This lecture has been postponed to a later date.
The Redwood is pleased to welcome back Dr. Michael Barry as he reflects on the history of the Middle East in a four-part lecture series, from the late 1400s to present day. A recognized scholar in Middle Eastern languages and art, Dr. Barry also served as an international humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s, and after many years teaching in Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies, is now head professor at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul.
Lecture Three: False Dawns and the Late British Middle East, 1907-1948
In the traumatic wake of World War I which saw Britain, France and Tsarist Russia combine against German-allied Ottoman Turkey followed by London and Paris dividing the former Ottoman Arab territories, and then by the almost simultaneous emergence of modern secular Turkey, religiously conservative Saudi Arabia, and the prospects of a Jewish homeland in the then British-ruled Palestine–the three main forces delineating today’s Middle East–Dr. Barry will discuss further deals with resurrected Soviet Russian power renewing political and military pressure upon rapidly weakening Late Imperial Britain compelled to begin withdrawing from the entire region between India in 1947 and Palestine in 1948.