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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... western Iraq, and southern Turkey. In truth, it was American missionaries like Bill's parents, through their letters home, their cultural societies, and their printing presses, who led the movement to legitimize the term Syria not only ...
... western Iraq, and southern Turkey. In truth, it was American missionaries like Bill's parents, through their letters home, their cultural societies, and their printing presses, who led the movement to legitimize the term Syria not only ...
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... Western education that the Americans in Lebanon were to succeed. And for that the local Arabs would learn to love them. The first American citizen ever to walk among the Arabs was John Ledyard of Groton, Connecticut. A Dartmouth College ...
... Western education that the Americans in Lebanon were to succeed. And for that the local Arabs would learn to love them. The first American citizen ever to walk among the Arabs was John Ledyard of Groton, Connecticut. A Dartmouth College ...
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... “What are your marching orders?” one Congregationalist asked himself, just the way a soldier would. The Congregationalists truly felt it was the Americans—not the Europeans—who were destined to bring the Western Bible to.
... “What are your marching orders?” one Congregationalist asked himself, just the way a soldier would. The Congregationalists truly felt it was the Americans—not the Europeans—who were destined to bring the Western Bible to.
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... Western Bible to the Holy Land. The Americans certainly invested themselves with a mantle of purity. They lived in a virginal land untainted by the hate and other iniquities of the Old World, best exemplified, they felt, by the fact ...
... Western Bible to the Holy Land. The Americans certainly invested themselves with a mantle of purity. They lived in a virginal land untainted by the hate and other iniquities of the Old World, best exemplified, they felt, by the fact ...
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... western coast of Turkey then known as the “Pearl of the Levant,” whose Orthodox Christian population and community of Western traders provided a Westernized beachhead in the Moslem Orient (much as Beirut would later become) that could ...
... western coast of Turkey then known as the “Pearl of the Levant,” whose Orthodox Christian population and community of Western traders provided a Westernized beachhead in the Moslem Orient (much as Beirut would later become) that could ...
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