Fromkin's Been Nailed

I finished extracting what I needed from Fromkin. I’m not sure he was a good choice now. The problem is that he loves long, dateless descriptions that skip back and forth across time. Usually descriptive texts that are useful, I scan into the timeline. But that can realistically be one or two paragraphs, maximum. Fromkin will give interesting descriptions with nothing at all to date and the descriptions go on for several pages. I simply can’t scan in whole pages, especially when it’s clear that he’s skipping back and forth over time, even while not dating a damned thing. What I need to read is a book that’s more like Zamir about the Great Arab Revolt (which looks really not so great after reading Fromkin!). I think my future timelining has to rest on ferreting out which book is date-rich. That one always has to come first. If nothing else, having the chronology already done for me would have allowed me cut and paste more out of Fromkin.

I’m thinking of adding another book on the Great Arab Revolt, Eliezar Tauber’s The Arab Movements in World War I. The book was reviewed by Philip S. Khoury, Jeffrey A. Rudd and Charles D. Smith and sounds a great deal like the Zamir—a book short on interpretation and long on mind-numbing detail. Smith, the author of what has become the standard textbook for courses on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, points out his errors, but on the other hand praises the book as the state of the art. The weaknesses tend surround issues of ignoring Rashid Khalidi’s work on Palestinian identity and Arabism, especially when he is so anxious to stress local nationalisms prominence at the expense of pan-Arabism. Khuri was the most lukewarm reviewer. Rudd was much more positive. Smith, interestingly, while the most critical, was also the most enthusiastic as well. All three reviewers stated that they would have liked to see Tauber both develop his own argument and engage the arguments of other scholars.

Do I need another book on this list? It’s a good one to read. I dunno. I probably should send the last blog to Ellis and ask him if he thinks this is a viable conference paper. Maybe I should just punt the idea. It’s late. I need to crash.

A Peace to End All Peace

Okay, I’ve decided which parts of Fromkin to timeline. I’m going to do chapters 23-28, chapters 35-37, chapters 41-44, chapters 46-48 and chapter 57. Basically this surgical reading emphasizes the diplomacy that lead to the Great Arab Revolt, the revolt itself, and the peace settlement in the Middle East focusing on Syria and Lebanon and a little side voyage into the Turks’ s slaughters of the Armenians and the rise of Mustafa Kamal’s Turkey.

The last two parts are important because the Maronites are quite mindful of the slaughter of the Armenians and see this as a primary motivation behind the expansion of the borders of the autonomous sanjak of Mount Lebanon into the Greater Lebanon of today. Given that this choice was a demographic disaster that has guaranteed that Lebanon will never be the Christian state the Maronite Church had hoped for, the paranoia that led to it needs some explanation. Moreover, France’s need to re-fight its war with Turkey and to eventually abandon the Treaty of Sèvres is important for our story. Re-fighting the Turks made the French vulnerable to insurrection in Syria as they had to deploy their men northward. Moreover, losing this small war meant that the French had to cede to Port of Alexandretta to the Turks. As Alexandretta was the only decent port in the Syria mandate that had not found its way into the borders of Greater Lebanon, the outcome of this war was one of the stressors that plagued the French Mandate in Syria.

Fromkin isn’t too dense, so let’s hope I can do this quickly. I have grading to do next week. Yippee.

Where Have You Been, Talal?

I know. No progress posted for over a week. We had a birthday party on the weekend of April 5-6 for my mother-in-law and brother-in-law. That kept me busy. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my teaching days. I find I have shit for focus after commuting, teaching three sections, attending a teaching meeting (Tuesdays only) and commuting back. I tried to timeline on Thursday, but my concentration was shot and it went nowhere. Wednesday, a friend had some personal career stuff to discuss, so I was busy with her that afternoon. I only left the U District at 4:30, so I was pretty tired that day, too. Sometimes I can timeline if I’m tired, but Zamir loves to shift back and forth across time and can be awfully vague with dates (despite being the most detailed historian in the group). When he’s in his back and forth mood, I can’t follow him if I’m tired.

I miss the Old Talal’s sense of focus. The Talal 2.0 (MS Version)© Operating System crashes way too easily.

But enough bitching! Zamir is finally done. What’s the strategy from here? Well, I was hoping to fill in the chronology from 1910-1926. That way I could start posting some interesting blogs about the creation of the mandate. I hate to keep this so boring.

That strategy, however, is riddled with problems. I was thinking of reading the first few chapters of the Ziadeh. I was hoping he’d be my complement for Zamir. While I have other sources in the timeline for 1910-1926 that aren’t in the chart, they’re mostly books about French imperialism and the Treaty of Versailles. Zamir is basically my detailed source for Lebanon itself during that period. The Ziadeh piece, being a book of Lebanese constitutional history from the 19^th century until the roughly 2005, likes to skip. He really doesn’t cover the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the war. Moreover, only one chapter of his book (chapter 4 covers 1920-1943) really covers the meat of my paper. He really has a gap between 1915 and 1920. While without a doubt, I’ll read his chapter 4 for the paper, I’m wondering if I need to add a book that can give me at least 1910-1920 coverage.

It seems almost like cheating, but I was thinking of selections from David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. It was published back in 1989 and is a bit dated now, but it has several elements that make it appealing. It has chapters on the Ottoman Empire during the war, on the Great Arab Revolt (yes, I know it wasn’t really all that great a revolt and mostly involved British troops. But I’m a Jordanian-American. I’m trained to call it the Great Arab Revolt), and The French war with Turkey and the Turks genocide of the Armenians. I could use a little more of all those elements to contextualize the situation in Lebanon just before the start of the mandate. It would be nice to have another source for the period that is focused on Lebanon, however. I hoped that Ziadeh would do the trick, but I don’t think he can do much for me in that period.

After that, I think I want to deal with the Gaunson. It’s a full book of facts about five years I can only rely upon Zisser for. I wrote in an earlier blog, Firro covers the period, but you never want Firro to be your fact book. Zisser is not as bad as Firro, but he isn’t as fact-rich as Zamir. Gaunson looks like he might do the trick. After Gaunson, then finally to the Solh. He looks Firro-esque in terms of his style. I figure waiting until later is the best I can do with him.

I need to timeline this week. I’m grading for three sections after Thursday. It’ll be a nightmare.