The Glubb Reports studies papers written by General Sir John Glubb, the long-serving British commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion. It covers issues such as the role of tribes and desert control, the impact of Palestine, the Arab Legion's role in the first Arab-Israeli war, the expansion of the Arab Legion, and Glubb's dismissal in 1956.
During the 1950s, John Glubb and the Arab Legion became the 'cornerstone' of Britain's imperial presence in the Middle East. Based on unprecedented access to the unofficial archive of the Arab Legion, including a major accession of Glubb's private papers, Graham Jevon examines and revises Britain's post-1945 retreat from empire in the Middle East. Jevon details how Glubb's command of the Arab Legion secured British and Jordanian interests during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, answering questions that have dogged historians of this conflict for decades. He reveals how the Arab Legion was transformed, by Cold War concerns, from an internal Jordanian security force to a quasi-division within the British Army. Jevon also sheds new light on the succession crisis following King Abdullah's assassination, and uses previously unseen documents to challenge accepted contentions concerning King Hussein's dismissal of Glubb, the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the nature of Britain's imperial decline.
Linear and progressive views of history have dominated the popular imagination for the past seventy years in a worldview wedded to the inexorable rise of globalisation and GDP-growth at any cost. However, the end of the Cold War failed to produce the end of history as hoped, a fact brought home to many by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Material wealth and 'Progress in the name of social justice have not made people happier or more united but quite the opposite. Anxiety, depression, fearfulness, sadness, loneliness and anger have all massively increased since 1970 with the male suicide rate at an all-time high. Western society seems to be divided against itself across every line conceivable: left versus right, women versus men, non-whites versus whites, globalists versus populists, the elites versus the people, people who think that men can be women and vice versa versus those who insist that they cannot, and so on. Seventy-three percent of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track, with similar views reflected in Britain and across Europe. The Prophets of Doom explores eleven thinkers who not only dared to contradict the dominant linear and progressive view of history, but also predicted many of the political and social maladies through which we are living.
With the end of the British Raj in 1947, the Foreign Office replaced the Government of India as the department responsible for the Persian Gulf, and would proceed to manage relations with the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates, UAE) until British withdrawal in 1971. This work is a comprehensive history of British policy in the region during that period, situated for the first time in its broad historical and political context. Tancred Bradshaw – an academic historian with extensive experience in the region – sheds light onto the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi in the 1950s, Foreign Office attempts to instigate a long-term development policy in the region, the slow end of the British Empire, the origins of the UAE and – most importantly – the British legacy in this geopolitically crucial region today. The book relies on 40,000 pages of archival material, much of it previously unused, and will be of interest to Imperial historians, as well as anyone working on the history and politics of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
This book offers fresh insights to enhance and diversify our understanding of the modern history of the state and societies in today’s Jordan, while also providing examples of why and how scholars can challenge the static and discursively government-minded approaches to minorities and minoritisation – especially the traditional emphasis on demographic balances. Despite its small size and initial appearance of homogeneity, Jordan provides an excellent case of a dynamic, relational, historically contingent and fluid approach to ethnic, political and religious minorities in the context of the imposition of a modern state system on complex and varied traditional societies. The editors and contributors present dynamic and relational perspectives on the status of and historical processes involved in the creation and absorption of minority groups within Jordan.
With more than 1,100 cross-referenced entries covering every aspect of conflict in the Middle East, this definitive scholarly reference provides readers with a substantial foundation for understanding contemporary history in the most volatile region in the world. This authoritative and comprehensive encyclopedia covers all the key wars, insurgencies, and battles that have occurred in the Middle East roughly between 3100 BCE and the early decades of the twenty-first century. It also discusses the evolution of military technology and the development and transformation of military tactics and strategy from the ancient world to the present. In addition to the hundreds of entries on major conflicts, military engagements, and diplomatic developments, the book also features entries on key military, political, and religious leaders. Essays on the major empires and nations of the region are included, as are overview essays on the major periods under consideration. The book additionally covers such non-military subjects as diplomacy, national and international politics, religion and sectarian conflict, cultural phenomena, genocide, international peacekeeping missions, social movements, and the rise to prominence of international terrorism. The reference entries are augmented by a carefully curated documents volume that offers primary sources on such diverse topics as the Greco-Persian Wars, the Crusades, and the Arab-Israeli Wars.
Jordan currently hosts the second largest percentage of registered refugees in the world: three million out of its eleven million inhabitants. Its experience in hosting migrants and refugees precedes its independence in 1946, with the arrival of Circassians, Chechens, and Armenians from the late 19th century. Jordan thus constitutes a unique observatory for reception policies and long-term settlement of different migrant groups. Based on original empirical and archival material, this volume focuses on migrations caused by conflicts, wars, and crises underscoring their articulation with longstanding human mobility. It sheds light on the cumulative and processual dimensions of Jordan's reception policies and migrants' settlement strategies. It identifies the multiple actors involved in the management of migrants and, conversely, the latter's contribution to the Jordanian social, economic, political, and urban fabric. The first part of the volume examines the policies adopted by the Jordanian authorities and international organizations to regulate access to basic services and to the labour market, and explores the economic and political factors underlying them. The second part analyzes the effects of Jordan's policies on the territorial distribution and settlement of migrants. How have these policies, combined with the adaptation strategies of migrants contributed to shaping new urban spaces? The third part focuses on capacity of the migrants to activate, establish, (re)build, and intersect different kinds of solidarity networks within the context of protracted displacement.
Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States and Saudi Arabia have built a close but often troubled alliance. In this critical history, Victor McFarland reveals the deep ties binding the leaders of the two nations. Connecting foreign relations and domestic politics, McFarland challenges the view that the U.S.-Saudi alliance is the inevitable consequence of American energy demand and Saudi Arabia’s huge oil reserves. Oil Powers traces the growth of the alliance through a dense web of political, economic, and social connections that bolstered royal and executive power and the national-security state. McFarland shows how U.S. and Saudi elites collaborated to advance their shared interests against rivals at home and abroad. During the 1970s, as higher oil prices enriched the Saudi government, destabilized the American economy, and changed the balance of power in the Middle East, leaders of both countries responded by consolidating their alliance. Facing objections from their own people, Washington and Riyadh chose to shield their partnership from public oversight and accountability. While American support empowered the Saudi royal family and helped the kingdom expand its influence across the Middle East, Saudi elites also encouraged a rightward shift in U.S. foreign and economic policy—with profound long-term effects. Oil Powers reveals the role of the U.S.-Saudi alliance in laying the groundwork for American military involvement in the Middle East and the entrenchment of a global order fueled by oil.
This book explores concepts of decolonisation, identity, and nation in the white settler society of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) between 1964 and 1979. It considers how white settlers used the past to make claims of authority in the present. It investigates the white Rhodesian state’s attempts to assert its independence from Britain and develop a Rhodesian national identity by changing Rhodesia’s old colonial symbols, and examines how the meaning of these national symbols changed over time. Finally, the book offers insights into the role of race in Rhodesian national identity, showing how portrayals of a ‘timeless’ black population were highly dependent upon circumstance and reflective of white settler anxieties. Using a comparative approach, the book shows parallels between Rhodesia and other settler societies, as well as other post-colonial nation-states and even metropoles, as themes and narratives of decolonisation travelled around the world.
