For more than two thousand years, the Middle East has provided a setting for titanic struggles between great civilizations and religions. In the wake of the Great War, it became the focus of rivalry between the European powers as the last major Islamic empire crumbled and collapsed. The discovery of the world's greatest oil reserves gave the region global economic importance while the foundation of a Jewish national state sparked one of the world's most enduring and intractable conflicts. This class traces the history of the region from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, examining issues such as the impact of imperialism, the economics of oil and gas, the battle between dictatorship and democracy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the recent reassertion of Islamic consciousness in the modern world. Learn through lectures, class discussion and other primary sources. Lecture style with question and answer time.