In the nineteenth century the Dead Sea and the Tigris-Euphrates river system had great political significance: the one as a possible gateway for a Russian invasion of Egypt, the other as a potentially faster route to India. This is the traditional explanation for the presence of the international powers in the region. This important new book questions this view. Through a study of two important projects of the time -- international efforts to determine the exact level of the Dead Sea, and Chesney's Euphrates Expedition to find a quicker route to India -- Professor Goren shows how other forces than the interests of empire, were involved. He reveals the important role played by private individuals and establishes a wealth of new connections between the key players; and he reveals for the first time an important Irish nexus. The resulting work adds an important new dimension to our existing understanding of this period.

The Palestine Campaign undertaken by the British during the Great War has become one of the most glorified military offensives of the 20th Century. Shattering the reach of Ottoman imperial power for the final time, the conflict both pushed Germany back into Europe and laid the groundwork for splitting up the Middle East into the nations that we recognize today. Meanwhile, the secretive Sykes-Picot Agreement ensured the British and French would continue to exert colonial influence in the Middle East for the next sixty years. Palestine and World War I is a new exploration of the social and cultural history of the campaign, which seeks to unravel the combination of myths and memory from which we inherit the romantic desert persona of Lawrence of Arabia and the image of General Allenby symbolically entering the Holy City on foot. With a compelling Foreword by Jay Winter, Palestine and World War I augments our existing understanding of the origins of contemporary conflict in the Middle East and provides a valuable new perspective into the ongoing tensions within the Arab World.

Through a detailed study of the work of three of the leading figures of the era - Augustus Petermann, Physical Geographer Royal to Queen Victoria; cartographer Charles Meredith van de Velde, who produced the finest map of the region at the time; and Edward Robinson, founder of modern Palestinology - the authors explore the complex cultural, cartographic and technical processes that shaped and determined the resulting maps of the region. Making full use of newly discovered archival material, and richly illustrated in both colour and black and white, Mapping the Holy Land is essential reading for cartographers, historical geographers, historians of mapmaking, and for all those with an interest in the Holy Land and the history of Palestine.