Newsletter #89: Colonialism, Zionism, and Sectarianism w/ Ussama Makdisi

Over the last few weeks, The Dig has published our two interviews with Ussama Makdisi, professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of four books, including the remarkable Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World. The interviews span the late Ottoman Empire’s multiconfessional culture of coexistence and how the pressures of European imperialism, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, and the emergence of Zionism all exacerbated and exploited sectarianism. 

For listeners interested in taking this inquiry further, we asked Makdisi to assemble a reading list on the region and period, drawing out a genealogy of “Palestinianism” as we understand it today. These were his recommendations. 

Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (1992)

From the publisher: “With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and an exile’s passion (he is Palestinian by birth), Edward W. Said traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied — as well as in the conscience of the West. He has updated this landmark work to portray the changed status of Palestine and its people in light of such developments as the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the intifada, the Gulf War, and the ongoing Middle East peace initiative. For anyone interested in this region and its future, The Question of Palestine remains the most useful and authoritative account available.”

Mitri Raheb, Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, the People, The Bible (2023)

From the publisher: “Decolonizing Palestine challenges the weaponization of biblical texts to support the current settler-colonial state of Israel. Raheb argues that some of the most important theological concepts — Israel, the land, election, and chosen people — must be decolonized in a paradigm shift in Christian theological thinking about Palestine. Decolonizing Palestine is a timely book that builds on the latest research in settler-colonialism and human rights to place traditional theological themes within the wider socio-political context of settler colonialism as it is practiced by the modern nation-state of Israel. Written by a native Palestinian Christian theologian who continues to live in the region, Decolonizing Palestine provides an insider’s perspective that disrupts hegemonic and imperialist narratives about the region.”

Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1962)

From the publisher: “Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939 is the most comprehensive study of the modernizing trend of political and social thought in the Arab Middle East. Albert Hourani studies the way in which ideas about politics and society changed during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, in response to the expanding influence of Europe. His main attention is given to the movement of ideas in Egypt and Lebanon. He shows how two streams of thought, the one aiming to restate the social principles of Islam, and the other to justify the separation of religion from politics, flowed into each other to create the Egyptian and Arab nationalisms of the present century. The last chapter of the book surveys the main tendencies of thought in the post-war years.”

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997) 

From Edward Said: “Khalidi’s massive study of the construction of Palestinian national identity is a pathbreaking work of major importance. It is the first book to work from the premise that such an identity does in fact exist, and then proceeds to uncover its overlapping layers, historical phases, and tragic setbacks with a complete mastery of the relevant literature in Arabic, Hebrew and Western sources.” 

Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (2011)

From the publisher: “The complex relationship between America and the Arab world goes back further than most people realize. In Artillery of Heaven, Ussama Makdisi presents a foundational American encounter with the Arab world that occurred in the nineteenth century, shortly after the arrival of the first American Protestant missionaries in the Middle East. He tells the dramatic tale of the conversion and death of As’ad Shidyaq, the earliest Arab convert to American Protestantism. The struggle over this man’s body and soul — and over how his story might be told — changed the actors and cultures on both sides.

“In the unfamiliar, multireligious landscape of the Middle East, American missionaries at first conflated Arabs with Native Americans and American culture with an uncompromising evangelical Christianity. In turn, their Christian and Muslim opponents in the Ottoman Empire condemned the missionaries as malevolent intruders. Yet during the ensuing confrontation within and across cultures an unanticipated spirit of toleration was born that cannot be credited to either Americans or Arabs alone. Makdisi provides a genuinely transnational narrative for this new, liberal awakening in the Middle East, and the challenges that beset it.

“By exploring missed opportunities for cultural understanding, by retrieving unused historical evidence, and by juxtaposing for the first time Arab perspectives and archives with American ones, this book counters a notion of an inevitable clash of civilizations and thus reshapes our view of the history of America in the Arab world.”

Christine M. Philliou, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (2010)

From the publisher: “This vividly detailed revisionist history opens a new vista on the great Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century, a key period often seen as the eve of Tanzimat westernizing reforms and the beginning of three distinct histories — ethnic nationalism in the Balkans, imperial modernization from Istanbul, and European colonialism in the Middle East. Christine Philliou brilliantly shines a new light on imperial crisis and change in the 1820s and 1830s by unearthing the life of one man. Stephanos Vogorides (1780–1859) was part of a network of Christian elites known phanariots, institutionally excluded from power yet intimately bound up with Ottoman governance. By tracing the contours of the wide-ranging networks — crossing ethnic, religious, and institutional boundaries — in which the phanariots moved, Philliou provides a unique view of Ottoman power and, ultimately, of the Ottoman legacies in the Middle East and Balkans today. What emerges is a wide-angled analysis of governance as a lived experience at a moment in which there was no clear blueprint for power.”

Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (2013)

From the publisher: “In this groundbreaking book, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi establishes the existence of a special radical trajectory spanning four continents and linking Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria between 1860 and 1914. She shows that socialist and anarchist ideas were regularly discussed, disseminated, and reworked among intellectuals, workers, dramatists, Egyptians, Ottoman Syrians, ethnic Italians, Greeks, and many others in these cities. In situating the Middle East within the context of world history, Khuri-Makdisi challenges nationalist and elite narratives of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern history as well as Eurocentric ideas about global radical movements. The book demonstrates that these radical trajectories played a fundamental role in shaping societies throughout the world and offers a powerful rethinking of Ottoman intellectual and social history.”

Bedross Der Matossian, The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century (2022)

From the publisher: “In April 1909, two waves of massacres shook the province of Adana, located in the southern Anatolia region of modern-day Turkey, killing more than 20,000 Armenians and 2,000 Muslims. The central Ottoman government failed to prosecute the main culprits, a miscarriage of justice that would have repercussions for years to come. Despite the significance of these events and the extent of violence and destruction, the Adana Massacres are often left out of historical narratives. The Horrors of Adana offers one of the first close examinations of these events, analyzing sociopolitical and economic transformations that culminated in a cataclysm of violence.  

“Bedross Der Matossian provides voice and agency to all involved in the massacres — perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Drawing on primary sources in a dozen languages, he develops an interdisciplinary approach to understand the rumors and emotions, public spheres and humanitarian interventions that together informed this complex event. Ultimately, through consideration of the Adana Massacres in micro-historical detail, this book offers an important macrocosmic understanding of ethnic violence, illuminating how and why ordinary people can become perpetrators.”