Charles Glass is a writer, journalist and, broadcaster, who has written on conflict in the Middle East, Africa and Europe for the past fifty years. Subscribe to receive details of new books, articles and upcoming events.
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LATEST ARTICLE A History of Modern Syria — the people at the heart of their own storyDaniel Neep’s excellent account corrects the traditional narrative to show a nation surviving and resisting the powers that have vied to dominate it. Syria is as ancient, and as complex, as civilisation itself. Lying between antiquity’s great empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia, it functioned as a bridge, sometimes a wall, between them. Rarely a conqueror, it adapted over millennia to invaders from all points on the compass: Egyptians, Sumerians, Hittites, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mongols, Turks and French. All left indelible marks despite their ephemeral presence. On seeing Syria’s historic capital, Damascus, in 1867, Mark Twain reflected, “She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims the name, old Damascus is by right the Eternal City.” It was only in 1946 that Syria, albeit in truncated form, governed itself after 26 years of French imperial rule. Its freedom of action remained provisional while outsiders — the US and Soviet Union on the global stage, Egypt and Hashemite Iraq within the Arab region — vied to dominate it. The struggle continues today between Turkey and Israel, whose armies occupy respectively the north and the south. Daniel Neep’s excellent, comprehensive history of “modern” Syria corrects the traditional narrative of a passive Syria by placing its people at the heart of their story. As well as considering “the usual suspects of European colonialism, American imperialism and Soviet expansionism”, he also looks to “seemingly impersonal economic currents” that have played “a crucial yet often overlooked role in remaking modern Syria”. His account begins in the mid-19th century, during what Turkish historian Selim Deringil calls “the Ottoman twilight”, when sultans in Constantinople grappled with modernising their empire to preserve it from European encroachment… |
Charles Glass
Charles Glass is a writer, journalist and, broadcaster, who has written on conflict in the Middle East, Africa and Europe for the past fifty years. Subscribe to receive details of new books, articles and upcoming events.
LATEST ARTICLE Letter from Beirut: A Stubborn Indifference to War This city keeps you on your toes, as long as you hang on to them. When you walk across a one-way street, look both ways. No driver—on a motorcycle or in an SUV—hesitates to charge the wrong way up a road clearly signed for traffic to go in the opposite direction. When two cars meet head-on, the driver going the wrong way shouts abuse at the innocent one obeying the rules. Welcome to Beirut. This insouciant behavior reflects the...
OUT NOW Over nearly a half century, David Hirst was The Guardian newspaper’s indispensable voice from the Middle East A landmark collection of David Hirst's finest reporting THE PEN AND THE OLIVE BRANCH Reporting the Middle East DAVID HIRSTEdited by JANICK GOLD and CHARLES GLASSIntroduction by JONATHAN DIMBLEBY read more > PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY NEW TO WATCH In a series of interviews with leading historians on the History of Resistance, Charles Glass and his history students at the American...
LATEST ARTICLE 1970s Postcard showing the two bays of Zaytouni and Saint Georges Beirut, Now and Then On Wednesday , 8 April, Israel expanded its kill zone beyond what had been known as the ‘safe’ areas north of Beirut’s suburban south. I talked to a doctor at the American University Hospital who told me his emergency room was treating four hundred patients wounded in the bombing. Four had died. I passed the hospital, where families outside were waiting for the medical staff’s reports. By the...