Arab Asia Since 1800

Arabic-speaking Asia today consists of 14 national units (including Palestine) and 180 million people. While this area is overwhelmingly Arabic speaking, it also includes speakers of Kurdish and Hebrew. The region is globally central, yet it is often lost in the vague term “Middle East” or discussed only one nation at a time. The population is mostly Sunni Muslim, with Shia majorities in Iraq and Bahrain and Shia minorities (30 percent) in Lebanon, Yemen, and Kuwait, plus Judaic and Druze religions. Long-standing Arab Christian populations still make up near to one-tenth of Palestine and Iraq, and one-third of Lebanon.

This historical overview summarizes regional conflict and change in the period since 1800. It traces empires, national movements, wars, migrations, diasporas, decolonization, and economic change over time.

 

1800 – 1900

Empire Rule

Empires— Ottoman, British, and French—expanded their influence on Arab Asia in the nineteenth century.

• The Ottomans had long controlled greater Syria (with Lebanon and Palestine) and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Hijaz.
• In 1798, Napoleon conquered Egypt. To challenge Ottoman armies, he led an expedition from Egypt northeast to the Palestinian port of Acre, where his two-month siege failed, defeated by Palestinian and Ottoman forces and the British navy.
• British forces drove the French out of Egypt in 1802.
• By 1840, the Ottomans had regained control of Iraq, greater Syria, and the Hijaz.
• Britain gained control of Aden, near the Red Sea, and several small Arab polities on the Persian Gulf, moving to abolish slave trade but not slavery from 1870.
• French links to Maronite Christians facilitated railway construction in Lebanon from 1890.

Influential Regional Powers

• Regional powers of Arab Asia included the militant Muslim Wahhabi movement and its ties to the Saudi dynasty of the inland Najd. In 1802, the Wahhabis led a great raid on the Shia shrine of Karbala in Mamluk Iraq.
• The greatest regional power was led by Muhammad Ali, the independent-minded Ottoman governor of post-Napoleonic Egypt. With modern armaments and forcibly recruited troops, he occupied the Hijaz from 1811, defeating the Sharif of Mecca and then moving on to destroy the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance by 1820. In a larger move, Muhammad Ali also sent troops to occupy Palestine and Syria from 1831. A Palestinian rebellion nearly defeated the invasion in 1834; then in 1840, Muhammad Ali was forced back to Egypt by a combination of Ottoman and British pressure. The Sharif of Mecca then returned to Hijaz, under Ottoman rule.
• Further south, the tribes of populous Yemen also seized independence from the Ottomans. Meanwhile, the Omani state expanded its East African holdings and even moved its capital to Zanzibar from the 1830s.
• In addition to the wars of this era, immigrants arrived – African slave trade brought pearl divers to the Gulf coast and slave wives to Yemen, while Zionist settlers began arriving in coastal Palestine after 1880. Meanwhile, the era of steamboats carried Syrian and Palestinian migrants to Atlantic destinations as merchants and laborers.

1900 – 1950

A “new” Arab Asia

By the end of the nineteenth century, Arab Asia was quite politicized. Along with the religious nationalism of the Saudi state, secular Arab nationalist feeling had grown in Syria, Palestine, the Hijaz, Yemen, Iraq, and other parts of the region.

• The Saudi state rebounded and survived another defeat, re-establishing itself at Riyadh in 1902.
• As World War I broke out, the Ottomans joined the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. In response, Hussein ibn Ali, Sharif of Mecca, rose in anti-Ottoman rebellion, led on by a 1916 British promise to support an independent Arab kingdom from Syria to Yemen.
• After disabling the newly constructed Hijaz railway, Faysal, a son of Hussein, led troops into Damascus with British support in late 1918 and was proclaimed king of the Arabs.

France, Britain, and Other Factors

• France insisted on controlling northern Syria and Lebanon after World War I.
• Britain made contradictory public promises—for an independent Arab state and, in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. (Arab leaders accepted modest numbers of Jewish settlers but never agreed to creation of a Jewish state.)
• Faysal governed Damascus for two years, but the French military governor overthrew him in 1920.
• The British both resisted and encouraged Jewish settlement: Britain separated Transjordan from Palestine and excluded it from Jewish settlement.

The Creation of Four Colonies

By 1923, the League of Nations formally divided the Ottoman Arab lands into four Class A Mandates (colonies), expected to become independent rapidly.

• The British appointed Faysal King of Iraq in 1921; they appointed Faysal’s brother Abdullah as king of Transjordan.
• Under France, the mandate for Syria and Lebanon led to independent republics for Lebanon (1943) and Syria (1944).
• In Palestine, Britain denied Arabs any move toward independence yet recognized Zionist settlers’ political and military institutions.
• Palestinians rebelled against Zionist and British seizure of their lands in the 1920s and from 1936–39. British repressed the 1936 rebellion with the assistance of Zionist militias.

 

Saudi Arabia Grows in Strength

Saudi Arabia conquered the Hijaz and the holy cities in 1925, displacing Hussen ibn Ali, and began attacks on Yemen.

• Petroleum was discovered in Arabia and the other Gulf territories during the 1930s; one result was an American alliance with Saudi Arabia in 1945.
• After World War II and its Holocaust of executions in Europe, Britain ceded Palestine to the United Nations in 1947; the UN adopted a third partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab portions, reflecting continuing Zionist seizure of territory.
• As Britain ended its mandate in 1948, Israel declared independence. In a further drive for expansion (known in Arabic as the nakba), Zionist militias seized land and expelled more Arabs until a 1949 cease-fire.

1950 – Present

The Era of Regional Wars Begins

Regional wars in Arab Asia began in 1947 and have continued since.

• Elements of the wars include the rise in Arab nationalism, Israeli determination to prevent recognition of the Palestinian nation, expansion of American imperial control, and conflicting policies in Arab nations.
• Arab nationalism grew in multiple directions and took a new turn in 1953, with the military overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy and the rise of Nasser. He nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, provoking an invasion by Britain, France, and Israel—but the U.S. supported Egypt and forced an end to the invasion.
• Egypt and Syria joined to proclaim the United Arab Republic in 1958, soon joined by Yemen.
• The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown by the nationalist Qasim in 1958, who was closer to the Soviet Union than to Egypt. Qasim was then overthrown in 1963 by Ba’athists, including Saddam Hussein.

Independence and the Rise of Middle East Oil

• Britain granted independence to Kuwait as an absolute monarchy in 1961, and other Gulf monarchies gained independence in 1971.
• In 1973, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia flexed their muscles in OPEC and world affairs with a boycott of oil sales to Western powers in support of Palestinians. With Saudi Arabia, they formed the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981.
• South Yemen became independent of Britain in 1967: struggles of South and North Yemen lasted until the two unified in 1992.

 

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Continues

Israel’s wars against Palestine took place in 1947–49, 1956, 1967, and 1973. The latest iteration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues today.

• In 1967, Israel seized the West Bank (which Jordan had taken in 1948), Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
• The Palestine Liberation Organization (1970), Hamas (1987), and Palestinian Authority (1994) all failed to gain independence.
• Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas won a Gaza election in 2007.
• After 2010, Israeli governments are alleged to have funded Hamas to keep Palestinians divided between West Bank and Gaza. The allegation is both denied and reaffirmed. This is one of many issues in this conflict in which participants disagree on matters of fact. Many of these debates may ultimately be resolved. [Footnote 1]
• In October 2023, a substantial two-day Hamas assault on Israel led to a 15-month Israeli counterattack of genocidal scale, supported by U.S. armaments.

U.S. Activity in the Region

As the United States has grown more powerful on a global scale, so has its activities and influence in today’s Middle East.

• U.S. regional imperial power expanded from 1970, seeking to dominate through military aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia yet failing to ally them to each other.
• After the Iraq-Iran war of 1980–88, Iraq annexed Kuwait in 1990, and the U.S. gained UN support that led to invasion in 1991, then rapid withdrawal.
• The U.S. again invaded Iraq in 2003, under the false pretenses that Iraq held “weapons of mass destruction.”
• Iraqi resistance to the U.S., from 2004–08, was a prelude to Gaza resistance to Israel.
• The U.S. carried out drone strikes in Yemen from 2010–23, attacking military objectives and the general population.

Recent Social and Political Turning Points

• National policies on migration differed. In Israel, Jewish immigrants gained citizenship. In Gulf nations, numerous immigrants from Asia and Africa worked in industry and service but had no access to citizenship or civil rights.
• The Arab Spring of democratization movements, from 2010, brought regime change in Tunisia but led to civil war in Syria.
• Beyond nations, militant parties of politics and war arose. Al Qaeda grew stronger as a U.S. ally in the 1978-92 war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Decades later, in 2001, Al Qaeda turned against the U.S., killing thousands of Americans in the September 11 attacks.
• ISIS, formed in Iraq in 2004, spread into Syria from 2014, and was later crushed.

Conclusion

In sum, the Ottoman and British empires stimulated nationalism in Arab Asia, yielding progress in decolonization from the 1920s to the 1970s. From that point, American empire stimulated nationalism yet prevented independence for Palestine. The war in Gaza has become a national, regional, and global crisis—perhaps determining whether decolonization would continue.

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Footnote 1: This point is a revision to the original posting.