Tourism and the making of the modern Middle East

Abstract

Since its inception the Journal of Tourism History has sought to expand the interdisciplinary field of tourism history to include scholarship from and about regions such as the Middle East. This special issue on ‘Tourism and the Making of the Modern Middle East’ is based on a conference sponsored by the Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society (SERMEISS) and held at the University of Alabama in 2022. While mostly focused on developments in Lebanon and Iraq before they gained independence from France and Britain, the essays explore how national actors used tourism to integrate populations within the newly formed political entities of the Mandate era into viable nation-states and to position these emerging states within the international framework defined by expanding tourism economies. Together these studies show how tourism and its impacts in the Middle East are multilayered, transnational processes within and across the emerging territorial nation-states of the region.