This book is a major and wide-ranging re-assessment of Anglo-American relations in the Middle Eastern context. It analyses the process of ending of empire in the Middle East from 1945 to the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Based on original research into both British and American archival sources, it covers all the key events of the period, including the withdrawal from Palestine, the Anglo-American coup against the Musaddiq regime in Iran, the Suez Crisis and its aftermath, the Iraqi and Yemeni revolutions, and the Arab-Israeli conflicts. It demonstrates that, far from experiencing a ‘loss of nerve’ or tamely acquiescing in a transfer of power to the United States, British decision-makers robustly defended their regional interests well into the 1960s and even beyond. It also argues that concept of the ‘special relationship’ impeded the smooth-running of Anglo-American relations in the region by obscuring differences, stymieing clear communication, and practising self-deception on policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic who assumed a contiguity which all too often failed to exist. With the Middle East at the top of the contemporary international policy agenda, and recent Anglo-American interventions fuelling interest in empire, this is a timely book of importance to all those interested in the contemporary development of the region.

An original and perceptive study of Britain's withdrawal from her last Arab dependencies - the Sudan, South West Arabia and the Gulf States.

Bernard Lewis looks at the new era in the Middle East. With the departure of imperial powers, the region must now, on its own, resolve the political, economic, cultural, and societal problems that prevent it from accomplishing the next stage in the advance of civilization. There is enough in the traditional culture of Islam on the one hand and the modern experience of the Muslim peoples on the other, he explains, to provide the basis for an advance toward freedom in the true sense of that word.

Based upon extensive archival research in Great Britain, the United States, and the Middle East, including sources never previously utilized such as declassified intelligence records, postwar planning documents, and the personal papers of key officials, this is painstakingly researched account of the origins of American involvement in the Middle East during the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It explores the effort to challenge British and French power, and the building of new relationships with Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Levant states. It also reveals new and controversial discoveries about Roosevelt's views on Palestine, his relations with Middle East leaders, and his often bitter conflicts with Churchill and de Gaulle over European imperialism. Modern-day parallels make this story compelling for followers of current events, World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, the Middle East, or British imperialism.

Britain's Moment in the Middle East: was it an imperial triumph or a decisive staging post in the end-of-empire story? Sir Percy Cox (1864-1937) was a vital figure in the history of the British Empire in the Middle East, part of the pantheon with such legends as T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell. As High Commissioner in Iraq from 1920 to 1923 he presided over the birth of modern Iraq - the climax of his career - but left an infant state fraught with political, ethnic and religious problems which have bedeviled Iraq and the Middle East to the present day. John Townsend paints a convincing picture of Britain's global empire and brings Cox to life as an archetypal patrician proconsul. This is the first major biography of Cox, based on extensive research in original sources and long experience in the region. It strikingly illustrates the troubled contemporary history of Iraq and the modern Middle East and will become the standard work on Cox.

With the end of the British Raj in 1947, the Foreign Office replaced the Government of India as the department responsible for the Persian Gulf, and would proceed to manage relations with the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates, UAE) until British withdrawal in 1971. This work is a comprehensive history of British policy in the region during that period, situated for the first time in its broad historical and political context. Tancred Bradshaw – an academic historian with extensive experience in the region – sheds light onto the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi in the 1950s, Foreign Office attempts to instigate a long-term development policy in the region, the slow end of the British Empire, the origins of the UAE and – most importantly – the British legacy in this geopolitically crucial region today. The book relies on 40,000 pages of archival material, much of it previously unused, and will be of interest to Imperial historians, as well as anyone working on the history and politics of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.