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This thesis examines how the monarchial regime of the al-Khalifa dynasty of Bahrain has skillfully tailored the tools of statecraft, both in international diplomacy and domestic policy, for one primary objective: to restrain attempts for democratic reform in order to sustain the regime's wealth and power. The al-Khalifa regime has shaped statecraft policies into a unique set in order to limit democratic initiatives. The monarchy blurs the lines between at democratization as contrasted with taking a few steps toward liberalization in order to address the nation's continuing unrest. The regime exacerbates the Sunni-Shi`a divide by hiring Sunni foreigners to serve in the security forces and deliberately stokes sectarian conflict by blaming Iran for inciting the Shi`i population. The regime encourages the hiring of migrant workers, which benefits the monarchy's wealth and fosters competition for jobs between groups of workers; at the same time, the regime denies migrants steps toward citizenship. Through its foreign relations polices, the monarchy prudently balances its relationships with the United States and Saudi Arabia for the primary purpose of maintaining power. Unique circumstances, as revealed by Bahrain's history, have influenced the al-Khalifa's governance of the nation. These factors include: US military base on Bahrain's land, a Sunni minority ruling a Shi`i majority, a well-educated citizenry willing to protest for democratization and labor rights, dwindling oil resources, and a geopolitical position between two rival regional powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran. / History

During the Arabic cultural renaissance of the nineteenth century known as the nahda, Christian Arabs made a substantial contribution to the development of fiction and journalism. Among these pioneers, Salim al-Bustani, Jurji Zaydan, and Farah Antun were inspired by translations of European fiction to write the first historical novels in Arabic. Their narrations of the Muslim wars of conquest are carefully constructed blends of history and fiction that emphasize the cultural and religious values that Christian and Muslim Arabs hold in common. In their novels, these authors celebrate the historical achievements of the Arabs and seek to inspire a new sense of Arab cultural identity, open to Christians and Muslims alike and based on shared language, history, territory, values, and aspirations for reform. In this way, these authors respond to the sectarian tensions of their time, European imperialism, and the challenges of modernism with ideas that would become central to Arab nationalist discourse in the twentieth century.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Michael Krysko / David Stone / Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who was a nationalist leader and founder and first president of the republic of Turkey, still remains an important figure in the Turkish political and social landscape. Kemalist historiography, which is based on Mustafa Kemal’s six-day speech (Nutuk) in October 1927, emphasizes the foundation of the Republic as central to Turkish history. While this historiography emphasizes that Mustafa Kemal had an explicit plan during his modernization efforts, this dissertation will cover how Mustafa Kemal was incoherent in his actions and changed his discourses over and over again during the change of the political structure of Turkey. Beyond that, this study will suggest that Mustafa Kemal was an opportunist and pragmatist who utilized every single event to establish a Jacobin style autocracy. This research will discuss how Mustafa Kemal succeeded in using every opportunity, such as the Law of Supreme Commander Act in August 1921, the abolition of Sultanate in 1922, the establishment of Republic in 1923, the abolition of Caliphate in 1924, and the elimination of opposition in 1925, to establish his personal autocracy. In particular, the records of Assembly debates, not sufficiently used by Turkish historians, will be helpful to understand the creation of this personal autocracy. While Kemalist historiography credits Mustafa Kemal Ataturk with the original and unique conception of the social, legal, and educational reforms of the early Republican period, this dissertation argues that this approach is not balanced. Although the Kemalist historiography asserts that Mustafa Kemal and his legacy represent carrying out Enlightenment ideals in an obsolete society almost totally ignorant of these principles, the Kemalist modernization got a great inheritance from its predecessors, the Young Turks. Therefore, the Kemalist overstatement of an idealist figure of Mustafa Kemal is wrong in some degree. This dissertation aims to scrutinize the contribution of the Ottoman reformers and contradictions, mistakes, and overstatements of the Kemalist modernization project in social, legal, and educational areas by the help of wide primary sources which include official reports of the Grand National Assembly, the Republican Era archives and a mass of periodicals which were published in 1920s in Turkey.

The deposition of Imam Muhammad al-Badr in September 1962 was the culmination of a Yemeni nationalist movement that began in the 1940s with numerous failed attempts to overthrow the traditional religious legal order. Prior to 1962, both the USSR and Egypt had been cultivating alliances with al-Badr in an effort to secure their strategic interests in South Arabia. In the days following the 1962 coup d'état, Abdullah Sallal and his cohort of Yemeni officers established a republic and concealed the fate of al-Badr who had survived an assault on his Sana'a palace and whose supporters had already begun organizing a tribal coalition against the republic. A desperate appeal by Yemeni republicans brought the first Egyptian troops to Yemen. Saudi Arabia, pressured by Egyptian troops, border tribal considerations and earlier treaties with the Yemeni Imamate, supported the Imam's royalist opposition. The battleground between Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and al-Badr was transformed into an arena for international conflict and diplomacy. The UN mission to Yemen, while portrayed as a symbol of failed and underfunded global peacekeeping at the time, was in fact instrumental in establishing the basis for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Bruce Condé, an American philatelist, brought global attention to the royalist-republican struggle to control the Yemeni postal system. The last remnants of the British Middle East Empire fought with Nasser to maintain a mutually declining level of influence in the region. Israeli intelligence and air force aided royalist forces and served witness to the Egyptian use of chemical weapons, a factor that would impact decision-making prior to the 1967 War. Despite concurrent Cold War tensions, Americans and Soviets appeared on the same side of the Yemeni conflict and acted mutually to confine Nasser to the borders of South Arabia. This internationalized conflict was a pivotal event in Middle East history as it oversaw the formation of a modern Yemeni state, the fall of Egyptian and British regional influence, another Arab-Israeli war, Saudi dominance of the Arabian Peninsula, and shifting power alliances in the Middle East.

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