Spies in Arabia The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East

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  • Engels
  • Hardcover
  • 9780195331417
  • 17 april 2008
  • 458 pagina's
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Priya Satia

Priya Satia is a Professor of History at Stanford University. She is the author of Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East, and her writing has appeared in Slate, the Financial Times, The Nation, and the Huffington Post, among other publications. She received a MSc in Development Studies (Economics) at the London School of Economics and a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Stanford, California with her family.

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The first cultural history of Britain's Middle Eastern empire, Spies in Arabia tells the story of an intelligence community groping through a fog of cultural notions, the violence of the Great War, and an interfering democracy towards a new style of "covert empire" centered on a brutal aerial surveillance regain.



At the start of the twentieth century, British intelligence agents began to venture in increasing numbers to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, drawn by the twin objectives of securing the route to India and finding adventure and spiritualism in an antique land. But these competing objectives created a dilemma: how were they to discreetly and patriotically gather facts in a region they were drawn to for its legendary inscrutability and promise of fame and escape from Britain? Spies in Arabia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this dilemma and its myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences during and after the Great War. Arguing that violence and culture were more closely allied in imperial rule than has been recognized, it tells the story of an imperial state dependent on equivocal agents groping through a fog of cultural notions and an interfering mass democracy towards a new style of "covert empire" centered on a brutal aerial surveillance regime in Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources - from the fictional to the recently declassified - it explains how Britons reconciled genuine ethical scruples with the actual violence of their Middle Eastern empire - how imperialism was made fit for an increasingly democratic and anti-imperial world. In doing so, it offers the first cultural history of Britain's Middle Eastern empire, anchored in a radically new interpretation of the institutions and practices of intelligence-gathering and the state. The result is a new understanding 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 start tale of poetic ambition, war, terror, and failed redemption - and the prehistory of our present discontents.

Productspecificaties

Inhoud

Taal
en
Bindwijze
Hardcover
Oorspronkelijke releasedatum
17 april 2008
Aantal pagina's
458
Illustraties
Nee

Betrokkenen

Hoofdauteur
Priya Satia
Hoofduitgeverij
Oxford University Press Inc

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Editie
illustrated edition
Extra groot lettertype
Nee
Product breedte
163 mm
Product hoogte
29 mm
Product lengte
242 mm
Studieboek
Nee
Verpakking breedte
163 mm
Verpakking hoogte
25 mm
Verpakking lengte
242 mm
Verpakkingsgewicht
834 g

EAN

EAN
9780195331417
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