The Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East w/ Eugene Rogan
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2022
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the beginning of the 20th century, most of the territory that we call the Middle East- including Syria, Iraq, Israel and Turkey- were part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman alliance w/ Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I provided Britain and France w/ the opportunity to divide the once-great empire into many states based on European imperial ambitions. In this episode Bob and Ben speak w/ Eugene Rogan to learn more about why the Ottoman Empire was divided, how that process shaped the Middle East, and how this history helps us understand the world today.
Dr. Eugene Rogan is a Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at St Antony's College, University of Oxford. He is author of The Arabs: A History (Penguin, 2009, 3rd edition 2018), which has been translated in 18 languages and was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Atlantic Monthly. His new book, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920, was published in February 2015.
This is a rebroadcast of episode 112 which originally aired on November 19th, 2018. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 1:09.3 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is The Road to Now. |
| 1:13.0 | Today's topic is relevant now. |
| 1:15.4 | It has been relevant for decades. |
| 1:17.0 | It is the history of the modern Middle East. |
| 1:20.0 | Our guest, Eugene Rogan, is one of the greats in his field. |
| 1:23.8 | And Bob and I were fortunate enough to speak with him in 2018 when he came to visit my university, |
| 1:29.2 | Middle Tennessee State University, as a part of our Strickland Scholars Program. |
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