HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
From the introduction by Professor J.C. Hurewitz
"The present work is designed to unfold European diplomacy in and on the Near and Middle East in modern times and, only secondarily, to illustrate the coincident aspects of intraregional international politics. History itself and the state of historical research have largely determined the choice. Behind a commercial façade, European influence in the Near and Middle East grew steadily in the two hundred years and more preceding the Napoleonic wars. Outward signs of imperialism did not accompany the growing European power, even in the second half of the eighteenth century when Persia was falling apart and the Ottoman Empire sinking, for the maritime states of Western Europe were distracted by competitive empire building elsewhere, notably further east in Asia and in the Western Hemisphere. European supremacy in the Near and Middle East started with Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt in 1798 and lasted a century and a half. Intraregional diplomacy, by comparison, played a minor role throughout most of modern times. International politics among the Near and Middle East states, prior to the mid-eighteenth century, consisted chiefly in the tensions on the ill-defined and shifting Ottoman–Persian frontier. Only in the [mid-twentieth century] with the rapid crumbling of the established European position, have the emergent independent states in the region won increasing liberty in their dealings with one another and with the world outside."
