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Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century
Adeed Dawisha
From Triumph to Despair
Princeton University Press
March 2005
352 pages ISBN: 0691122725 Trade Size
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Non-Fiction Political | Non-Fiction
Like a great dynasty that falls to ruin and is eventually
remembered more for its faults than its feats, Arab
nationalism is remembered mostly for its humiliating rout in
the 1967 Six Day War, for inter-Arab divisions, and for
words and actions distinguished by their meagerness. But
people tend to forget the majesty that Arab nationalism once
was. In this elegantly narrated and richly documented book,
Adeed Dawisha brings this majesty to life through a sweeping
historical account of its dramatic rise and fall. Dawisha argues that Arab nationalism--which, he says, was
inspired by nineteenth-century German Romantic
nationalism--really took root after World War I and not in
the nineteenth century, as many believe, and that it
blossomed only in the 1950s and 1960s under the charismatic
leadership of Egypt's Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir. He traces the
ideology's passage from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
through its triumphant ascendancy in the late 1950s with the
unity of Egypt and Syria and with the nationalist revolution
of Iraq, to the mortal blow it received in the 1967 Arab
defeat by Israel, and its eventual eclipse. Dawisha
criticizes the common failure to distinguish between the
broader, cultural phenomenon of "Arabism" and the political,
secular desire for a united Arab state that defined Arab
nationalism. In recent decades competitive ideologies--not
least, Islamic militancy--have inexorably supplanted the
latter, he contends. Dawisha, who grew up in Iraq during the heyday of Arab
nationalism, infuses his work with rare personal insight and
extraordinary historical breadth. In addition to Western
sources, he draws on an unprecedented wealth of Arab
political memoirs and studies to tell the fascinating story
of one of the most colorful and significant periods of the
contemporary Arab world. In doing so, he also gives us the
means to more fully understand trends in the region today.
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