It has to be approx. 2500 words!

You are expected to rely on course readings and your notes from lectures and class discussions only. You should incorporate your own opinions and interpretations. The essay will be evaluated on how effectively you can synthesize and analyze the range of relevant course materials in your own voice. You should support your arguments with specific examples and draw comparisons where possible and appropriate. Avoid strict region-by-region or chronological cataloging of facts.

Do not utilize outside sources or the web for content. Please treat this exercise as a take-home final examination and refrain from collaborating with others. Do not share your writing with fellow students.

It is important that you provide brief textual citations for material referring to the readings, e.g., “(Hanioglu, 46” or “(Keddie, 17)”. Any direct quotations should be indicated as such (within quotation marks). You do not need to provide citations for information coming from your lecture notes. There is no need to provide a “works cited” (bibliography) section. A title is optional.

Please proofread your paper before submission and do not rely solely on the spell-check function of your word-processing program. Essays considerably longer or shorter than the assigned length and use of prose lacking in technical merits (grammar, spelling, punctuation, cohesion, sentence structure, etc.) will work against you.

Prompt: The Middle East’s opening up to Europe and the restructuring of its institutions accompanied social, political, or intellectual currents/movements engendered by novel ideas, foreign influence, and/or policies of the indigenous regimes/states. Identify such responses and evaluate their impact on the transformations that Middle Eastern states and societies underwent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (before 1918).