Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East, by Jonathan Parry

Abstract

The title of Jonathan Parry’s Promised Lands does not give much away. The book is about British geopolitics and political strategy, mainly in relation to the lands around the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, between 1798 and 1854. In essence, it is a study of how and why Britain secured certain routes to India. Parry reconstructs a phenomenally complex set of stories about local negotiations, diplomatic assertions, political and religious visions, and careerist machinations, which explain how Britain established its influence in the region he calls the ‘Ottoman Middle East’. The driving confidence with which the book is written belies the backbreaking labour involved in uncovering these interlocking dynamics, and the artistry involved in relating them to one another. It is an immense scholarly achievement, and must obviously become a standard work in the historiography of the nineteenth-century Middle East. The book is diffident, however, about spelling out any possible broader implications for our understanding of nineteenth-century political and imperial history. These deserve reflection.