Product Description

At the dawn of the twentieth century, British intelligence agents began to venture in increasing numbers to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, a region of crucial geopolitical importance spanning present-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. They were drawn by the twin objectives of
securing the land route to India and finding adventure and spiritualism in a mysterious and ancient land. But these competing desires created a dilemma: how were they to discreetly and patriotically gather facts in a region they were drawn to for its legendary inscrutability and by the promise of
fame and escape from Britain?

In this groundbreaking book, Priya Satia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this problem and the myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences of their methodological choices during and after the Great War. She tells the story of how an imperial state in thrall
to the cultural notions of equivocal agents and beset by an equally captivated and increasingly assertive mass democracy invented a wholly new style of "covert empire" centered on the world's first brutal aerial surveillance regime in Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources--from the
fictional to the recently declassified--this book explains how Britons reconciled genuine ethical scruples with the actual violence of their Middle Eastern empire. As it vividly demonstrates how imperialism was made fit for an increasingly democratic and anti-imperial world, what emerges is a new
interpretation of the military, cultural, and political legacies of the Great War and of the British Empire in the twentieth century.

Unpacking the romantic fascination with "Arabia" as the land of espionage, Spies in Arabia presents a stark tale of poetic ambition, war, terror, and failed redemption--and the prehistory of our present discontents.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112695 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 472 pages

Review
"Priya Satia makes a seminal contribution to the history of Britain and the Middle East at different levels: her book is as much a study in cultural assumptions as it is an examination of the political and strategic circumstances of the British presence in the region. At an even higher level, in a manner reminiscent of T. E. Lawrence, it is a story of honor and redemption, and of degradation and damnation, in which chivalry and good intentions collapse into torture and mass murder."--Wm. Roger Louis, University of Texas at Austin

"This is a most original, exciting, and exhilarating book, which gives an entirely new interpretation of some of the overseas activities of the British state in the first third of the twentieth century. Satia has a well-articulated notion of 'Arabia' as the last frontier, and describes the enduring fascination, in British popular imagination, with 'Arabia', 'the desert', and the exploits of those who sought to test their endurance or their manhood in it. Quite early on, the arrival of complex new technology made it increasingly difficult for the public or elected bodies to supervise and/or restrain what the state does. At a time when the public is presented almost daily with revelations about the ways in which the Bush administration deceived it both before and during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Satia convincingly places the origins of this kind of helplessness in the 1920s."--Peter Sluglett, author of Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country

"Spies in Arabia is a fine-grained and closely researched history that interweaves diplomatic, military, and cultural themes to highlight the centrality of Britain's brief 'moment in the Middle East' for the imperial state in decline. Priya Satia's cultural and social contextualization of British espionage in the Arab world provides fresh insight into a subject that, despite the deceptive familiarity of the cult of T.E. Lawrence, remains poorly understood. The road to British imperial failure in the Middle East was paved with romantic illusions. British agents, talented and brave though many of them were, by rejecting empirical methods of gathering intelligence in favor of their intuitive understandings, cultivated the British state's inability or unwillingness to see the region clearly. This tale offers an indispensable lesson for the American adventure in the Middle East to those who are prepared to learn it."--Joel Beinin, author of Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East

About the Author
Priya Satia is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University.