ABSTRACT

The origins of the modern Middle East lay not only in the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire, whose territories were carved up and placed under European control, but in the growth of new ideas that emerged prior to World War I. Particularly important was the idea of nationalism and a desire for independence among local inhabitants in the region. At the same time European interests in the Middle East, economic and political, deepened. Indeed, though the Ottoman Empire spanned over 500 years, by the seventeenth century it was a decidedly different empire, in its form and function, from the one led by Suleyman that had challenged European control of Vienna.