Dry Aspirations: An Early Trajectory of US–Middle East Relations

The history of Cold War era US-Middle East relations has fascinated many historians and other scholars ever since the time itself. Relations between the US and the region, however, have a deeper and more complex history beyond matters of military and financial aid driven by the US-Soviet standoff. Through this poster, I demonstrate in words and visual imagery how the roles played by American temperance and prohibition activists to “dry” Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria in the 1920s constituted a crucial albeit lesser-known prelude to subsequent relations. By 1919, having succeeded in passing legislation that would optimistically achieve Prohibition in the US, members of the Anti-Saloon League of America (ASLA) expanded their gaze to envision a “dry” world. ASLA leaders thus established the World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA) and justified their scheme as essential for protecting Prohibition at home by thwarting the arrival of overseas alcohol on American shores. Their initiative, however, also reflected America’s expanding hegemony after World War I and was routinely couched in the language of an American “moral empire.” To achieve their goal, WLAA leaders provided American “moral and financial support” to other countries and worked closely with local temperance groups and activists to bring about legal prohibitions abroad. In their view, the Middle East commonly seemed an easy first target and ideal early potential victory due to the Islamic prohibition of alcohol and drinking. Not yet having experienced American imperialism, after WWI, many Middle Eastern people looked up to the US as potential protectors of them and their interests. Disseminating news in the region of America’s Prohibition by way of missionaries and other temperance activists, WLAA leaders assumed that the temperance cause would yield a common ground between America and the region and influence America’s decision-making, especially during the post-WWI peace negotiations. My original research on this topic is profoundly significant beyond its relevance as one more story from the Prohibition era; it is a history of America’s emerging expressions of hegemony over the Middle East region and its peoples, a past that continues into our present day and will continue to do so into our futures.

Through my presentation of this poster, I textually and visually convey this history of emerging US-Middle East relations as partly yet significantly based on temperance activism. In doing so, I employ images from prohibitionist posters and newspapers, media images of American temperance activists abroad, and anti-alcohol literature that pictorially celebrated America’s prohibition activists. Through these images I reveal American prohibitionists’ world view and their global aspirations, beginning with a quest to replicate the US example amid the Middle East’s “semi-arid/humid” drinking culture. Of wider relevance, my research also establishes one of the early expressions of American hegemony over the region through a self-serving discourse of Americans as “saviors” of the Middle East and its peoples through the WLAA’s initiative to “dry” the region and its societies from the global scourge of alcohol.