The people of Turkey at the end of the War of Independence could hardly have imagined the long era of peace and national development that was to follow. They had just been through more than a decade of struggle to survive against the odds of warfare abroad and at home, epidemics, and serious interferences with the normal material means of livelihood. Loss of life and permanent disability were legacies for many families of the 1911–1922 period. Practically every community was affected in some life-threatening way by the ambitions of outside powers and their local allies or by the last Ottoman campaigns (the Balkans, North Africa, Gallipoli, the Russian front, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and the Hejaz). Only the independence struggle itself finally resolved the issues of territoriality, governance, and the right to reside in peace. The new Republic was founded in 1923.

It is common knowledge of Iranian history that at the turn of the present century iran was undergoing important social transformations. A notable feature of this period that witnessed the rising movement for constitutional reforms was a heightening of social tensions and contradictions in a traditional society that had now become subject to potent forces of change from within and without. The disintegration of the political power of the Qajar dynasty went hand in hand with an accelerating trend of economic decline, while the social fabric of the country at large was unraveled by a growing tendency for outbursts of massive social agitation and popular unrest.

This article, which draws largely from Arabica press sources from 1885 to 1900, seeks to sharpen our view of social attitudes reflected in the activities of local Freemasons in Egypt and Syria during the last decades of the Ottoman Empite. A number of earlier historians have attached considerable importance to pre- and post-1908 masonic orders and Ottoman politics. Too few, however, have tried to analyze ways in which essential social themes, some widely recognized as having importance across international and intercultural lines, were viewed through the perspective of late 19th-century Freemasonry. A first task in this introduction, therefore, will be to see how Masons in Europe and the Middle East viewed, or were presumed to view, a number of such social themes in general terms. We will then turn to one specific issue which clearly assumed more than passing importance as a propagandistic cause pursued by a small but influential group of Masons in Syria and Egypt over nearly two decades' time. We may tentatively suggest that the purpose of such endeavors was to encourage majority acceptance of the relevance and value of a cause espoused for the body politic as a whole, without necessary reference to its original, here clearly minority, proponents.

In my contribution to a volume edited by Roger Owen, I have studied the economic development of Palestine from the Crimean War up to the beginnings of the first Jewish Aliya. In this article I propose to investigate the concomitant demographic development of Palestine, that is, of the Livās of Jerusalem, Nablus/Balqā', and 'Akkā, during roughly the same period.

Revolutions are momentous events that shake the foundations of societies, transforming their social and political structures and often signalling the triumph of a new ideology. It has long been noted that the international ramifications of revolutions are no less profound than their domestic impact. This is not only because revolutions often give rise to powerful states, thus potentially undermining the extant balance of power, but also because they sometimes infuse those states with norms and objectives that are antithetical to those subscribed to by other members of the international system. They also exert a demonstration effect beyond the boundaries of their country of origin, with a potential for triggering waves of revolution and counter-revolution both within and between societies.