Spies in Arabia
«[...] a significant edition to the historiography of the First World War beyond Europe... [An] impressive study...»
Nadia Atia, History Workshop Journal, Spring 2011
At the dawn of the twentieth century, British intelligence agents began to venture in increasing numbers to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, a region of crucial geopolitical importance spanning present-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Les mer
discreetly and patriotically gather facts in a region they were drawn to for its legendary inscrutability and by the promise of fame and escape from Britain?
In this groundbreaking book, Priya Satia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this problem and the myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences of their methodological choices during and after the Great War. She tells the story of how an imperial state in thrall to the cultural notions of equivocal agents and beset by an equally captivated and increasingly assertive mass democracy invented a wholly new style of "covert empire" centered on the world's first
brutal aerial surveillance regime in Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources-from the fictional to the recently declassified-this book explains how Britons reconciled genuine ethical scruples with the actual violence of their Middle Eastern empire. As it vividly demonstrates how imperialism
was made fit for an increasingly democratic and anti-imperial world, what emerges is a new interpretation of the military, cultural, and political legacies of the Great War and of the British Empire in the twentieth century.
Unpacking the romantic fascination with "Arabia" as the land of espionage, Spies in Arabia presents a stark tale of poetic ambition, war, terror, and failed redemption-and the prehistory of our present discontents.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- Oxford University Press Inc
- Innbinding
- Paperback
- Språk
- Engelsk
- ISBN
- 9780199734801
- Utgivelsesår
- 2010
- Format
- 24 x 15 cm
- Priser
- Winner of the Pacific Coast Branch Award of the American Historical Association Winner of the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association null
Anmeldelser
«[...] a significant edition to the historiography of the First World War beyond Europe... [An] impressive study...»
Nadia Atia, History Workshop Journal, Spring 2011
«[An] impressive work which ambitiously seeks to explore the cultural space within which political, military and intelligence personnel operated.»
Keith Jeffery, Asian Affairs.
«This book is nuanced, challenging, nicely written, interesting and thought-provoking... rich and rewarding... It is a book that is sure to be well received and it will further our understanding of Britain and the Middle East.»
Matthew Hughes, History