Jeremy Salt. The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands.

• Position: BOOKS IN BRIEF--SUMMER 2008 - Book review

Jeremy Salt. The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008.468 Pages. Hardcover $ 29.95.

Something is wrong with the way the West has dealt with the Middle East since the beginning of the 19th century. This led Jeremy Salt to investigate the consequences of decisions taken about the Middle East in the centers of imperial power in the past two centuries. The unmaking of the Middle East is done through techniques of control and domination employed by distant governments ranging from invasion and occupation to a more discrete exercise of power. Making treaties is but one form of exercising power and the large amounts of foreign aid that led to dependency are yet another. The unmaking began in 1798, when intervention was justified with similar themes: civilization and order in the 19th century, civilization, freedom, and democracy in the twentieth.

In part one Salt tries to explain "why they [the West] hate us"? He looked at the origin of "civilization" starting with the French invasion of Egypt in 1798 onwards, followed by the British invasion of Egypt in 1882, and ended with Winston Churchill's...