Arabists: The Romance of an American EliteSimon and Schuster, 1995 M07 1 - 368 pages A tight-knit group closely linked by intermarriage as well as class and old school ties, the “Arabists” were men and women who spent much of their lives living and working in the Arab world as diplomats, military attaches, intelligence agents, scholar-adventurers, and teachers. As such, the Arabists exerted considerable influence both as career diplomats and as bureaucrats within the State Department from the early nineteenth century to the present. But over time, as this work shows, the group increasingly lost touch with a rapidly changing American society, growing both more insular and headstrong and showing a marked tendency to assert the Arab point of view. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and other official and private sources, Kaplan reconstructs the 100-year history of the Arabist elite, demonstrating their profound influence on American attitudes toward the Middle East, and tracing their decline as an influx of ethnic and regional specialists has transformed the State Department and challenged the power of the old elite. |
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... Christianity, the one faith which can make a man or a nation an uplifting force in the world. —Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match. —Richard Crossman, Palestine Mission ...
... Christianity, the one faith which can make a man or a nation an uplifting force in the world. —Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match. —Richard Crossman, Palestine Mission ...
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... Christian hymns every morning at chapel and the “sleepy, peaceful” quality of Beirut. David Zimmerman, another future U.S. diplomat, remembers the Saturday baseball games, the Cub Scout meetings in sight of Beirut harbor, and picking ...
... Christian hymns every morning at chapel and the “sleepy, peaceful” quality of Beirut. David Zimmerman, another future U.S. diplomat, remembers the Saturday baseball games, the Cub Scout meetings in sight of Beirut harbor, and picking ...
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... Christianity, the American missionaries in the Middle East were complete failures. The intractability of Islam quickly forced them to give up any hope of converting souls to Christ. In an acute observation of just how harmless the ...
... Christianity, the American missionaries in the Middle East were complete failures. The intractability of Islam quickly forced them to give up any hope of converting souls to Christ. In an acute observation of just how harmless the ...
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... Christ. The event, known as the Haystack Incident, passed into legend, and the details became obscured. What is ... Christian love,” the Reverend Hopkins explained, “could bring nearer to humankind the millennium that would wipe out ...
... Christ. The event, known as the Haystack Incident, passed into legend, and the details became obscured. What is ... Christian love,” the Reverend Hopkins explained, “could bring nearer to humankind the millennium that would wipe out ...
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... Christian nation, which has never persecuted the descendants of Israel.” AntiSemitism would one day become a critical issue for Americans in the Arab world. But it all began rather differently. These early Congregationalists were, in ...
... Christian nation, which has never persecuted the descendants of Israel.” AntiSemitism would one day become a critical issue for Americans in the Arab world. But it all began rather differently. These early Congregationalists were, in ...
Contents
Aggrieved Area Experts | |
Mugged by Reality | |
Horan of Arabia | |
Indiana Jones | |
Debacle | |
The Icy Eyes That Had Contemplated Nineveh | |
Cowering in a Dark Alley | |
Hostages to Idealism | |
Reality | |
Mr Foreign Service | |
Old Hands | |
Never a Dull Moment | |
Redemption | |
A New Species? | |
Bibliography | |
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Akins American missionaries antiSemitism April Glaspie Arab country Arab nationalism Arab world ArabIsraeli Arabists Aviv Baghdad became Beirut Bill Stoltzfus Bliss British cables Cairo career Christian Cluverius colleagues College Congregationalist Coon Crane culture Custis Damascus David Department Department’s desert Doughty Eagleton Eastern Egypt Eli Smith expatriates Falashas Feisal Foreign Service French FSOs Glaspie’s going Hermann Eilts Hume Horan Iran Iraq Iraq’s Iraqi Islam Israel Israeli Jerry Weaver Jerusalem Jewish Jews Jidda Kelly Khartoum Killgore Kissinger Kissinger’s knew Kuwait language Lawrence Lawrence’s learn Arabic Lebanon lived Loy Henderson Maronites Mesopotamia Middle East military mission Moslem NEA assistant secretary never officer Operation Moses Palestine Palestinian Parker peace Philby political president Protestant Roy Atherton Sadat Saddam Saudi Arabia says Seelye’s Shiite Sisco SixDay Soviet Sterner Sudan Sudanese Syria Talcott Seelye U.S. ambassador U.S. diplomats U.S. embassy United University Veliotes Washington Western Wiley William Yemen