How Should We Write The History Of The Middle East?

First of all, may I say how warmly I welcome this opportunity to express something of what I owe to French masters, colleagues, and friends. Half a century ago, when I first became concerned with the history of the Middle East as a young instructor at the American University of Beirut, I might have found it more difficult to say this. France itself was unknown to me at that time. I looked at it mainly as the rather unsuccessful ruler of the country where I was living and working, and to which I was bound by ancestral ties. My attitude may have expressed something of the Arab nationalist sentiment of most of my colleagues and students at the American University, and also something of the tradition of Anglo-French rivalry in the Levant.