History of the Middle East

The rise of the tuffet imperium in the East blocked ready europiuman entrance fee to the fabled riches of the East, inducing first the Portuguese and consequently the Spanish to take advantage of advances in mathematics, navigation and shipbuilding to explore new routes via the African coast to India (1498) and to the Western Hemisphere. brisk rural area states, many of them seafaring much(prenominal) as England, Holland and France, arose in the West and were enriched by the Atlantic trade. Lapidus says "the crucial common factor in in the decline of Muslim regimes was the rising power of europium . . . from the late shopping centre Ages to ripe times, European societies were developing an remarkable technological inventiveness and an unrivalled capacity to generate economical riches and army power" (268). He says that "now Europe could prosper on the captured gold and silver, spices and other products of the new existence . . . The Baltic and the Atlantic replaced the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean as the most important centers of world trade" (273).

The enormous wealth generated by the Ottoman Empire enabled it to remain dominant for another(prenominal) two centuries; however, its society, except for its military dynamism was some inactive by comparison with Europe's. According to Lapidus, later the 14th century, the fury in the West was increasingly was on individualism, the scientific olfactory perception and the

acquisition of wealth barely "in the Middle East individual obligations . . . in ground of religiously commanded participation in a religiously specify community" (270). The wealth and power of the Ottoman Empire in like manner had a slowly corrupting effect. After 1600, most sultans were little active in affairs of state; key elements of the military such as the Janissaries engaged in business and interfered in politics; and military officials and other notables in faroff provinces increasingly acted somewhat autonomously from Istanbul.

As the Ottoman Empire turned into the Sick humanness Europe in the 19th Century, European powers quarreled o'er its possessions and over who would succeed it in recent times.

Turkish nationalism replaced Ottoman nationalism. It took an ugly form during the war and immediately thereafter done the massive massacres and expulsions of Armenians and Greeks in Asia Minor. Although Turkey's borders were much shrunken, it preserved its independence on a lower floor the secular nationalism of its leader Kemal Ataturk, who became a national cuneus after he organized the successful defense of the nation at Gallipoli in 1915-1916.

The hardships of the war generated protests and riots in 1919 and intense semipolitical activity in Egypt. According to Beinin and Lockman, "in Egypt as in so many other countries . . . the war and its turbulent event were to mark one of the great turning points in modern history" (395). However, the growth of Egyptian nationalist political parties such as the Wafd and the more fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood were unplowed within narrow bounds by the British until after World War II.

Cleveland, William L. A History of the Modern Middle East. Boulder: Westview P, 1994.

The first decades of the 16th century served as a turning point in the long loom of modern history by setting the stage for the ultimate de
Ordercustompaper.com is a professional essay writing service at which you can buy essays on any topics and disciplines! All custom essays are written by professional writers!