Sample Solution

British Petroleum Company was regarded as a nationalist demand which would prove enormously difficult to achieve and would require both perseverance and determination”. 60 To a world that has become accustomed not only to a different approach towards the Middle East region, its various nations state’s and their alignments, but also to the significance of oil as a commodity and an economic weapon, the changes that have occurred in the period under consideration here are indeed striking.
These current realities are part of the larger and longer process, namely the complex web of relationships between the cultures of East and West, itself the subject of a whole series of novels. A comparison of al-Tayyib Salih’s novel, Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal (1967; Season of Migration of the North, 1969) with earlier works in which Arabs give their impressions of Europeans provides another illustration of the changing nature of the relationship between the cultures of the Middle East and the West.
The Arab world “rediscovered” Europe during the 19th century. The interest of Europe in the Arab world took a rather more pragmatic from as France and Britain occupied, or otherwise participated in the governmental process of various countries in the region. A natural reaction to this was the formation of a number of nationalist movements whose aspirations, whether totally local or pan-Arab, were dashed by the mandate agreements which followed the First World War. The apparent success of the “Arab Revolt”, even if they were often viewed by English readers through the distorting lens of T. E. Lawrence’s narrative, had raised among the Arab nations considerable hopes for independence when the fighting was over. With the publication of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, declaring that a homeland for the Jewish people was a goal of the British government, the basis was created for a continuing series of misunderstanding and deception over the future of Palestine. Hopes for the Middle East were crushed as the French and British announced their agreement to divide the former Ottoman dominions into a series of “protectorates”: France undertook the administration of the Maghrib, Lebanon and Syria; the British became the mandate power in Palestine and Transjordan. These arrangements were dul