Hardback, First Edition, 256 pp. Bibliography, Index. Noot LT: P. slaagt er als geen ander in de rode draad te trekken doorheen de geschiedenis; hij legt het ontstaan van het nationalisme in de XVIIIde eeuw en bij de Verlichting.
On the Middle East: 'There is no Arab nation, as such. The historical experience and reference of the region is not to nation but to religion, commune, empire, caliphate. The states which exist there today do so because it is now considered appropriate that people live in nation-states, not in multiconfessional and multinational empires.' (...) 'There still are not many real nations in the Middle or Near East. Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Iran (Persia), Yemen - and Israel - possess the social and historical credentials of nationhood. The other Eastern Mediterranean states are artificial.' (111)
'For millennia (...) Syria had been politically fragmented, the object of repeated invasions and conquests because of its fertility and command of trade routes.' (...) 'None of the other religious minority communities in Syria - the Druze (a sect of Islamic origins), Kurds, Armenians, Turkomans, Orthodox Christians, and the Islamic minorities - possessed the numbers and staying power to impose itself in modern times as a nation.'(113-114)
'The identification of religion with civilization in Islamic society blocks a solution to its contemporary problems.' (123)
William Pfaff (December 29, 1928 – April 30, 2015) was an American author, op-ed columnist for the International Herald Tribune and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.