The Arabists: The Romance of an American EliteFree Press, 1993 - 333 pages Here is the untold story of an inbred, gifted, and powerful elite of families and friends who dominated America's relations with the Middle East for over a century. Known to Foreign Service colleagues as "the Arabists", these were the men and women who had spent much of their lives, usually with their families, living in the Arab world as diplomats, military attaches, intelligence agents, and educators. Descended from the missionaries, scholars, and explorers who first ventured into the region - an offshoot of the WASP elite that ruled America during the nineteenth century - the Arabists were an exclusive caste linked by complex social, institutional, and family ties. Thoroughly at home in Arab cultures and often enjoying relations of longstanding intimacy with the monarchs and ruling elites of Arab countries, these American expatriates lived a charmed lifestyle that has become a source of intense nostalgia among the Arabists themselves as well as a symbol of their romance with Arab culture and increasing isolation from American society and interests. The Arabists dominated American policy and shaped our perception of the Arab world throughout the colonial and interwar periods. But after World War II, the diplomatic corps began to change, reflecting the country's new ethnic and social diversity. Kaplan describes the impact of this change within the State Department, showing how the advent of Irish Catholics, Jews, and Harvard-trained regional experts created internal pressures that slowly loosened the Arabists' grip on Middle East diplomacy in the postwar period. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and other official and private sources, Kaplan reconstructs the hundred-year history of theArabist elite, and traces their decline against the background of this social transformation. |
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Page 107
... Western liberalism : the birth of a Jewish state in Palestine . The Syrians , who had seen Americans only in the most exalted of lights through 1946 , now saw America as the agent of their further dismemberment . The French had ...
... Western liberalism : the birth of a Jewish state in Palestine . The Syrians , who had seen Americans only in the most exalted of lights through 1946 , now saw America as the agent of their further dismemberment . The French had ...
Page 109
... Western democracy offered no quick solution for the ills of Arab societies . The largest number of seats went to the tribal and sectarian independents , while the biggest gains since the 1949 ballot were registered by the Baath ( " Re ...
... Western democracy offered no quick solution for the ills of Arab societies . The largest number of seats went to the tribal and sectarian independents , while the biggest gains since the 1949 ballot were registered by the Baath ( " Re ...
Page 182
... Western relationship , " including “ the usurpa- tion of Palestine by Zionists . " Kerr's essay , written in honor of a late Jordanian prime minister , Abd al - Hamid Sharaf , goes on to champion Western liberalism , Arab nation- alism ...
... Western relationship , " including “ the usurpa- tion of Palestine by Zionists . " Kerr's essay , written in honor of a late Jordanian prime minister , Abd al - Hamid Sharaf , goes on to champion Western liberalism , Arab nation- alism ...
Contents
Three generations Three wars Three marriages | 1 |
Dream | 11 |
Home to Lebanon | 13 |
Copyright | |
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