries, became a French-controlled nation after WWI, and, more recently, "lacked the anchors to withstand the disintegrative effects of regional wars and political-sectarian rivalries, especially after the ill-conceived U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003." The environment that allowed Syria's initial Arab Spring protests to emerge and spread was one in which governmental attention had shifted from the agricultural regions to the prosperous, mercantile urban communities, leaving a vacuum of power in the rural heartland. Though the events of the past decade are only reached in the final 25 pages, and Reilly offers few clues as to what the future may hold, his sweeping vision and encyclopedic knowledge of everything from crop yields to the Levantine educational system make this an essential book for anyone seeking to understand the modern Middle East.
