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D. K. Fieldhouse, Western Imperialism and the Middle East, 1914-1958. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. vii + 376. $115.00.
In an age witnessing the unfolding consequences of recent Western intervention in the Middle East, D. K. Fieldhouse has provided a timely and provocative historical assessment of an earlier era. Fieldhouse is a seasoned historian of the British Empire, but this is his first attempt to concentrate exclusively on the Middle East. In the introduction, he explains that in the course of editing the memoirs of his father-in-law, Wallace Lyon, a British officer who served in Iraq after World War I, he became convinced that a larger scale comparative study of the five post-War League of Nations mandates in Iraq, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon was both necessary and feasible. Though it might be tempting to assume that the resultant study, which relies almost entirely on secondary sources, might be too superficial to be of much use, Fieldhouse has drawn on a lifetime of scholarship in many different branches of imperial history to produce a strikingly fresh and authoritative work of synthesis.
Fieldhouse tells a tragic, cautionary tale. Despite the idealism enshrined in the terms of reference...