Syria
A History of the Last Hundred Years
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
"A fluent introduction to Syria's recent past, this book provides the backstory to the country's collapse into brutal civil conflict" (Andrew Arsan, author of Lebanon: A Country in Fragments).
The fall of Syria into civil war over the past two years has spawned a regional crisis with reverberations growing louder in each passing month. In this timely account, John McHugo seeks to contextualize the headlines, providing broad historical perspective and a richly layered analysis of a country few in the United States know or understand.
McHugo charts the history of Syria from World War I to the tumultuous present, examining the country's thwarted attempts at independence, the French policies that sowed the seeds of internal strife, and the fragility of its foundations as a nation. He then turns to more recent events: religious and sectarian tensions that have divided Syria, the pressures of the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and two generations of rule by the Assads.
The result is a fresh and rigorous narrative that explains both the creation and unraveling of the current regime and the roots of the broader Middle East conflict. As the Syrian civil war threatens to draw the US military once again into the Middle East, here is a rare and authoritative guide to a complex nation that demands our attention.
"Scholarly but accessible and of much interest to those with an eye on geopolitical matters." —Kirkus Reviews
"Useful as a concise overview of independent Syria's most important movements and personalities, McHugo's book gives readers the basic background necessary to understand the country." —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Syria, lacking natural defenses and located at the crossroads of three continents, has always been susceptible to foreign interference. McHugo (A Concise History of the Arabs), an international lawyer and Arabist, untangles the fraying threads of Syria's fragile polity and tracks the global fault lines that make the current civil war arguably "the last proxy conflict of the Cold War." Proceeding briskly from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the present-day chaos, he sketches how Syria's first, hopeful experiments with democracy inexorably gave way to military dominance and autocracy: "The ideologically based parties took part in democratic politics, but they also recruited army officers who... ultimately came out on top." McHugo capitalizes on recent interest in the region, warning that "if the Syrian civil war cannot be ended, it seems only a matter of time before it engulfs the rest of greater Syria," but his attempts to draw connections between ISIS, French colonial efforts to foment sectarian tension, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are rudimentary and insufficient. Useful as a concise overview of independent Syria's most important movements and personalities, McHugo's book gives readers the basic background necessary to understand the country, but it will leave those who seek greater comprehension of the current conflict wanting more. Illus.
