ABSTRACT
THE CONCEPTION OF THE STATE IN WEST AND EAST
The Middle East of today offers to politicians and historians alike the dramatic spectacle of new-born national States. Communities or groups which quite recently had still the character of clans and tribal associations are being transformed into nations and States of a modern type. Oriental despotisms which only yesterday were still attempting with success to withstand the drive of the new forces, are now crumbling. Their collapse overwhelms the old regime and, together with the old forms, breaks down the limits of their former areas of domination. A development which in Europe took a thousand years is here being compressed into a few decades, and indicates future political and State-forming potentialities which may transform the entire Middle Eastern world.
