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

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  • Engels
  • Paperback
  • 9780199734801
  • 04 februari 2010
  • 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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In this groundbreaking book, Priya Satia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this problem and the myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences of their methodological choices during and after the Great War.



At the dawn of the twentieth century, British intelligence agents began to venture in increasing numbers to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, a region of crucial geopolitical importance spanning present-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. They were drawn by the twin objectives of securing the land route to India and finding adventure and spiritualism in a mysterious and ancient land. But these competing desires created a dilemma: how were they to discreetly and patriotically gather facts in a region they were drawn to for its legendary inscrutability and by the promise of fame and escape from Britain? In this groundbreaking book, Priya Satia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this problem and the myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences of their methodological choices during and after the Great War. She tells the story of how an imperial state in thrall to the cultural notions of equivocal agents and beset by an equally captivated and increasingly assertive mass democracy invented a wholly new style of "covert empire" centered on the world's first brutal aerial surveillance regime in Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources--from the fictional to the recently declassified--this book explains how Britons reconciled genuine ethical scruples with the actual violence of their Middle Eastern empire. As it vividly demonstrates how imperialism was made fit for an increasingly democratic and anti-imperial world, what emerges is a new interpretation 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 stark tale of poetic ambition, war, terror, and failed redemption--and the prehistory of our present discontents.

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Taal
en
Bindwijze
Paperback
Oorspronkelijke releasedatum
04 februari 2010
Aantal pagina's
458
Illustraties
Nee

Betrokkenen

Hoofdauteur
Priya Satia
Hoofduitgeverij
Oxford University Press Inc

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Extra groot lettertype
Nee
Product breedte
152 mm
Product hoogte
26 mm
Product lengte
229 mm
Studieboek
Nee
Verpakking breedte
154 mm
Verpakking hoogte
35 mm
Verpakking lengte
233 mm
Verpakkingsgewicht
714 g

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EAN
9780199734801
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