The Struggle That Shaped the Middle East (with James Barr)

Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econalk.org. We'd love to hear from you. Today is February eleventh, twenty twenty five, and my guest is historian and author James Barr. I reached out to him after recent events in Syria, uh the fall of Assad. And I realized I had no idea how Syria became Syria.

Uh Along with some other Things I didn't know about the uh the Middle East, of course. It's a l it's a long list. But after a little research I discovered a book, A Line in the Sand Britain, France and the Struggle That shaped the Middle East.

by our guest, James Barr. The book explores how the French British rivalry shaped the outcome of the area and the region in the aftermath. Of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which eventually gave the world the nations of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Israel.

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