University of California Press Blog

The Unmaking of the Middle East

Jeremy Salt teaches in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey and is the author of Imperialism, Evangelism, and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878-1896. In his latest book, The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (UC Press, June 2008), Salt examines the history and human cost of Western intervention in Arab lands. In his blog below, Salt talks about Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama's recent remarks before the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

By Jeremy Salt

Barack Obama’s speech to the annual conference of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, was predictable but still shocking, for a man who appeared on the political stage with a message of change.  Arab-Americans, Arabs, Muslims everywhere, and indeed anyone looking for signs of fresh thinking, will be dismayed and disillusioned.  Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Nancy Pelosi all engaged in the bidding war for the Jewish vote at the annual AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference in Washington but because Obama has raised expectations so high it was his speech that was the most dispiriting and disturbing.  Scant regard was shown for international law by this former president of the Harvard Law Review.  Not even the US government regards Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  The western half of the city was seized in 1948.  In the eastern half of the city Israel has no rights but only the responsibilities of an occupying power, which it has serially violated through the permanent changes it has introduced over the past four decades.  For Israel’s erstwhile negotiating partners in Ramallah –  the ‘moderates’ –  East Jerusalem  as the  capital of a Palestinian state is a sine qua non of any peace agreement.  Yet the message for them from Barack Obama was that ‘Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided’. Hamas now has further reason to say ‘what did we tell you?’.   This was a speech that could have been written in the Israeli Foreign Ministry.  There were references to rockets‘ raining down on Sderot’ and ‘raining down on Israel’, but naturally none to the missiles and the artillery and tank shells that  have rained down on occupied Palestinian land  over the past four decades.  There was mention of   the ‘constant threats’ Israel has faced, but naturally not of the constant threat Israel has posed to Arab states in the past six decades.  The word extremism was used in the context of the Palestinians, but naturally not in the context of an Israeli state whose actions in the occupied territories, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights have been condemned time after time over the past six decades by the UN General Assembly and international human rights organizations – not that Obama even mentioned the word ‘occupation’. 

Up till now there is no proof that Syria or Iran are developing nuclear weapons but Obama spoke as if they were, naturally without mentioning the menacing shadow Israel’s actual possession of nuclear weapons has cast across the  Middle East  for nearly four decades.  On this issue Obama spoke as stridently as George W. Bush, Ehud Olmert and John McCain.   ‘I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon’.  He repeated the ‘everything’ so that no one missed the point that he is ready to go to war if necessary.  ‘I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel’.    Obama’s Faustian pact with expediency comes at a price he will be paying for years if he becomes president.   By locking themselves into position behind an Israel that is determined to maintain its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East whatever the cost  (within days of his speech Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said an attack on Iran was ‘unavoidable’),  he and John McCain have made another war in the Middle East more rather than less likely. This is hardly the kind of change Obama seemed to promise at the beginning of his campaign.   

Slave Revolts in Antiquity

Theresa Urbainczyk is Senior Lecturer in Classics at University College Dublin and author of Spartacus, among other books. In her latest release, Slave Revolts in Antiquity (UC Press, May 2008), Theresa talks about slave resistance and the meaning of freedom in Ancient Rome and Greece. Furthermore, Theresa talks about the inspiration for her book in the blog below.

By Theresa Urbainczyk

I read somewhere that Stalin put forward the thesis that the revolt of Spartacus had brought down the Roman Empire. Whoever was commenting on this, remarked that 500 years was rather a long time-span for the effect to result from the cause.

I was reminded of this when reading in a recent book (Spartacus: Film and History edited by Martin M. Winkler, Blackwell 2007) that in 1960 the Universal film studios wanted an academic to write an article advertising Kubrick’s forthcoming movie, Spartacus, and in the specifications instructed, ‘If you feel that Spartacus’ revolt contributed to the downfall of the great Roman Empire, please emphasise this’. 

The response this generally evokes is similar to that some of us have to rather comical mistakes in students’ exam scripts but I was struck by two people making the same comment, especially since it was unlikely that the film executive was familiar with Stalin’s arguments.

Part of me hesitates to admit that another movie Gladiator was one of the reasons I started to study slave revolts. In fact I probably was too much of a snob to go and see Ridley Scott’s film at all if I hadn’t been living in New York and feeling lonely. Any invitation was (almost) better than none when you know hardly anyone in a new city so I went with a couple of classicists. The young American woman beside me murmured at the end ‘Oh that was wonderful.’ The older English man on the other side snarled ‘Spartacus was much better’. I hadn’t ever seen that film and when I did I assumed most of it was pure invention. Which was how I came to look at the ancient sources on slave revolts.

To me they were intrinsically interesting and worth writing about and I was mystified as to why my colleagues weren’t as fascinated as I was. And they most certainly weren’t.  After I gave what probably was an overenthusiastic talk on the unexpected (to me at any rate) amount of information there was on slave revolts in antiquity in our ancient texts, one professor chipped in ‘Yes but so what? What effect did the large slave wars have on the course of events of Roman Republic? None at all as far as I can see.’

Thinking about just how much effect the wars did have on this particular period of history, helped explain to me how in both the USA and the USSR the same seemingly ridiculous theory could have arisen. A common confusion for students is the way historians use the term Roman Empire. At the time of the Roman Republic, the Romans had an empire but it wasn’t the Roman Empire, in that they did not have emperors.  If we substitute the term ‘Republic’ for ‘Empire’, the theory is not so far-fetched. In fact, expressed in these terms, it’s a commonplace in our historians from antiquity. It’s only in more recent times that the threat of slave revolts has been played down.

The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution

As Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Sonoma State University, author and editor, Jonah Raskin puts Jack London's revolutionary writings into context in his latest book, The Radical Jack London. Furthermore, you can read more about Jonah and his book on his website, The Radical Jack London. Among other books, he is author of American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (UC Press, 2004) and For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman (UC Press, 1997)

The Radical Jack London in 1968

By Jonah Raskin

Had Jack London lived until 1968 he would have been 96 years old - not a biological impossibility. After all, his close friend, Upton Sinclair, lived until ‘68 and the ripe old age of 94. It’s tempting to imagine London ’68, the year that changed America and the world, and that London would have loved because upheaval inspired him, and engaged his deepest sympathies.

London was always young – he died in 1916 at the age of 40, and even at 40 there was something boyish about him, as his friends noted. He would have fit in with the youthful students who stormed college campuses in ’68, and he would have been attracted to the youth-orientated culture of the 1960s. In 1905, along with Upton Sinclair, London founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an organization of radical students, and the forerunner of Students for a Democratic Society, the Sixties group that opposed the war in Vietnam. An extremist almost all his life, London wrote about war and revolution, and it’s likely that he would have written about the war in Vietnam and the cultural revolution that created hippies, Yippies, feminists and Black Panthers. He smoked hashish, rejected the sexual mores of his time, went back to the land and was drawn to Asian spirituality.

1968 was a pivotal year for me. It was the year I was arrested as a protestor, went to jail for the first time, and began to write for underground newspapers. I was not then a big fan of Jack London’s work but I knew about it and him. I admired his 1908 novel The Iron Heel, which describes the coming of a brutal dictatorship to the United States. At times in 1968 it seemed like the United States was headed in that direction, especially when the police attacked demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. London’s prescience couldn’t have been more in evidence.

What London didn’t share with the radicals of 1968 was a sense of outrage about racial injustice. In fact, at times he would be downright racist himself. He identified himself as a white man, praised the white race and looked down at people of color. That’s the part of him I like the least, and it’s the part of him that his biographers andcritics have for the most part declined to explore, much less condemn. When I began to write The Radical Jack London I knew I would have to tackle the issue of race and racism. I think I have done it in a level-headed way and I’m proud of my approach. It’s not the first time I have written about that subject. I did it in my first book, The Mythology of Imperialism, which I wrote in 1968, and in many ways The Radical Jack London is a continuation of my own scholarship as a young man aiming to describe the links between culture and politics, which the academic world of that era was eager to deny. Without a big stretch of the imagination, I can see Jack London with us in ’68, marching, chanting defying the powers-that-be.

Israel's Occupation

As a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel, Neve Gordon, writes about the history of Israel's occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as the on-going rift between Israel and Palestine dating back to the 1967 war. You can read more about his book and Middle Eastern politics at his website, Israel's Occupation. The University of California Press will be publishing his forthcoming title, Israel's Occupation in Fall 2008.

Baseball's Color Line

In commemorating the 60th anniversary of baseball's Jackie Robinson Day on April 15th, 2008, author Adrian Burgos, Jr. blogs about how Latinos were subsequently effected by Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier. Baseball Musings posted the article on April 18th. The University of California Press published Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line in 2007.

Special Issue of The Public Historian: Sites of Conscience

University of California Press Journals and Digital Publishing is proud to announce the publication of a special issue of The Public Historian, the official journal of the National Council on Public History. “Sites of Conscience: Opening Historic Sites for Civic Dialogue,” (Volume 30, Number 1) is concerned with the ways in which society’s response to museums, memorials, and historical sites can grow from passive observation to active engagement.

Says editor Randolph Bergstrom in his introduction, “Public historians are coming to recognize that their sites can be more than important places of encountering the past. Astute practitioners are learning to use the distinct opportunity these sites afford to promote civic engagement.”

Click here to view the table of contents.
Click here to download the press release as a PDF.

Taking Liberalism Back

A 2008 Presidential victory for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will be a triumph for the Democrats, and will offer an opportunity to rebuild the image of the Democrats as progressive pioneers. Tom Waldman’s timely book Not Much Left (forthcoming in late April) chronicles the history of American liberalism, from its Gilded Age of championing peace and civil rights to its recent struggles with defeat and disenchantment. Not Much Left discusses how political setbacks and waning liberal sentiment have stranded the Democrats in a wasteland, and their best hope for escape is to make a sharp left turn.

"...In this important, revisionist, smart and funny history of liberalism since it's been down and out, Tom Waldman tallies its lasting achievements and argues that Democrats can't achieve a lasting resurgence unless they embrace their inner liberals."—Harold Meyerson, Executive Editor, The American Prospect and columnist for the Washington Post

"Tom Waldman's book is extremely interesting and gives us a lot to think about, particularly at this moment in our nation's history."—Congressman Henry A. Waxman

Exploring the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we'd like to encourage everyone to explore his legacy through his writings.  The University of California Press, in a unique ongoing partnership with the Martin Luther King Papers Project, is the publisher of the Martin Luther King Papers–the definitive record of the most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts of one of America's best-known advocates for peace and justice. The series currently includes six volumes of published papers that cover various chronological periods in the life of Dr. King. Volume VI of the papers was published in March of 2007 and covers Dr. King's never before published sermon file that covers the entire period between September 1948 and March of 1963.

When Does History Begin? by Daniel Lord Smail

Daniel Lord Smail, the author of the recent UC Press book, On Deep History and the Brain, recently wrote an original essay for Powells.com that introduces the subject of his book.  He begins:

Back when I was in grade school — I was born in 1961 — it was pretty clear that history began in 1492. We did cover the Native American peoples in our social studies classes, and since I grew up in Wisconsin this meant the Chippewa. But the Chippewa nation didn't exactly have a history. All they had was a collection of timeless customs, encapsulated in the frozen dioramas we went to see in the State Historical Society Museum in Madison. We never had to memorize any dates associated with the Chippewa. In this sense, Wisconsin came into the stream of history only when the first French traders arrived and set things on the move, in the same way that Christopher Columbus magically brought history to North America as a whole. A thick curtain shrouded all that lay before. There was something back there, but it wasn't connected to the time stream of what we called "history." It never would have occurred to any of us to ask what the Chippewa were doing in Wisconsin at the same time that the Romans were doing things in Rome.

He then poses the question:

So when does history begin?

To find out Smail's take, read the full article at the Powells.com website.

Video Interview with Peter Dale Scott

Peter Dale Scott, the author of Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America and Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, was recently interviewed by Harry Kreisler for his UC Berkeley's Intstitute of International Studies series "Conversations with History," which is broadcast on UCTV, In the interview, Scott discusses aspects of his new UC Press book, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America.