Efraim Karsh

Empires of the Sand

Karsh's Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1922 was published in 1999, co-written by his wife Inari Rautsi-Karsh. Daniel Pipes called it a "tour de force that offers a profoundly new understanding of a key issue in modern Middle Eastern history:"^[7]

"Efraim and Inari Karsh review the relations between Europe and the Ottoman empire in the final century-and-a-half of the latter's existence, and in the process nearly reverse the standard historical interpretation. According to that interpretation, from about the time of the French Revolution until World War I, a dynamic, arrogant, imperial Europe imposed its will on a static, humiliated, supine East. This framework is common to nearly every leading historian, almost regardless of era or political disposition.... Here is where the Karshes, a husband-and-wife team, step in. In 'Empires of the Sand,' they characterize the standard account as 'fundamentally misconceived.' Middle Easterners, they assert, 'were not hapless victims of predatory imperial powers but active participants in the restructuring of their region.' Put more directly: 'Twentieth-century Middle Eastern history is essentially the culmination of long-standing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior rather than an externally imposed dictate. Great-power influences, however potent, have played a secondary role, constituting neither the primary force behind the region's political development nor the main cause of its notorious volatility.' Drawing on a wide range of original sources, and writing in a clearly organized fashion and in fast-paced prose, the Karshes make a very compelling case for their revisionist position, establishing it point by point and in elegant detail."

Richard Bernstein characterized it as "a readable, scholarly re-examination of a long and complicated Middle Eastern history.... The main purpose of this very detailed and broad-shouldered history is to revise many of the standard interpretations that have been given to Middle Eastern history over the last two centuries. Most generally the Karshes dispute the idea that the main events and developments in the region stem from the machinations of the great powers, especially Britain and France. The ‘main impetus behind regional developments,’ they write, was ‘the local actors’ [...] The authors write clearly and authoritatively and with great geographical sweep. Those who do not know much of these events will learn a great deal from this book, while specialists with views differing from the Karshes’ will face a robust challenge to their interpretations.^[8]

Anthony B. Toth published a review of Karsh's Empires of the Sand in the Journal of Palestine Studies, in which he wrote:

"This is a polemical book whose authors have extended the intemperate and unbalanced rhetoric customarily employed by dogmatic partisans of the Arab Israeli conflict to the normally sedate and measured arena of nineteenth - and early twentieth-century Ottoman history. The book relies mainly on Western published sources and official British documents. But their use of even these sources is limited, since they actually ignore most of nineteenth-century history. Instead, the authors emphasize those episodes they feel support their interpretations.^[9]

Richard Bulliet, professor of history at the Middle East Institute of Columbia University wrote that Empires of the Sand is "a tendentious and unreliable piece of scholarship that should have been vetted more thoroughly by the publisher" and asserts that the authors failed to "contribute a dimension of sense and scholarship that raises the debate[s in question] to a higher level."^[10] Karsh in response wondered "what credential did Bulliet possess, that a leading journal in the field should ask him to review our book? He is a medievalist who has done no research or writing on the subject. But in his spare time, he propagates the view of the Middle East and its nations as hapless victims of Western imperialism".

Karsh states that his book "has incurred the ire of the Arabist establishment" and that "scathing indictments have been made, on the basis of hearsay, without writers taking the trouble to read the book. A leading academic has even urged fellow academics to place negative reviews on the website of a major Internet bookstore, so as to warn potential readers of our book."^[11] Karsh further said "[the]conventional view – absolving Middle Easterners and blaming the West – is academically unsound and morally reprehensible. It is academically unsound because the facts tell an altogether different story of modern Middle Eastern history, one that has consistently been suppressed because of its incongruity with the politically correct dogmas of the Arabist establishment. And it is morally reprehensible because denying the responsibility of individuals and societies for their actions is patronizing and in the worst tradition of the 'white man's burden' approach, which has dismissed regional players as half-witted creatures, too dim to be accountable for their own fate... Little wonder therefore that Empires of the Sand was more favorably received by Middle Eastern intellectuals, fed up with being talked down to and open to real revisionism of their region's history after suffering decades of condescension from their paternalistic champions in the West."^[11]

Islamic Imperialism

In 2006 Karsh published Islamic Imperialism: A History, stating that Islam started out as a Great Jihad that lasted over a thousand years, and persisted in the Ottoman Empire right up through World War I, and is still alive today with the jihad against Israel, the 9/11 Attack, al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc.

In a review published by the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Columbia University professor of history Richard Bulliet stated:^[12]

Pursuing the myriad problems called up by the evidence Karsh presents to support his case would be pointless. The book is selling ideology, not historical acumen. [...] As a history of Islam, Islamic Imperialism is a travesty, but as ideological preaching, it should please the choir to which it is directed.

In a review published by the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Princeton University professor of history Robert Tignor stated:^[13]

The book is timely as well as polemical. Its polemics and its obvious intention to arouse strong responses should not deter readers, since it is a work deserving to be read for its penetrating analyses of the long history of Islam as an expanding and proselytizing faith.

Writing in International Review of Modern Sociology, California State University professor Henry E. Chambers concluded his review with the words: "This politically driven history will lead readers astray and offers a flawed version of the Middle East."^[14]

In the review published by the Digest of Middle East Studies, Marian University professor of history Marian Gross writes:^[15]

The ingenuity of Karsh’s monograph is that it portrays Islamic imperialism in the same light as all other imperialism—accentuating the utter normalcy of Muslim rulers’ imperialist ventures, goals, and means.[...] By seeking the roots of the current situations in the Middle East within the framework of Middle Eastern history, Karsh provides an invaluable assessment.

Reviewing the German translation of the book in Die Welt Des Islams, Erlangen University professor of history Thomas Philipp wrote:^[16]

Imperialismus im Namen Allahs is the book of a knowledgeable historian who follows the fashionable trend of wholesale denigration of Islam and the Arabs, and whose political interests clearly dominate his terminology and historical analysis.

Reviewing the book in History: Reviews of New Books, history professor William E. Watson from Immaculata University writes that "book destined to become a seminal study on the history of radical Islam"^[17]

Palestine Betrayed

Karsh's 2010 book Palestine Betrayed is about the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic), "the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands [of] Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948." (The Electronic Intifada Website). According to Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes:^[18]

"With his customary in-depth archival research — in this case, relying on masses of recently declassified documents from the period of British rule and of the first Arab–Israeli war, 1917–49 — clear presentation, and meticulous historical sensibility, Karsh argues the opposite case: that Palestinians decided their own destiny and bear near-total responsibility for becoming refugees."

According to Karsh:

"Far from being the hapless victims of a predatory Zionist assault, it was Palestinian Arab leaders who, from the early 1920s onward, and very much against the wishes of their own constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival which culminated in the violent attempt to abort the U.N. partition resolution... There was nothing inevitable about the Palestinian–Jewish confrontation, let alone the Arab–Israeli conflict."

Books

• Palestine Betrayed (Yale University Press, 2010). read online
• Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale University Press, 2006). read online
• La Guerre D'Oslo (Les Editions de Passy, 2005; with Joel S. Fishman). read online
• Arafat’s War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest (Grove, 2003). read online
• Rethinking the Middle East (Cass, 2003). read online
• The Arab-Israeli Conflict. The Palestine War 1948 (Oxford, Osprey, 2002) - republished under the new title The Arab-Israeli Conflict. The 1948 War (Rosen Publishing Group, 2008). read online
• The Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988 (Oxford, Osprey, 2002). read online
• Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1922 (Harvard University Press, 1999; with Inari Rautsi-Karsh) read online
• Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians" (Cass, 1997; 2nd ed. 2000) read online
• The Gulf Conflict 1990–1991: Diplomacy and War in The New World Order (Princeton University Press, 1993; with Lawrence Freedman);
• Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (The Free Press, 1991; with Inari Rautsi-Karsh). read online
• Soviet Policy towards Syria Since 1970 (Macmillan & St. Martin's Press, 1991).
• Neutrality and Small States (Routledge, 1988).
• The Soviet Union and Syria: The Asad Years (Routledge for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1988).
• The Cautious Bear: Soviet Military Engagement in Middle East Wars in the Post 1967 Era (Westview, 1985).

Articles

• "Arafat Lives", Commentary, January 2005, pp. 33–40. Reprinted in Ha-Umma (Hebrew)
• Azzam's Genocidal Threat
• "Israel's Arabs v. Israel", Commentary, December 2003, pp. 21–27]
• What Occupation?
• Benny Morris and the Reign of Error
• Benny Morris' Reign of Error, Revisited, a review essay on Morris' revised edition of his book on the Palestinian refugee exodus.
• Dear Diary: Juan Cole's Bad Blog
• "Were the Palestinians Expelled?"
• "European Misreading of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Finnish Foreign Minister Tuomioja – A Case Study"
• The Unbearable Lightness of my Critics
• Beirut Bob, a review by Karsh of Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation.