Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798-1864

Global empires, or Great Powers, have long assumed the responsibility of bringing security to the Middle East, but their interventions have often resulted in further turmoil and civil wars. Dangerous Gifts explores the origins of these imperial security practices in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, focusing on the Ottoman Levant. It explains why the region has been embroiled in a paradox of ever-increasing demand despite the increasing supply of security and embeds this history into an innovative narrative around the Eastern Question. It also explores the gradual opening up of the Levantine economies to global free trade, the asymmetrical implementation of international law, and the secondary importance attached to their threat perceptions in a world where political and economic decisions were made through the filter of global imperial interests.

Format: Hardback
Length: 432 pages
Publication date: 22 July 2021
Publisher: Oxford University Press

From Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798 to the foreign interventions in the ongoing civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya today, global empires, or the so-called Great Powers, have long assumed the responsibility to bring security to the Middle East. The past two centuries have witnessed their numerous military occupations to liberate, secure, and educate local populations. They staged the first humanitarian interventions in history and established hitherto unseen international and local security institutions. Consulting fresh primary sources collected from some thirty archives in the Middle East, Russia, the United States, and Western Europe, Dangerous Gifts revisits the late eighteenth and nineteenth-century origins of these imperial security practices. It explicates how it all began. Why did Great Power interventions in the Ottoman Levant tend to result in further turmoil and civil wars? Why has the region been embroiled in a paradox—an ever-increasing demand despite the increasing supply of security—ever since? It embeds this highly pertinent genealogical history into an innovative and captivating narrative around the Eastern Question, emancipating the latter from the monopoly of Great Power politics, and foregrounding the experience of the Levantine actors. It explores the gradual yet still forceful opening up of the latter's economies to global free trade, the asymmetrical implementation of international law in their perspective, and the secondary importance attached to their threat perceptions in a world where political and economic decisions were ultimately made through the filter of global imperial interests.

Weight: 794g
Dimension: 162 x 242 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198852964