Syria: A Broken Land at the Crossroads of Power (Cape of Good Hope Series)

One of the Cape of Good Hope series. Drawing on the research methods of the Annales School, Matthew Ray traces nearly two centuries of Syrian history by analyzing factors such as changes in the geographical environment and the impact of outside forces arriving from different regions and directions. This is both a history of human migration, showing how villages formed around cities, how cities emerged and grew, and how the boundaries of the nomadic world gradually shrank, and a history of state formation. As people migrated, different settlements gradually became connected in a network. Combined with the influence of outside forces and the shifting balance of internal forces, this ultimately led to Syria becoming an independent country. Yet those very same factors have also repeatedly plunged Syria into turmoil.