ABSTRACT

This chapter begins by tracing the origins of the invention of the Middle East in Britain’s imperial insecurities. It explains Orientalist and/or Middle East studies scholars’ contributions and discusses challenges to the Middle East as a geopolitical invention and the alternatives that were offered. The Cold War context of Middle East studies in the United States (US), then, distinguished it from British, German, and French approaches to the region. After Second World War, the Middle East replaced the Near East in British official correspondence. In the second half of the twentieth century there evolved a reciprocal relationship between Middle East studies and US policies designed to secure the Middle East. Self-reflection in the field of Middle East studies was initiated by the publication of W. Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978, and later revitalised following the end of the Cold War in 1989.