Most historians locate the beginning of the modern Arab history in the first decades of the XIX ^E century.

The forwarding of Bonaparte in Egypt (1798-1801) opens this new period of the history of the Arabs: indeed, at the same time as he wanted to cut the road of the Indies to Great Britain, the French general, influenced by the ideals of the philosophy of the Lights and of the Revolution, in the modern era Egypt removed from the Othoman yoke wanted to insert.

But Bonaparte, which had made a point of being surrounded by eminent scientists who got busy, inter alia activities, to decipher the hieroglyphs and to print Arabic books, failed in his forwarding. The French intervention had however opened the way with the colonial companies of the XIX ^E century.

One of the most remarkable figures of this century - and perhaps the most important character of the modern history, for the Arabs - was the Albanian mercenary Méhémet-Ali (1769-1849), who seized the power in Egypt in 1805 and ends up being named viceroy of the country by his suzerain, the sultan of Istanbul. Without passion interest for Egypt or the Arabs themselves, it apparently decided to use them at personal and dynastic ends.

Impressed by the power of Europe and respectful of his suzerain, who was a reforming sultan, Méhémet-Ali wished to build a powerful State and it took, for this purpose, a series of radical measurements: transformation of part of the Egyptian fellahin into modern soldiers, improvement of the agricultural methods, nationalization of the trade, industrialization of the country, formation of a new class of technicians and bureaucrats in Europe or in Egyptian schools created for the circumstance according to the European principles.

Méhémet-Ali failed in his great intention, but it provided the foundations of the future developments in the Arab world. In Egypt, the industry created by its care was largely abandoned as of before its death; the European powers indeed forced it to give up the control centralized on the economy and the trade, and to dismantle the frightening military force which it had setting-up. But the cultural impulse generated by its activities could not be destroyed.

Apart from Egypt, in the zones conquered by its armies, of the of the same changes width were in hand. Courting the favors of Europe, Méhémet-Ali was presented in the form of “a missionary armed with civilization”; he accommodated the European merchants, diplomats and even ecclesiastics, offering to the Christians new freedoms. The organization of a modern army created a new market, the economic barriers were raised and the economic investments were encouraged. European missionaries founded schools, private clinics and even of the universities.

The old uses were considered become old-fashioned and the styles changed. New roads of trade are established, new cities grew (to the detriment of many Pharaonic ruins), and of new social groups benefitted from the movement while others were ruined. About the middle of the century, the European merchants monopolized the essence of the trade, industry, transport and finance. The construction of Suez Canal, the processing cost of Egypt and the fashion of the European goods of luxury gradually placed all the economy under a quasi monopolistic European control.

In their turn, the pressures of the merchants and European creditors, the ambitions and the intrigues of the European powers and the weakness of the Othoman power involved a control in fact by the European advisers and consuls, in many significant areas of the Middle East.

This numbness of the Ottoman Empire indeed made it possible conquering Europe to settle in the Middle East. France seized Algeria (1830, beginning of the conquest; 1847, rendering of Abd el-Kader; 1870, Crémieux decrees dividing Algeria into three departments), then installed a protectorate in Tunisia (1881, treated of Bardo) and in Morocco (1912). Great Britain occupied Egypt in 1912 and made a protectorate in 1914 of it.

Perceiving initially only vaguely the long-term strategy of the European powers, the Arab elites adopted with the envi the European habits and had a duty to bring Europe to their compatriots. With the arrival of printing works and the diffusion of cheap books, the culture penetrated in all the mediums; not only the European books, but also traditional Arabic became accessible to all. The rediscovery of the Arab heritage, at the time of this confrontation with Europe, gave rise to soon the first manifestations of the national conscience. As of the years 1870, a reaction started vis-a-vis the Occident.

This reaction took various forms. Nahda, or Arab “alarm clock”, in which took part of the intellectuals, Christians and Moslems, of Egypt, of Syria, of Lebanon, appeared by the revival of the Arab literature, with writers and poets like Boutros Al-Boustani or Khalil Gibran. But this movement was also monk and took orientations which succeeded, on the one hand, with the appearance of the liberal modernism with the Egyptian Rifaa Al-Tahtawi, influenced by the ideas of the French revolution and the Saint-Simonians, on the other hand, with the rise of the salafiyya, fundamentalist movement preaching a return to the sources.

Already, around 1750, the sheik Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab and his disciple Muhammad ibn Saoud had made triumph the wahhabism, doctrines which are characterized by the return to an Islam of moral rigorism and doctrinal intransigence. When the Saoud family imposes her domination on the Arabique peninsula and that Saudi Arabia will be created, in 1932, the wahhabism will become doctrines of State. At the XIXe century, the large theorists of the salafiyya are Aldine Djamal Al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh, called the “Reformer of the century”, in favor of the restoration of the umma (community of the believers) Moslem.

Apart from the religious sphere, many statesmen sought to guarantee European domination while becoming “modern” with the European direction of the term, by the renewal of the attempts at Méhémet-Ali. Others still tested the military solution. British forwardings had early made break the career of the first modern military chief of Egypt, Ahmad Arabin, in 1882.

In 1898, they made also failure with a military rising in Sudan. The failure of the soldier, the monk and the policy required an effective defense against the Occident forced the Arab elites to reconsider in a more critical way the bases of their Community existence.

Some sought a nationalist base in the language - primarily the Christian Arabs anxious to reduce the importance of Islam. Gradually, the nationalist ideas were spread in Balkans, where the Othomans lost little by little their possessions, so that the Turks themselves are reflected to create their own ethnic and linguistic nationalism.

But it was necessary to await the First World War day before and the more and more marked contempt of Europeans with regard to the Arab weakness so that nationalism was really spread. The first Egyptian political parties were founded in 1907, with the intention posted to expel the British. This movement was going to culminate with the “revolution” of 1919, when the Egyptians, determined to see recognized their national existence, required the right to send a delegation wafd to the International Conference of Peace.

provided to the Syrian and Arab armies, supported by weapons and money from Great Britain, the occasion to release itself from the Ottoman Empire by the “revolt of the Desert”; certain Westerners joined this war, under the control of Lawrence of Arabia. At the end of the hostilities, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the chief of the Arab coalition, prince Fayçal, son of the charif Saoudi of Mecque, took the control of Damas and almost all Syria. However, at the time of the conference of the Peace which followed, he vainly sought to ensure the independence of Arab Syria. Having failed Paris, it returned to Damas where it was proclaimed king. But when Syria was invaded by France to which it conference of Paris had entrusted the mandate on these provinces, king Fayçal was constrained to exile itself.

Meanwhile, Great Britain had invaded Iraq and had driven out the Othomans without the help of the Arabs. The British policy was similar to that of France in Syria. When a general revolt of the tribes burst against the British mandate in 1920, Fayçal was brought back of its exile and was imposed as king on Iraq. Although this country was developed less than Egypt, Syria or even Palestine, it was the first to be left the mandate and obtained its independence in 1932.

In Syria, the French occupation left deep scars. The French never managed to set up a government at the same time stable, friendly and economically viable. Syria lived thus under the mode of the martial law, in virtual state of occupation, with an inescapable alternation of rebellions and repressions, until the proclamation of independence in 1941 and the evacuation of the Franco-British troops in 1946.

To the XX ^E century, the theories of the thinkers of Nahda were incarnated in political movements, according to two opposite ideologies. On a side, liberal modernism, at the origin of the nationalism which supported the movements of independence and provides the ideological framework to those which seized the power then:

·   the Baath party (left Arab Resurrection), made up in the years 1940, with the power in Syria and Iraq, and which claims at the same time Arabism and socialism;

·   nasserism, resulting from the Egyptian revolution of 1952; Nasser, with the free Officers, reversed king Farouk, nationalized Suez Canal (1956) and caused transitory United Arab Republic (1958-1961) gathering Egypt and Syria;

·   Néo-Destour, founded in 1934 by Habib Bourguiba;

·   the Face of national release (FLN), founded in 1954, the shortly after the Algerian insurrection, which arrived at the power after eight years of war (1962).

On another side, the fundamentalism of Muhammad Abduh and the Saoudi wahhabism, which were at the origin of the movement of the Muslim brothers, founded in 1927-1928, which preaches the return to the fundamental values of Islam and the formation of Moslem States living according to the only Islamic law charia. The various islamist movements - that they are of integrist or fundamentalist obedience - are made the pioneers of the fight against modes accused of corruptions and infeodation in the Occident.

The formidable increase in population, rural depopulation, the accumulation of the populations in the cities, the economic difficulties, the bursting of the family institution are as many upheavals which support recovery by the radical Islam of the popular discontent and the crisis of identity. Also, the islamist wave develops since the beginning of the years 1980: Islamic revolution in Iran (seizure of power by the Khomeyni Imam in 1979), agitation of the Muslim brothers in Egypt, electoral victories of the Islamic front of the Hello (MADE) in Algeria, in 1990 and 1991.

In Palestine, placed under British mandate, a violent conflict of nationalisms burst because of British policy. In order to encourage the Russian and American Jews to support the Allies in the First World War , the British government promised in 1917, by the famous declaration Balfour, so fraught with consequences, to allow “the establishment in Palestine of a national fatherland for the Jewish people”.

On their side, the Arabs estimated that the Hussein-MacMahon correspondence of 1915-1916 had already guaranteed this territory to them, like condition of their assistance in the revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, in 1916, within the framework of the Sykes-Barb agreements, the British had also promised Palestine in France.

After one period of sour recriminations, the French inclined themselves in front of the accomplished fact. In Palestine as in Syria, years 1920 and 1930 were punctuated multiple violences; after the forced hiatus of the Second world war , these violences culminated with the Israeli-Arab of 1948-1949, consecutive war with the creation of, and the escape State of Israel or expulsion of the majority of the Arab population of Palestine. The League of the Arab States, however formed in 1945, had clearly failed in one of its main aims: to support the cause of the Palestinian Arabs. This failure led many Arabs to call into question the significance of their nationalism, the validity of their companies and their national security policy. The extent of disillusions and rancours caused a series of coups d'etat which more or less violently reversed, in one decade, the governments of Syria, of Lebanon, of Egypt and Iraq, to finish by the assassination of king Abdallah of Jordan in 1951.

In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created, who gathered the Palestinians having fled the Israeli occupation in 1948, in particular towards Lebanon and Jordan, and later on in 1967. From 1969 with its death, in 2004, the PLO was directed by Yasser Arafat, who, in November 1988, proclaimed a “State independent of Palestine”.

But, parallel to the Palestinian question, the Arab defeats at the time of the war of the Six-Jours in 1967, then at the time of the war of Kippour in 1973, the recognition by the Egyptian president Anouar el-Sadate of the State of Israel and the agreements of Camp David in 1978 were perceived in the greatest Arab part of the world like as many retreats vis-a-vis Israel. Intifada, the “war of the stones”, started in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1987, introduced inside even borders of Israel a conflict up to that point developed outside. In spite of the agreement of September 1993 between Israel and the PLO, in spite of the beginning of autonomy granted in Gaza and Jericho in 1994 and the signature of an peace agreement between Jordan and the Hebrew State, future of the Palestinian people continuous to pose problems which are far from being solved.

The war of Lebanon must be located in this context: born in 1975 from the surge of Palestinian combatants, poisoned by the invasion of 1982 of the south of the country by Israel, worsened by the Syrian intervention against the PLO in 1976 and 1983, it finds also its origin in the rupture of the fragile interdenominational balance which reigned in the country since 1943. Lebanon is pacified today, but under Syrian control.

The war of Algeria was one of the other tragic moments of the alarm clock of the Arab conscience. Its history, its political and human implications are approached in a note which is especially devoted to him.

Today, in spite of diversity, the divergences and even the hostilities as regards policy, of economy, religion and company, the Arab governments agree on the need for gaining in force and respect by the modernization of their companies. All launched out in programs aiming at treating the rapid growth of their population by the development of severely limited resources.

Only oil the States rich person of Saudi Arabia, of Kuwait, of the Persian Gulf and Libya have sufficient incomes to satisfy the needs for their development. In all the Arab States, however, major transformations proceed, tending to create a modern industrial society in which - at least superficially - few things will survive of the past.

The most fundamental changes are perhaps those which result from education. In Egypt, largest by the Arab States, the number of the registered students increased in a considerable way in the last half of the century. The growth of technical education was even more considerable since the years 1950.

In addition to the schools, however, the army, the cinema, television, the radio and great work are essential means of instruction and stimulation. The transformations resulting from this state of affairs are so important that one can distinguish a new social group, which differs by its motivation, its discipline, its education and its waitings, from those which preceded it. It is for this group that the great projects of development are created and these are the performances which will largely determine its future.

The Arab States also tried an industrial revolution directly controlled by the State. Progress was excessively slow and painful in Iraq, Syria, Morocco and Jordan, faster in Egypt (which had a past on the matter) and faster still in the oil States richest. Great progress was made in Lebanon and in Algeria, which profited from special relations with Europe. The central problem was the unequal man and capital, allocation of resources. Certain attempts were made to distribute the surpluses, by the means of subsidized loans of the oil States to their poorer neighbors. However, until the brutal increase in the prices by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in 1973, a good part of the assistance came from the nonArab States, in particular the United States and the Soviet Union. Most Arab countries knew improvements, but the too fast increase in population tends to absorb the benefit as they get clear.

Moreover, there exists a new radicalism in the Arab countries. Most governments are laic, authoritative and “state-control”: with rare exceptions, they leave only very little space for private initiatives, in policy as in economy. By adopting what they called “socialism”, by mobilizing the opinion of the masses and while drawing left the cold war to attract the international assistance, of the determined statesmen - as Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anouar el-Sadate in Egypt; Ahmed Ben Bleated in Algeria; Abdoul Karim Al-Kassem in Iraq - seem to have led the Arab policy towards new spheres.

The conflict between Iraq and Iran was, of 1980 to 1988, a bloody illustration of antagonism between these political and ideological referents: nationalist ambitions of Saddam Hussein, claims islamist recovering, in the case of Khomeyni, a Persan nationalist feeling (thus antiarabe) and Shiite (thus antisunnite). Carried out of colonel Kadhafi (conflict of Chad of 1973 to 1982) and the war in the Persian Gulf (invasion of Kuwait by Iraq on on August 2nd, 1990 and intervention of the forces of UNO in January - February 1991) are only one new demonstration of an Arab nationalism whose excesses should not make forget the force of popular mobilization against the Occident, with the first chief the United States, indicated like the “Great Satan”. In this context, the oil of the Middle East, which Europe and America absolutely need, represents a weapon which makes it possible to the Arabs to continue to play a leading role in the world politics and to act on the international economic equilibrium, as it was the case at the time of the oil crises of 1973 and 1979.