Most of the ten essays in this volume were originally presented as papers at conferences held at Yale University. Eight have previously appeared, sometimes in slightly altered form, in other publications. However, this does not detract from the collection's usefulness for scholars. These well-researched essays focus on lesser known aspects of American interaction with this critical region. They could also provide supplementary readings for advanced undergraduates in courses on the modern Middle East or the history of U.S. foreign relations.
Benjamin R. Foster's essay, “On the Formal Study of Near Eastern Languages in America, 1770–1930,” details the historical development of the study of ancient languages in the United States. His explanation of the scholarly lineage that led to the creation of graduate programs in Near Eastern archaeology and Semitic languages in the 20th century is fascinating. At the close of the essay the author writes that funds for archaeological fieldwork between 1893 and 1940 “were solicited and put up with no strings attached” (p. 38). Surely, many of those individuals and institutions contributed money expecting antiquities in return.
Timothy Marr's “‘Drying up the Euphrates’: Muslims, Millennialism, and Early American Missionary Enterprise,” focuses on early 19th-century missionaries, whose millennial visions compelled them to labor among Muslims. It was initially assumed that Islam would collapse in the face of these ardent Protestant evangelicals, thereby ushering in Christ's return. Missionaries' failure to engage Muslim societies “as highly developed cultures of belief” (p. 72) set a pattern, Marr argues, that continues to impact relations between the United States and the Muslim world.
In “American Palestine: Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth-Century American Imagination,” Hilton Obenzinger argues convincingly that the two American authors strongly criticized their contemporaries' obsession with the Holy Land. Americans were fascinated with Palestine and the link they saw between the restoration of “old” Jews in Jerusalem and the success of the “new” Jews (Protestant Christians) in North America. Such beliefs spurred the missionary endeavors that Marr details so effectively.
In his essay “Missionaries, Peasants, and the Protection Problem: Negotiating Coptic Reform in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” Paul Sedra provides a view from among the Copts in Egypt, where church authorities did battle with American missionaries, not to reject reforms but rather to put themselves in control of new institutions such as schools. To Protestant evangelicals, much of this activity was mistakenly dismissed as resistance to change. More interesting still, Sedra concludes that Coptic peasants in Upper Egypt, far from being passive observers, manipulated their religious affiliation to avoid excessive unpaid labor for the state, thus becoming agents in their own progress toward modernity.
Moving into the 20th century, Erez Manela's “‘Is This Not the Ugliest of Treacheries?!’: Diplomacy, Culture, and the Origins of Anti-Americanism in Egypt” draws our attention to American–Egyptian contacts in the interwar years, focusing on the impact of Woodrow Wilson's promise of self-determination on the Egyptian nationalist movement, the role of American archaeologists during the Tutankhamun controversy, and, once again, Protestant missionary efforts. In each case he finds much to criticize. The essay opens with an explanation that these subjects remain “largely a terra incognita” (p. 102). This was true when he originally wrote the article, but since then each of these subjects has received detailed scholarly attention. (See Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007]; James Goode, Negotiating for the Past [Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007]; and Heather Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007].)
Mansour Bonakdarian looks at an early period in his “Great Expectations: U.S.–Iranian Relations, 1911–1951.” He notes that for decades Iranian nationalists sought to draw the United States into their affairs, but when Washington did become heavily engaged (beginning with the CIA-sponsored coup overthrowing Muhammad Musaddiq in 1953), they had regrets about their wish. Iranian nationalists, of course, had imagined a benign America before the tensions of the Cold War. Nevertheless, it should be noted that some nationalists who opposed the shah's increasing power still hoped for American support in the early 1960s and even on the eve of the revolution.
Another view from inside Iran comes from Abbas Amanat's excellent contribution, “Khomeini's Great Satan: Demonizing the American Other in Iran's Islamic Revolution.” The author sets out the surprising pedigree of the term “Great Satan,” which has come so effectively to encapsulate views of the United States in revolutionary circles. Amanat argues that Ayatollah Khomeini adopted and developed this term early in the revolution as a way to make the religious establishment socially relevant. This was especially attractive because the religious establishment had continued to eschew intellectual modernity, openness, and legal reforms. His argument is convincing, for Khomeini's views did come to eventually dominate. One might also recall the minority views of leading ʿulamaʾ such as ayatollahs Montazeri, Shariatmadari, and Taleqani, who embraced a more modernist perspective.
Michelle Hartman's “‘Besotted with the Bright Lights of Imperialism?’: Arab Subjectivity Constructed against New York's Many Faces” analyzes three contemporary works of Arabic literature, each focusing on a character's experiences in the iconic American city. Hartman discovers an “orientalism in reverse” (p. 169), a civilized East opposed to a barbaric West. These Arab writers, however, often reveal a narrow, simplistic understanding of American society, one that does not always represent accurately the complexities of the United States.
Lawrence Davidson's essay, “Christian Zionism and its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy,” is a continuation of themes raised earlier by Obenzinger and especially Marr concerning the role of evangelical Christians in the redemption of Palestine. He carries the story to the present, detailing the symbolic relationship between Christian Zionists and other Zionists. This powerful alliance, he argues, has come to dominate U.S. foreign policy toward Israel–Palestine. Davidson concludes that former president George W. Bush's fundamentalist beliefs prevented him from ever validating Palestinian complaints.
In her essay, “A Cultural History of the War without End,” Melani McAlister discusses the consistent condemnation of Islam based on biblical references and a bipolar view of the world, which, I think she would agree, too often determine American perspectives to this day. McAlister traces cultural influences in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy, detailing the evolution of the term “terrorism” in films, novels, and “expert” testimony. She observes that Islam has become identified “as the dominant producer of terrorism” (p. 215), thus exposing, according to its critics, a serious flaw in the very “nature of Islam” (p. 215).
The editors have selected wisely. The essays in this collection are well crafted and complement one other. Taken together they reveal a sobering tale of American insensitivity in its relations with the Middle East since the early 19th century.
