The book by the British-American historian explains the development of the Middle East throughout time, factors that had influence over it, national and political interests, and its current importance in modern international relations discussions from a westerner’s perspective.

Lewis starts by analyzing the historical outline of the Middle East. For a relatively long time period, the area was ruled by local nations, with some exceptions. One of them happened in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion. The author emphasizes that the prior effect of this conquest was immense, but the overall impact was always exaggerated by most historians. Usually, the Mongolic ferocity is considered responsible for the recession of the Islamic culture. However, according to Lewis, they destroyed neither the Islamic nor the Arabic civilization, which were way past their golden ages at that point. On the contrary, they managed to spread the culture even more under their own sovereignties, in a way that was influenced by the Persian culture.

The Impact of the West

The second chapter illustrates the Western factors that affected the current state of the Middle East. The impact was only economic in the early stages, according to the author. The first Europeans arriving were just humble merchants asking for residence and trade permits in small boroughs rather than invaders.

Continuous losses of the Ottomans and Napoleon’s conquest were indicators of how far behind the Middle East was compared to Europe. The needed army reform started with European military schools being established in the Ottomans and instructors being brought in. A sociologic reform also occurred ultimately, as more people were exposed to the Western culture over time.

Lewis later explains that the biggest influence westernization left behind was that, as traditional rulers lost their legitimacy and the loyalty they had, Middle Eastern people also lost their collective identity. They found themselves as citizens of many different colonial countries that would later become nation-states, instead of members of a thousand-year-old Islamic empire. This would later cause most of the disasters that occurred in the modern Middle East.

The Quest for Freedom

The author continues with emphasizing the challenging path Middle Eastern people had to go through in order to find freedom. He notes that the French Revolution was a unique blueprint for the Middle East, and unlike other Christian movements, its ideas easily managed to spread among the society, which led to the new generations growing up admiring the freedom, equality, and brotherhood ideas of the West. In the early stages, steps taken for promoting and applying the liberal democracy, mostly by imitating the Western module, ended up being unsuccessful. The author attributes the reason to some factors, which helped the system to operate in the West, being non-existent in the Middle East. The democracy module, which was designed just for the needs of the British people, was directly imported with little to no adaptations added for Muslim majority Middle East population and ended up malfunctioning.

A similar approach was also seen with the socialism module in its rise in the middle of the 20^th century. Arabic socialism became the main ideology at that time with the efforts of the Egyptian and Syrian governments. However, unfulfilled economic promises tarnished the reputation of the ideology and made the regimes gradually shift to totalitarian dictatorships. Lewis adds that, after all, Middle Eastern people managed to enter a war for national freedom and won it; they lost the war against political freedom, and they were incapable of fighting for economic independence.

Patriotism and Nationalism

Chapter 4 provides an overview of patriotism, nationalism, and their development in the Middle East. The only country where patriotism could progress without being based on the land and the religion among Muslim states was Egypt. The British invasion created a splash in the idea in the late 1800s as well. On the contrary, the first representers of ethnic nationalism in the region were the Hungarian and Polish migrants from the

Ottomans. One of the notorious examples is Borzecki, a polish immigrant, who published books about how Turkish people are also from the Aryan race and genetically related to East Europeans.

The author adds that nationalism was not only specific to Muslims in the Middle East; it existed among Jews as well. Even though any kind of nationalism was considered disrespectful to God in traditional Judaism, it was never an issue for the immigrant Jews from the Eastern Europe, furthermore, Zionism was more of a charitable issue for them. Each new war became an opportunity for the rulers to boost nationalist feelings among the people, as it was beneficial for governmental sustainability.

The Revolt of Islam