In an accessible survey of the last century, Contested Lands tells the story of the Middle East since the First World War: what happened, why, and what it all means today.With a focus on the many conflicts in the region over the last one hundred years, T. G. Fraser analyses the fault lines of the tension: the damaging legacies of imperialism; the creation of the State of Israel; the competition between secular, autocratic rulers and emerging democratic and theocratic forces; and the rise - and fall - of Arab Nationalism in the face of fraying regional alliances and the Islamic revival.Against this backdrop comes the twenty-first century, marked first by the tragedy of 9/11, then the 'Arab Spring', the Syria's civil war and now the Israel-Hamas conflict. And amid it all, complex social and economic change have transformed the region. In Contested Lands, T. G. Fraser untangles the threads of history in the Middle East and, in doing so, weaves a detailed and insightful picture of a troubled region and why its heritage remains important today.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been one of the most defining features of recent world history, flaring up into open war fare yet again in Gaza at the end of 2008 and provoking large-scale demonstrations in the streets of cities across the world. When the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann (1874 1952) spoke before the Conference on 27 February 1919, he would have appeared as only one of the many representatives of minor nationalities putting their case to the peacemakers. Ninety years after the Conference, what Weizmann said and did there is an essential part of our understanding of how this small, but critical, part of the world evolved out of the deliberations.

In an accessible survey of the last century, Contested Lands tells the story of the Middle East since the First World War: what happened, why, and what it all means today.With a focus on the many conflicts in the region over the last one hundred years, T. G. Fraser analyses the fault lines of the tension: the damaging legacies of imperialism; the creation of the State of Israel; the competition between secular, autocratic rulers and emerging democratic and theocratic forces; and the rise - and fall - of Arab Nationalism in the face of fraying regional alliances and the Islamic revival.Against this backdrop comes the twenty-first century, marked first by the tragedy of 9/11, then the 'Arab Spring', the Syria's civil war and now the Israel-Hamas conflict. And amid it all, complex social and economic change have transformed the region. In Contested Lands, T. G. Fraser untangles the threads of history in the Middle East and, in doing so, weaves a detailed and insightful picture of a troubled region and why its heritage remains important today.

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been one of the most defining features of recent world history, flaring up into open war fare yet again in Gaza at the end of 2008 and provoking large-scale demonstrations in the streets of cities across the world. When the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann (1874 1952) spoke before the Conference on 27 February 1919, he would have appeared as only one of the many representatives of minor nationalities putting their case to the peacemakers. Ninety years after the Conference, what Weizmann said and did there is an essential part of our understanding of how this small, but critical, part of the world evolved out of the deliberations.