Roger Owen

Topics of Interest:
Economic, Social, and Political History of the Middle East, Imperialism, Military Occupation

Countries/Regions of Interest:
Egypt, Middle East

List of Publications

Books:
The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life (2012)

Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul (2004)

State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (2004)

The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914 (1993)

Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820-1914: A Study in Trade and Development (1969)

Articles:
'British and French Military Intelligence in Syria and Palestine, 1914–1918: Myths and Reality' (2011)

'British and French Intelligence in their Modern Middle Eastern Empires' (2009)

'Reconstructing the Performance of the Iraqi Economy, 1950-2006: An Essay with Some Hypotheses and Many Questions'(2006)

'The Rapid Growth of Egypt’s Agricultural Output 1890–1914 As an Early Example of the Green Revolutions of Modern South Asia: Some Implications for the Writing of Global History' (2006)

'The Population Census of 1917 and its Relationship to Egypt's Three 19th Century Statistical Regimes' (1996)

'The Study of Middle Eastern Industrial History: Notes on the Interrelationship between Factories and Small-Scale Manufacturing with Special References to Lebanese Silk and Egyptian Sugar, 1900-1930' (1984)

'Lord Cromer and the Development of Egyptian Industry, 1883–1907' (1966)

'The Influence of Lord Cromer's Indian Experience on British Policy in Egypt, 1883-1907' (1965)

Roger Owen is currently the A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History Emeritus at Harvard University Emeritus and a former director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the same university. He previously taught Middle East political and economic history at Oxford University until 1993, where he was also many times the Director of the St Antony's College Middle East Centre.

His books include 'Cotton and the Egyptian Economy', 'The Middle East in the World Economy: 1800-1914', 'State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East' (3rd revised edition 2004), 'Lord Cromer; Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul', and, most recently, 'The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life' (2012). He is also the co-author (with Sevket Pamuk) of 'A History of the Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century'.

He has written a regular column for the Arabic newspaper, Al-Hayat, since the late 1980s in which he comments both on Middle Eastern affairs and the relations between the Middle East and the rest of the world. He also has a particular interest in the study of Middle Eastern armies which started with his own military service in Cyprus in the 1950s. An early article that treated the subject from an analytical point of view was `The role of the army in Middle Eastern politics: A critique of existing analyses', Review of Middle East Studies, 3 (1978). In recent years he has extended this interest to include the military history of the First World War with special reference to military intelligence.