GEOG 2400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Sykes–Picot Agreement, Arab Spring, Personal Rights
14 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
GEOG 2400
Middle East
Middle east
• Ambiguous boundaries
• Birthplace of humanity
• Some of the highest rates or urbanization, but very uneven
• Most urbanized: Qatar and Kuwait
• 3 of the world's major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
• Vast difference in terms of human condition
• Main cause of death: car accidents
• Home to some of the wealthiest cities in the world, but also incredibly unequal (Dubai vs Syria)
Dubai:
• Importing plants on a weekly basis
• Growing global city, major site of international trade
• Low corporate taxes
• Oil found in 1950 near Abu Dhabi
• Slight decline in 2008, but 16 million visitors in 2017
Gaza:
• Considered by some of the world's largest slum
• Essential an urbanized agglomeration of refugee camps
• Israel captured territory in 1967, enclave of the state of Palestine
• One of the most densely populated places in the world
• Tightly controlled borders
Population:
• 30 million for centuries (ottoman Empire)
• 20th century: reaches 60m
• Post 1950, enormous population explosion
• 2000: 380 million people
• Highest population growth of any region in past century
• Rapidly growing urban population
Contemporary Middle East
• Decline of nomadism, little arable land
• Syke-Picot Agreement:
o Carving up of the middle east by UK/France
o Creating new borders that didn't previously exist
o Didn't consider religious/cultural differences
• Middle East oil
o 1920s: US became interested
o 1930s: US companies won first contract to explore oil in Saudi Arabia, oil found in Bahrain
and Kuwait
o Palestine ceded Palestine to UK in early 1920s, oil is a strategic issue
o US allied with countries to fuel its need for oil
o Important part of WWII
• Laying runways
• Making TNT for bombs
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
