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. |
From inside the book
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... Eli Smith, a Beirut missionary wife, noted in 1839 that through Moslem eyes, “Americans did not lie, nor steal, nor quarrel, nor do any such thing; but, poor creatures, they have no religion!” It would be only as purveyors of Western ...
... Eli Smith, a Beirut missionary wife, noted in 1839 that through Moslem eyes, “Americans did not lie, nor steal, nor quarrel, nor do any such thing; but, poor creatures, they have no religion!” It would be only as purveyors of Western ...
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... Eli Smith to make the difficult journey across Anatolia to the wild and freezing mountainous region where Turkey, Armenia, Iran, and Georgia intersect. Both men were twentynine. Otis Dwight had graduated from Hamilton College in upstate ...
... Eli Smith to make the difficult journey across Anatolia to the wild and freezing mountainous region where Turkey, Armenia, Iran, and Georgia intersect. Both men were twentynine. Otis Dwight had graduated from Hamilton College in upstate ...
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... Eli Smith and others in the late 1820s, Beirut started to take on the role of a real expatriate community, however tiny, rather than a mission outpost like Jerusalem or Urmia. By the time Smith returned to Beirut after his nearfatal ...
... Eli Smith and others in the late 1820s, Beirut started to take on the role of a real expatriate community, however tiny, rather than a mission outpost like Jerusalem or Urmia. By the time Smith returned to Beirut after his nearfatal ...
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... Smith also compiled an encyclopedic list of Syrian towns and villages that formed the basis of geographic knowledge for later Middle East specialists. With Eli Smith, the meaning of what a missionary was began to change from a ...
... Smith also compiled an encyclopedic list of Syrian towns and villages that formed the basis of geographic knowledge for later Middle East specialists. With Eli Smith, the meaning of what a missionary was began to change from a ...
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... Eli Smith that was known in Syria as American Arabic. The first nationalist Arab cultural group, the Syrian Society of Arts and Sciences, established in 1847, was a joint venture of Syrians and early American missionaryArabists such as Eli ...
... Eli Smith that was known in Syria as American Arabic. The first nationalist Arab cultural group, the Syrian Society of Arts and Sciences, established in 1847, was a joint venture of Syrians and early American missionaryArabists such as Eli ...
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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Common terms and phrases
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