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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... Syria, and Palestine, and Egypt, you might as well dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as of Magic. There is no controversy about the matter. The effect of this, the unanimous belief of an ignorant people, upon the mind of a stranger ...
... Syria, and Palestine, and Egypt, you might as well dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as of Magic. There is no controversy about the matter. The effect of this, the unanimous belief of an ignorant people, upon the mind of a stranger ...
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... Syria,” not “Beirut, Lebanon,” because that's what it was. We always thought of Beirut as part of Syria. Modern Lebanon is a French invention,” Bill explains. Bill's father and mother met in an orphanage in Sidon, a Mediterranean ...
... Syria,” not “Beirut, Lebanon,” because that's what it was. We always thought of Beirut as part of Syria. Modern Lebanon is a French invention,” Bill explains. Bill's father and mother met in an orphanage in Sidon, a Mediterranean ...
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... Syria, after his missionary father became president of Aleppo College when Bill was a year old. Aleppo was also ... Syrians had always been tolerant of Americans. We trusted them and they trusted us.” For Beirutborn and Alepporaised Bill ...
... Syria, after his missionary father became president of Aleppo College when Bill was a year old. Aleppo was also ... Syrians had always been tolerant of Americans. We trusted them and they trusted us.” For Beirutborn and Alepporaised Bill ...
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... Syria, and everything else—a sandstone desert reaching all the way south to Yemen. Syria, a Greek word derived from the Semitic Siryon, first appears in Deuteronomy in reference to Mount Hermon, a mountain straddling the current ...
... Syria, and everything else—a sandstone desert reaching all the way south to Yemen. Syria, a Greek word derived from the Semitic Siryon, first appears in Deuteronomy in reference to Mount Hermon, a mountain straddling the current ...
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... state for the Middle East and a former ambassador to Syria and to Saudi Arabia, says the word “became a pejorative for he who intellectually sleeps with Arabs,” someone, that is, assumed to be politically naive, elitist, and too.
... state for the Middle East and a former ambassador to Syria and to Saudi Arabia, says the word “became a pejorative for he who intellectually sleeps with Arabs,” someone, that is, assumed to be politically naive, elitist, and too.
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