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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... language and have spent years of their lives in a difficult foreign environment in service to the United States. I wish I were one of them. Unfortunately, because my Arabic was never very good, I'm not.'” The reader may think that he ...
... language and have spent years of their lives in a difficult foreign environment in service to the United States. I wish I were one of them. Unfortunately, because my Arabic was never very good, I'm not.'” The reader may think that he ...
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... languages. Parsons was “moody, introspective,” and had a weak stomach. In 1820 this sorry pair reached Smyrna, a Greek city on the western coast of Turkey then known as the “Pearl of the Levant,” whose Orthodox Christian population and ...
... languages. Parsons was “moody, introspective,” and had a weak stomach. In 1820 this sorry pair reached Smyrna, a Greek city on the western coast of Turkey then known as the “Pearl of the Levant,” whose Orthodox Christian population and ...
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... language. (Richard Francis Burton, the first of the great British Arabists, was a boy of six at the time.) Unlike Pliny Fisk, who quickly gave up on Arabic, Smith kept at it daily for three years, establishing the groundwork for his ...
... language. (Richard Francis Burton, the first of the great British Arabists, was a boy of six at the time.) Unlike Pliny Fisk, who quickly gave up on Arabic, Smith kept at it daily for three years, establishing the groundwork for his ...
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... languages of the region they served in, the Congregationalists were starting to become more like romantic explorers and Peace Corps workers than real missionaries. Asahel Grant, for instance, after establishing his clinic in Urmia, set ...
... languages of the region they served in, the Congregationalists were starting to become more like romantic explorers and Peace Corps workers than real missionaries. Asahel Grant, for instance, after establishing his clinic in Urmia, set ...
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... language of their liturgy, which they use to this day. It remains unclear exactly when and why the Maronites migrated from northern Syria into the mountains north and northeast of Beirut. As a small sect surrounded by enemies, they ...
... language of their liturgy, which they use to this day. It remains unclear exactly when and why the Maronites migrated from northern Syria into the mountains north and northeast of Beirut. As a small sect surrounded by enemies, they ...
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