The Middle East from Empire to Sealed Identities / / Lorenzo Kamel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Complete eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Kamel, Lorenzo,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (280 p.) :; 19 B/W illustrations

Explores how conceptions of identity were historically constructed in the Middle East under the influence of imperial powersThis compelling analysis of the modern Middle East – based on research in 19 archives and numerous languages – shows the transition from an internal history characterised by local realities that were plural and multidimensional, and where identities were flexible and hybrid, to a simplified history largely imagined and imposed by external actors. The author demonstrates how the once-heterogeneous identities of Middle Eastern peoples were sealed into a standardised and uniform version that persists to this day. He also sheds light on the efforts that peoples in the region – in the context of a new process of homogenisation of diversities – are exerting in order to get back into history, regaining possession of their multifaceted pasts.Key featuresLargely based on primary sources (in English, Arabic, Hebrew, Ottoman Turkish, German, Italian and French) from 19 archives in the Middle East, Europe and the USProvides an intra-regional historical understanding of the (past and ongoing) politicisation of ethno-religious differences in the Middle East

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Abbreviations -- Note on Transliteration -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: The Past’s Present -- 1 Beyond ‘Tribes’ and ‘Sects’: On Concepts and Terms -- 2 The First Moment – 1830s: Th e Germs of Competing Ethno-religious Visions -- 3 Th e Second Moment – The Tanẓīmāt’s Long Waves: Politicising Ethno-religious Differences -- 4 The Third Moment – From Ethnocentric Drives to a New Millet System -- 5 Balfour’s ‘Pattern’ -- 6 The Racialisation of Middle Eastern People -- 7 Beyond ‘Artificiality’: Borders, States, Nations -- Conclusion: The Present’s Past -- Bibliography -- Index