Edward Roger John Owen (27 May 1935 – 23 December 2018) was a British historian who wrote several classic works on the history of the modern Middle East. His research interests included the economic, social and political history of the Middle East, especially Egypt, from 1800 to the present, as well as the theories of imperialism, including

military occupations A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

Biography

He read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...

, from 1956 to 1959, followed by a D Phil in Economic History at

St. Antony's College St Antony's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1950 as the result of the gift of French merchant Sir Antonin Besse of Aden, St Antony's specialises in international relations, economi ...

, from 1960 to 1964. One of his close advisers was the renowned Middle East historian Albert Hourani. His thesis which was on the cotton production and the development of the economy in nineteenth-century Egypt was later published into a book. When in the 1960s new postgraduate course in modern Middle Eastern studies were introduced at St Antony's College and a raft of new posts created with British government funding, Owen was appointed in Economic and Social History in 1964. He served as Director of St. Antony's College Middle East Centre, from 1971-4, 1980-2, 1986-8, and 1991-3. Subsequently he became the A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard University and was the director of

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES). In addition to his teaching and scholarship, Owen frequently wrote columns for the

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

versions of the Arabic newspapers Al-Hayat and

Al-Ahram ''Al-Ahram'' ( ar, الأهرام; ''The Pyramids''), founded on 5 August 1875, is the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper, and the second oldest after '' al-Waqa'i`al-Masriya'' (''The Egyptian Events'', founded 1828). It is majori ...

. He was a member of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, also known as MESA. He died on 23 December 2018.

Awards and honors

In 2007 he received a Doctorate in Humane Letters from the

American University of Cairo The American University in Cairo (AUC; ar, الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة, Al-Jāmi‘a al-’Amrīkiyya bi-l-Qāhira) is a private research university in Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning progra ...

. In July 2010, he received the prestigious “Award for Outstanding Contributions to Middle Eastern Studies 2010” from the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES) in Barcelona. In 2012, he received the Giorgio Levi Della Vida medal for Excellence in Islamic studies, Von Grunebaum Center UCLA.

Selected works

''The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life''
Harvard University Press (2012) * ''Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul'' (2004)
''State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East''
Routledge, revised version (2004)
''A History of the Middle East Economies in the 20th Century''
with

Şevket Pamuk Şevket Pamuk is chair of contemporary Turkish studies at the European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, and Professor of Economics and Economic History at Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University. He is a leading economic h ...

). I.B. Tauris (1999) * ''The Middle East in the World Economy 1800–1914'' (1981) * ''Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820–1914'' (1969)

References

External links

Faculty page at Harvard University
*, March 17, 2008.
One Hundred Years of Middle Eastern Oil
By Prof. E. Roger Owen, 2008. {{DEFAULTSORT:Owen, Roger 1935 births 2018 deaths Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford British historians Fellows of St Antony's College, Oxford Historians of the Middle East Middle Eastern studies in the United States Harvard University faculty