Hell in the Holy Land: World War I in the Middle East

2007 ◽  
Vol 44 (07) ◽  
pp. 44-4041-44-4041
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
World War

Press Propaganda and Subaltern Agents of Pan-Islamic Networks in the Muslim Mediterranean World prior to World War I

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World War ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The Press ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.

The Government of War

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-793
Author(s):  
Dina Rizk Khoury
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
State System ◽  
World War ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Security Services ◽  
Short Piece ◽  
The Government

I write this piece as Iraq, following Syria, descends into a civil war that is undermining the post–World War I state system and reconfiguring regional and transnational networks of mobilization and instrumentalizations of violence and identity formation. That the Middle East has come to this moment is not an inevitable product of the artificiality of national borders and the precariousness of the state system. It is important to avoid this linear narrative of inevitability, with its attendant formulations of the Middle East as a repository of a large number of absences, and instead to locate the current wars in a specific historical time: the late and post–Cold War eras, marked by the agendas of the Washington Consensus and the globalization of neoliberal discourses; the privatization of the developmental and welfare state; the institutional devolution and multiplication of security services; and the entrenchment of new forms of colonial violence and rule in Israel and Palestine and on a global scale. The conveners of this roundtable have asked us to reflect on the technopolitics of war in the context of this particular moment and in light of the pervasiveness of new governmentalities of war. What I will do in this short piece is reflect on the heuristic and methodological possibilities of the study of war as a form of governance, or what I call the “government of war,” in light of my own research and writing on Iraq.

The Great War of the Postcards

2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-568
Author(s):  
Johann Strauss
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Book Illustrations ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

This article examines the functions and the significance of picture postcards during World War I, with particular reference to the war in the Ottoman Lands and the Balkans, or involving the Turkish Army in Galicia. After the principal types of Kriegspostkarten – sentimental, humorous, propaganda, and artistic postcards (Künstlerpostkarten) – have been presented, the different theatres of war (Balkans, Galicia, Middle East) and their characteristic features as they are reflected on postcards are dealt with. The piece also includes aspects such as the influence of Orientalism, the problem of fake views, and the significance and the impact of photographic postcards, portraits, and photo cards. The role of postcards in book illustrations is demonstrated using a typical example (F. C. Endres, Die Türkei (1916)). The specific features of a collection of postcards left by a German soldier who served in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq during World War I will be presented at the end of this article.

Making History to/as the Main Pillar of Identity: The Assyrian Paradigm

Belleten ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 76 (276) ◽  
pp. 631-646
Author(s):  
Bülent Özdemi̇r
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Segment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Conditions

In the 20th century Assyrians living in Diaspora have increased their search of identity because of the social and political conditions of their present countries. In doing so, they utilize the history by picking up certain events which are still kept fresh in the collective memory of the Assyrian society. World War I, which caused a large segment of the Assyrians to emigrate from the Middle East, has been considered as the milestone event of their history. They preferred to use and evaluate the circumstances during WW I in terms of a genocidal attack of the Ottomans against their nation. This political definition dwarfs the promises which were not kept given by their Western allies during the war for an independent Assyrian state. The aspects of Assyrian civilization existed thousands of years ago as one of the real pillars of their identity suffer from the artificially developed political unification around the aspects of their doom in WWI presented as a genocidal case. Additionally, this plays an efficient role in removal of existing religious and sectarian differences for centuries among Assyrians. This paper aims at showing in the framework of primary sources how Assyrian genocidal claims are being used pragmatically in the formation of national consciousness in a very effective way. Not the Assyrian civilization but their constructed history in WWI is used for the formation of their nation definition.

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