The Making of the Modern Middle East

Here is the updated syllabus of the course, as of the first day. Below are “podcasts” of case studies, based on reports generated by ChatGPT’s DeepResearch and parsed by Google’s NotebookLM (the Audio Overview feature). They may contain errors, mangle non-English names and terms, and mispronounce words derived from capitalized acronyms. After all, they’re not real people… Next to each entry is also a link to the reading materials for that session.

Need more background? This series by my colleague Asher Susser is an excellent introduction to the modern history of the Middle East, structured in the usual way, over 40 short clips, assembled in this playlist.

US Enters the First Barbary War (1801-1805) Reading.
The French Decision to Invade Egypt (1798) Reading.
British Policy Debates on the Greek Revolt (1821-1830) Reading.
The French Decision to Invade Algeria (1830) Reading.
The British Decision to Save the Ottomans (1840) Reading.
Britain’s Entry to the Crimean War (1853-1854) Reading.
French Intervention in Lebanon (1860) Reading.
British Debate over the Suez Canal (1850s-1876) Reading.
Britain’s Debate over Occupying Egypt (1882) Reading.
Britain and the Sykes-Picot Accord (1916) Reading.
The Balfour Declaration (1917) Reading.
Britain Between Greece and Turkey (1919-1922) Reading.
Britain Makes a Monarchy in Iraq (1921) Reading.
Britain Retreats from a Jewish State (1939) Reading.
U.S. Support for Creation of Israel (1948) Reading.
The U.S. Overthrow of Mossadegh (1953) Reading.
Aswan Dam: U.S. Sanctions Nasser (1956) Reading.
Britain’s Suez Adventure (1956) Reading.
U.S. Intervention in Lebanon (1958) Reading.
French Withdrawal from Algeria (1962) Reading.
First U.S. Weapons to Israel (1962) Reading.
Britain Leaves the Gulf (1971) Reading.
Arming the Shah of Iran (1972) Reading.
U.S. Airlift to Israel (1973) Reading.
U.S. Faces Crisis on Cyprus (1974) Reading.
Carter’s Pivot to Camp David (1977) Reading.
U.S Admits the Shah (1979) Reading.
AWACS to Saudi Arabia (1981) Reading.
The U.S. Meets the PLO (1988) Reading.
Arms for Hostages (1985-1986) Reading.
Desert Shield, Desert Storm (1990-1991) Reading.
The Iraq War Decision (2001-2003) Reading.
Easing Mubarak Out (2011) Reading.
Regime Change in Libya (2011) Reading.
Broken Red Line in Syria (2013) Reading.