The Middle East

In 1900, the territories between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf were provinces of the Ottoman Empire, governed from Istanbul, connected by caravan routes and pilgrimage roads, home to Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Persians, Jews, Christians, Druze, and dozens of other communities. By 2000, that same geography held over twenty sovereign states, the world's largest proven oil reserves, several active wars, a nuclear-armed neighbor, and the attention of every major power on earth.

No region underwent a more violent transformation in the twentieth century. The Middle East was carved up by European powers, reshaped by the discovery of petroleum, fractured by the creation of Israel, convulsed by revolution, and drawn into the Cold War as a proxy battleground. Through all of it, ordinary people, farmers in the Nile Delta, shopkeepers in Tehran's bazaar, Palestinian families in refugee camps, Bedouin herders watching pipelines cross their grazing lands, lived inside decisions made in London, Washington, Moscow, and their own capitals.

Understanding the modern Middle East requires holding multiple truths at once. Oil wealth created glittering cities and deepened inequality. Nationalism liberated peoples and suppressed minorities. Religious revival offered meaning and, in some cases, became a tool of authoritarianism. Foreign intervention sometimes prevented catastrophe and more often caused it.