It is often said that the Middle East’s greatest export isn’t oil, it’s instability. For centuries, great powers have been drawn to the region, often filled with ambitions of grandeur and empire, only to grow disillusioned and broken, shattered by what they can not change. And yet, try as it may, the West can’t seem to escape its labyrinth pull.
The story of the modern Middle East is one of tragedy and hubris, of a vast and diverse part of the world that has been shaped by war, misrule, and retrograde ideologies. It is a story of such complexity that merely capturing its scope and scale would seem beyond the capabilities of even the most talented of historians.
Recommended Stories
Yet in his latest work, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East, famed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore succeeds in spades. The Cauldron is as well-written and insightful as it is ambitious and daring.
Montefiore has made a career out of writing page-turning works on titanic subjects like Joseph Stalin, the Romanov dynasty, and the holy city of Jerusalem. This, one senses, must have been good preparation for the mammoth task of writing about the modern Middle East.
“It almost killed me writing it,” Montefiore has said. “It was both the most satisfying and most challenging book I have written.” This, coming from a chronicler of the rise and rule of Joseph Stalin and the 300-year reign of the Romanovs, is a testimony to the innumerable challenges confronting those who seek to chart the last 125 years of Middle East history.
The story begins in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, under a Middle East that was at once remarkably different and strikingly similar to the region today. By 1900, the Ottomans had ruled for six centuries. At its height, their domains stretched from the European continent through the sands of Africa and the Levant and all the way to West Asia. In their time, they were a force to be reckoned with, encompassing a dizzying array of languages, ethnicities, religions, and cultures.
But at the dawn of the 20th century, the Ottomans were far from their imperial glory. The so-called “Sick Man of Europe” was under threat from within and without. The empire was in arrears and was being carved up, both by European powers and by emerging strands of nationalism and succession.
Ottoman sultans embarked on a series of belated reforms as part of a bid to recharge and regain lost lands and influence. But when the Great War came, its new rulers, dubbed the “Young Turks,” fatefully decided to cast their lot with Imperial Germany. An empire that had lost its way was soon lost itself. What emerged from its ashes has been even more chaotic. The Middle East today is still looking for what it lost, and perhaps never truly had, more than 200 years ago.
It would be easy to tell the story of the Middle East as one in which its peoples were wholly at the whim of Western colonial powers and were without independent agency. For decades, this has been the fashionable thing to do. But this line of thinking — one hesitates to call such polemics “history” — fails to truly capture the story of the region in all its complexity.
Thankfully, Montefiore discards this lamentable trend. The characters that he chronicles are flesh and blood, capable of both greatness and grave mistakes. Well-known figures like Egypt’s “dreammaker and political shapeshifter,” Gamal Abdel Nasser, to the “Giant of Arabia,” Abdulaziz ibn Al Saud, are among those who have their stories told.
But The Cauldron’s greatness also rests with Montefiore’s willingness to explore rulers and lands whose importance are too often overlooked, from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia to the Trucial States in the Gulf. And, as always, Montefiore has a great eye for the memorable anecdote and juicy detail, from the orgies and gluttony of Egypt’s King Farouk to Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s bizarre obsession with Condoleezza Rice.
SEAN DURNS: A HISTORY OF COMMUNISM WITH AN EYE ON THE VICTIMS
Historians today, both of the Middle East and other subjects, often cast a small net. They avoid large and controversial topics and eschew writing with verve and flair. The Cauldron is a sweeping epic of the old school, the sort of history that begs to be read and is remembered long after it is set down. It both haunts and informs.
Those looking for a solution to the region’s many maladies won’t find answers, but they may find that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And in a famously hot part of the world, that may be cold solace enough. If history is an indicator, this much is certain: borders will continue to shift, wars will continue to be waged, and there will be no shortage of bloodletting and upheaval.
