ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to provoke a reassessment and proposes that survey writing played a significant role in the formation of the field now known as Middle Eastern studies. Throughout the twentieth-century heyday of survey writing, it contributed systematically to the ways different Western publics understood the living Middle East, and it figured in careers of great distinction. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, the interpretation of the contemporary Middle East was the province of diplomats, colonial administrators, soldiers, travelers, traders, and missionaries—persons who boasted the credential of extended residence in the region. Oriente Moderno won immediate international recognition as the preeminent source for information on the emerging nationalist movements of the contemporary Middle East. In covering the Middle East, the Survey confined its purview to the international affairs of the region. The Middle Eastern sections of the Survey revolved around the confrontation of Middle Eastern nationalism and Western imperialism, portrayed as a moral rather than political contest.
