The first component of this lecture is the conclusion of nine years of lectures on the Palestine question. This corresponds to chapter XIV of tome V of La Question de Palestine, La paix impossible published by Fayard in September 2015 (p. 738-825).
The other component of the lecture inaugurates a new research theme, which revives previous work, updates it and opens up new avenues of research. Initially, my focus was on the beginnings of the First World War in the Arab East, in response to a highly topical scientific issue highlighted by the opening symposium at the Collège de France. However, the new issues raised by the most recent literature, particularly on relations between Arabs and Ottomans and on the first developments of Muslim reformist thought in India, have led to a change of focus in order to restore the long-term nature of questions of the West and the East. This year, in parallel with the question of Palestine, I am inaugurating a vagabond history of relations between these two universes over a long 19th century.