J.’s Reviews > A History of the Middle East > Status Update

Reading A History of the Middle East by Peter Mansfield has clarified for me that the mid-19th century marked a decisive psychological and political turning point for the Ottoman world, especially after the Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War. While the empire did not formally collapse then, European powers effectively subordinated Ottoman sovereignty by imposing external guarantees and accelerating secular administrative reforms that were not organically rooted in society. This created a lasting tension between religious law and state authority, where secularism survived primarily when elites benefited from restraining religious power rather than eliminating it outright. The resulting repression was not uniquely Islamic, but structural: any system in which the state monopolizes law while displacing established moral authority risks sliding toward despotism. Seen this way, many modern Middle Eastern struggles are less about religion itself and more about unresolved power imbalances introduced—and then locked in—by nineteenth-century imperial intervention.

In A History of the Middle East, Peter Mansfield treats slavery primarily as one element within wider systems of trade and empire rather than as a central organizing force in its own right, particularly in his discussion of early modern commerce and Portuguese–Arab rivalry. While this approach is consistent with a macro-political narrative, it has the effect of flattening slavery’s historical weight, especially when viewed alongside scholarship that foregrounds labor extraction as a decisive engine of imperial wealth. Recognizing this gap does not undermine Mansfield’s argument; instead, it highlights a methodological limitation—one that reminds the reader that systems of extraction, whether through coerced labor, trade monopolies, or resource control, operated across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa alike, even when their social consequences were unevenly emphasized. Slavery, in this sense, was not peripheral to empire, but often rendered invisible by the scale at which empire is described.

I didn’t get much time in today, but even a short session continued to surface patterns rather than isolated facts.

One thing that became clearer is how enduring the tension has been between Russia and the rest of Europe. Mansfield’s treatment of nineteenth-century diplomacy, especially around the Treaty of Berlin, reinforces that Russian aims rarely aligned cleanly with broader European balances of power. Russia’s alliances and interventions consistently reflected long-term border security and expansion concerns rather than ideological harmony with its partners.

I was struck again by how central Russia remained in regional outcomes—this time in relation to the Armenian population under Ottoman rule. The scale of violence against Armenians predates and numerically compares with later twentieth-century genocides, a reminder that mass coercion and extermination were not innovations of modern Europe alone. Mansfield doesn’t dwell on this emotionally, but the historical weight is undeniable.

I also find myself thinking more structurally about Russia’s behavior across time. There appears to be a recurring logic: insecurity at the border produces expansion, which then creates new borders—and new insecurity. Russia seems least comfortable when neighboring territories are genuinely independent. Whether this observation overreaches, I’m not yet certain, but the historical continuity is striking enough to warrant attention.

Another realization concerns Europe itself. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European powers—Britain, France, and others—treated invasion and domination abroad as normal instruments of policy. This was the soil in which colonialism flourished. What I hadn’t fully appreciated before is how sharply this system lost legitimacy after World War II, particularly under American pressure. Franklin Roosevelt’s opposition to formal colonial empires reshaped postwar expectations, even if unevenly and imperfectly applied.

What followed, however, was not a clean end to empire. The Soviet Union recast expansion as liberation, substituting ideological justification for colonial administration. In that sense, American resistance to Soviet influence may have been about more than economic systems; it may also have been resistance to a new form of empire operating under moral cover.

Seen in that light, modern events resonate differently. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looks less like an aberration and more like a return to a familiar imperial pattern. Regardless of past political unions or contemporary debates, the exertion of control over a sovereign neighbor appears fundamentally at odds with long-standing American opposition to colonialism in any form—something that often goes unacknowledged in current public discourse.

Finally, Mansfield’s account prompted a more ambivalent thought: while decolonization was morally necessary, it unquestionably made the international system more complex and less predictable in the short term. Arrangements once stabilized—however unjustly—by imperial control gave way to volatility. Yet given technological change, communication, and rising political consciousness, that complexity likely would have emerged anyway.

This chapter continues to reinforce that modern instability is not sudden. It is layered, historical, and deeply patterned.

What Mansfield keeps revealing is not a sequence of moral failures, but recurring systems—border insecurity, imperial extraction, and legitimacy-seeking—that resurface under different justifications across centuries.

Deep Future – Reflection — Debt, Empire, and the Machinery of Control

Book context: A History of the Middle East — Peter Mansfield
Progress: Chapter 7

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I continued through Chapter 7 tonight, and the density of this book remains striking. Mansfield wastes no words. Every paragraph advances the system.

One realization that sharpened for me is how colonial control increasingly shifted from outright invasion to financial domination. In Egypt and, more broadly, across weakening Ottoman domains, Britain and France extended credit for modernization projects that were both attractive and strategically entrapping. The result — most clearly visible in Egypt’s bankruptcy around 1876 — was not merely financial collapse, but political subordination. Whether intentional or not, the mechanism resembles modern debt leverage strategies used today, including those employed by China, where infrastructure investment becomes a means of long-term influence rather than direct rule.

This prompted a comparison with contemporary Western approaches, often channeled through NGOs and multilateral institutions. My impression — admittedly provisional — is that this diffuses power more broadly and limits any single state’s leverage, though it still operates within asymmetrical global systems. It may be less coercive, but it is not neutral.

Mansfield’s frequent reference to corvée labor caught my attention as well. It appears to occupy a gray space between slavery and free labor — compulsory, state-enforced, and unavoidable, yet legally distinct from chattel slavery. Its prominence highlights another feature of this narrative: slavery exists in the background, but Mansfield rarely foregrounds it as an economic driver. This contrasts with historians like David Eltis, whose work makes slavery central to the rise and maintenance of empire. I don’t read Mansfield’s restraint as evasion, but as a consequence of his scale and focus — though the absence still shapes interpretation and deserves to be remembered.

What becomes increasingly clear is that empire rarely rules through force alone for long. Control is sustained through layers of intermediaries: advisors, diplomats, committees, financial overseers, and carefully manipulated local elites. Debt, bureaucracy, and paralysis do as much work as armies ever did.

Mansfield is also unsparing in documenting British racial hierarchies. Egyptians are portrayed by British officials as intellectually and socially incapable of self-rule, while Turks are viewed as closer to Europeans — competent in principle, but corrupted and underdeveloped. This hierarchy directly influenced how Britain governed different peoples and helps explain why methods of rule varied so dramatically by region.

Although Mansfield does not dwell on British India, the contrast is instructive. There, brute force rule seems to have been justified by similar assumptions of inferiority — or, perhaps more bluntly, by opportunity and capacity. The variation in imperial methods raises an important question: were differences driven by racial theory, administrative convenience, resistance levels, economic value, or simply expediency? Likely all of the above.

What I appreciate most is Mansfield’s restraint. He does not moralize, yet he does not sanitize. His descriptions of British rule in Egypt — especially the contempt embedded in race, class, and governance — are clear, detailed, and devastating precisely because he lets them stand on their own. It feels like watching history through a window rather than being told how to feel about it.

The effect is powerful.