Transition From Empire to Modern State System in the Middle East

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Introduction:

Middle East considers one of the most studied areas in the world due to its rich history of politics, social, economic, and its culture and civilization. Its borders are still arguable geographically, generally in the west it starts from morocco until Iran in the east, however, many scholars don’t agree on including Turkey either as a Middle Eastern or as a European country (Milton-Edwards, 2006. P: 4). The origin of the name was invented by the colonies as a necessity to describe the place geographically, which was the era of bringing “Middle East” the language of academic writings and political scientists. Changes, innovations, and new ideologies create gaps between the transformations of any perspectives to a different level of observation. The transformation of Middle East from being colonies to independent states was not an overnight event, as it has passed through many occurrences and took many years in order to transform to what is called modern states. First of all, it must be understand what a modern state means and how hard it had been for Middle Eastern countries to fill the western definition of modern state. According to (Drogus and Orvis, 2012) modern state characteristics are: territory, sovereignty, legitimacy, and bureaucracy.

Despite of the importance of Safawi and Abasi empires in the Middle East, this paper will explain briefly the collapse of ottoman empire and state formation after world war one, with highlighting some of the patterns of the transition such as social, economic and political, consequently after identifying the major issues of the transition, which are identity, territory, cultural hegemony, economic integration, and autonomy of the state, two examples of Egypt, and Algeria w...

... middle of paper ...

...ost worldwar2 and most obvious ones were: problem of identity, cultural hegemony, autonomy, territory and economic integration. Although these problems still exist in today’s Middle East, but there have been noticeable changes in economics and some aspects of political structures within Middle East which are still under changes of reconstruction and still are arguable subjects toward modernization.

Works Cited

-Drogus, C. and Orvis, S. 2012.Introducing comparative politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

-Fawcett, L. 2005. International relations of the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

-Milton-Edwards, B. 2000. Contemporary politics in the Middle East. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

-Pappe, I. 2005. the modern middle east. London: routledge.

-Smith, D. 2006. The state of the Middle East. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

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