The Middle East in 1958: Reimagining A Revolutionary Year

Overview

The Middle East in 1958: Reimagining A Revolutionary Year (London, UK: Bloomsbury and I.B. Tauris 2020) serves as a conversation between scholars specializing in different aspects of the postcolonial moment in 1958 and its connections to broader revolutionary struggles, both failed and successful, across the Middle East, as well as outside the region. Jeffrey G. Karam’s collection of chapters from junior and senior political scientists and historians explores the transnational nature of the twentieth-century world and the Cold War in the Middle East. The book engages with many issues, including Egypt and Syria’s perceptions of the United Arab Republic; the extent to which states in the Gulf, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, were affected by different crises and events in Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan; Britain’s coping strategies and actions with the ascendancy of the United States in the region; the linkages between the Algerian War of Independence and the collapse of the Fourth Republic in France; the ability of the regimes in Turkey and Jordan to weather the revolutionary wave at the time; the success of the military coup in Iraq and the failure of the different coup d’états in Jordan; and the introduction of US forces into Lebanon. 

Amidst waning Anglo-French influence, growing US-USSR rivalry, and competition and alliances between Arab and non-Arab regimes and domestic struggles, the book explains why and how the revolutionary year of 1958 was a turning point in the Middle East. Karam writes, “this multi and interdisciplinary book explores this pivotal year in its global, regional and local contexts and from a wide range of linguistic, geographic, academic specialties.” The contributors to Karam’s volume draw on declassified and multilingual archives, reports, memoirs, and newspapers in thirteen country-specific chapters, shedding new light on topics such as the extent of Anglo-American competition after the Suez War, Turkey's efforts to stand as a key pillar in the regional Cold War, the internationalization of the Algerian Revolutionary War, and Iran and Saudi Arabia's abilities as regimes to weather the revolutionary storm that swept across the region. 

As Karam writes in the introductory chapter of The Middle East in 1958, the focus on “revolutionary” in the title reflects one of the underlying themes of this book and relates to the fact that revolutions are neither static events nor moments in time that have a clear beginning and end. Revolutionary moments are usually ones characterized by radical change or extensive reform that pave the way for new beginnings. However, revolutions are messy, and the consequences of such momentous events take time to materialize and could result in either positive or negative consequences. Thus, the focus on the different phases and dimensions of “revolutionary processes” and their expected messiness, rather than a simple and binary characterization of revolutionary outcomes as either failed or successful is a much more realistic and accurate portrayal of immense moments of political change, mobilization, and contentious politics. 

The book likewise speaks of the shift in political strategy and a reassessment of policies of declining powers at the time, such as Britain, France, and revisionist ones, such as the United States and the Soviet Union. At the heart of these critical moments in decision-making, the different contributors analyze both the intended and unintended consequences of revolutionary struggles and transformational moments in the Middle East during the 1950s on states outside the region. Karam writes, “while the chapters highlight the impact of the Cold War on events in the Middle East, they equally demonstrate that the sociopolitical developments in the Middle East had equal, if not stronger, repercussions on falling and rising powers at the time.” The Middle East in 1958 reverses the dominant and often assumed direction of impact between states in the twentieth century, by shifting the focus on the Third World global south and its agency in shaping Cold War history.

Selected Excerpts 

Chapter 1, “Reimagining 1958 Through the Lenses of Multilingual Sources and Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” by Jeffrey G. Karam

The year 1958 was a time marked by a series of transformative sociopolitical developments that shook the foundations of the existing Middle Eastern order and in various ways, sparked the beginning of a new sociopolitical landscape in the region. The year 1958 remains a vital, if not one of the most important, moments in the Middle East from the Nahda  (Renaissance) to the Arab uprisings in 2010–11 and the most recent wave of protests in the region that erupted in 2019. Against the backdrop of Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company and the ensuing crisis of 1956, the creation of the United Arab Republic with the merger of Syria and Egypt into one state on February 1, 1958, seemed the initial step toward greater Arab unity. As the present work shows, the repercussions of the union between Egypt and Syria had an impact both on the states in the Middle East and on the ones outside the region. The most visible impact manifested in three Arab states: first, the aggravation of the political crisis later turned civil war in Lebanon between May and July 1958; second, the attempted and foiled coups against Hussein in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in June and July 1958; and third, the military coup turned revolution in Iraq on July 14, 1958, that ended the monarchy and created a republic. 

The three seminal events constituted a turning point in the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa. However, this book considers that these sociopolitical developments were part of a larger series of events in a periodmarked by decolonization, revolutionary nationalism, internationalism, postcolonialism, imperialism, anti-imperialism, and state formation. Therefore, this book is a study that brings together these events, arguing for the importance of examining these moments in conjunction and in conversation with each other by using the time span of that seminal year of 1958. Existing scholarship, especially the edited volume A Revolutionary Year: The Middle East in 1958 , by Roger Louis and Roger Owen, draws the connections between the events in Iraq and Lebanon. Other works examine the process of state formation in some states in the Arab Middle East and the importance of oil in the region. However, these important contributions have mostly explored the experiences of a limited number of states and focused on collections of records and documents, while excluding a deeper appreciation of the role of non-Arab actors in the region and the multilayered connections between local, regional, and global developments in 1958. 

Chapter 15, “Reflections and Conclusions from the Revolutionary Year of 1958” by Jeffrey G. Karam

Lessons from the Past for Studying and Understanding the Contemporary Middle East

The chapters in the present volume suggest two important lenses for a contemporary understanding of sociopolitical developments in the Middle East and North Africa. The first relates to the pattern of relationships between local political actors in the region and foreign powers. While the geopolitical landscape changed after the end of the Cold War and has led to the decline and rise of powers in Europe and other regional theaters around the globe, successive administrations in the United States have leveraged their diplomatic and military power to shore up pro-Western and conservative regimes and monarchies in the region. Many of these regimes, including ones that have been analyzed and discussed in previous chapters, have been so far successful in insulating themselves from repeated calls for sociopolitical reform. Other regimes have been successful in receiving support from other powers in the system, such as the Russian Federation, to quell any opposition to the ruling regime. In other instances, many of the analyzed states in this present volume have experienced momentous changes in the aftermath of 1958, such as the consolidation of military-led authoritarian regimes or the resurgence of religion in politics, which has lingered for over sixty years. As the present volume suggests, the unresolved Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts, the active involvement of the Western and Eastern powers in several wars and domestic political crises across the Middle East, and the political bickering between Arab and non-Arab states over leadership in the region has deep roots in the transformational events that materialized in the mid-1950s and represented a climax of these trends in the revolutionary year of 1958.

The second relates to underscoring the agency of local political actors in the decisions that were taken after the revolutionary year of 1958. It is crystal clear that Arab and non-Arab officials have been extremely successful in banking on foreign support to contain any opposition to their regimes. However, the roots of this agency and the ability to “play off” Western and Eastern powers against one another in the region is directly connected to the period of decolonization, state formation, modernization, and rising authoritarianism in the 1950s. With the exception of a few states that witnessed varying degrees of success in the aftermath of the 2010–11 uprisings, many political regimes in the Middle East and North Africa have so far been able to stall any meaningful reform. As the recent protests in Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, and elsewhere across the globe demonstrate, the grievances and much of the demands that revolutionaries and protesters in the street are voicing have deep origins in the political and socioeconomic opportunities that failed to occur in the period of decolonization and state formation during the Cold War. In fact, they resemble similar struggles that many revolutionaries carried out during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first for better economic opportunities and social inclusion. Clearly, there is not a direct uninterrupted line between events in the 1950s and the ones that are presently unraveling in the Middle East and elsewhere across the globe. However, it is important to highlight the commonalities and the deep roots of political contestation and revolutionary struggle against injustice and tyranny, and the desired objective of reimagining and actively creating a better future. 

This book is a testament to the importance of bridging the many artificial boundaries that seek to constrain innovative scholarship in a world that should embrace much more diversity, inclusion, and tolerance.

Selected Reviews 

“'By widening their focus and digging deeper into the archives Jeffrey G. Karam and his colleagues have new things to say about a pivotal moment in the politics of the Middle East.'” –  Robert Vitalis, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, USA

“The Middle East in 1958 examines one of the most transformative critical junctures in the political history of the region. This expertly edited volume shows how the examination of 1958 is relevant and timely to our understanding of current regional dynamics. The Middle East in 1958 not only significantly expands our understanding of some of the most vital historical events that shaped the current structure of the region, it paves the way for producing more relevant historical knowledge by using innovative methodologies and multilingual sources.” –  May Darwich, Lecturer in International Relations of the Middle East, University of Birmingham, UK

“Jeffrey G. Karam's The Middle East in 1958 is an impressive examination of a revolutionary year whose impact still reverberates today. Drawing on a range of archival sources, Karam's volume benefits from the latest research by leading scholars. Its regional and global approach to the tumultuous events of 1958 makes it ideal for graduate and undergraduate courses.” –  Osamah Khalil, Associate Professor of History, Syracuse University, USA

“With perceptiveness and authority, with impressive command of exciting new sources and methodologies, The Middle East in 1958 illuminates this six-decades-old history, establishing its resonance and relevance for a new generation of readers.” –  Salim Yaqub, Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA