Making the Modern Middle East

Catalog description

(Same as HISTORY 181B. 81B is 3 units; 181B is 5 units.) This course introduces students to major themes in the modern history of the region linking the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. No prerequisites or prior knowledge of the Middle East is required. We will begin with the Eurasian context that produced the Safavid and Ottoman empires and quickly move to the rapid transformations of the nineteenth century and imperial dissolution of the early twentieth. Twentieth-century themes include mass migrations, genocides, colonial occupations, nationalisms, revolutions, socialist and Islamist movements, and the role of American policy in the region. The course concludes with placing ongoing anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian liberation movements in regional and global perspective.