Courses

This seminar examines the international history of the Persian Gulf during the Cold War (1945-1991) as an ongoing struggle among external powers and local actors for regional supremacy. At one level the seminar will examine the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for regional influence in the context of the decline of Britain’s empire in the Persian Gulf. Here the focus is on superpower intervention in a series of regional events and crises, particularly in Iran and Iraq. The seminar places these regional episodes in the global context of the Cold War. The seminar also addresses broad themes in the contemporary history of the Persian Gulf, such as the rise of nationalism and political Islam, the politics of oil, or rebellion and revolution, but it does so not only in national contexts, but as part of the international history of the Cold War. The main theme of the course is the connectivity between the local and the global. The seminar is primary one of political and diplomatic history, with a particular focus on U.S. diplomatic history in the Persian Gulf, but broader aspects of the region’s intellectual, cultural and social history will be discussed.