The End of the Ottoman Empire & Making of the Modern Middle East

Course description

Just over 100 years ago, following World War I, one of the longest-lived empires in the history of the world (the Ottomans) dissolved. In its stead emerged an amalgamation of new nations, states, and identities whose ongoing, tumultuous transformations could not be more integral to today’s global flux.

From Turkey’s neo-Ottoman aspirations to Syria’s repeated reassembling, and the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Saudi Arabia’s immense twenty-first century influence, all are in key respects traceable to this world-historical pivot.

We will explore anew the Ottomans’ dissolution (far less foreordained than the outmoded “sick man of Europe” thesis might suggest), and the many ways in which it still reverberates.