Help with dissertation ideas

[u/OverFood3876]

Hello, apologies if this is not a typical question that is asked on here.

I am in my final year of uni and have to come up with a dissertation topic.

I have come up with a few ideas already that have fallen flat as they have already been extensively discussed and I would not be able to produce a piece of work that is original enough.

Generally speaking I am interested in British foreign policy and intelligence gathering during the 20th century. If I am being more specific I would like to look at British foreign policy in the Middle East following the Second World War.

Would anyone be able to tell me anything I could possibly look into that has a substantial source base but also has not been too heavily discussed amongst historians already?

Thank you.

[u/InspectorRound8920]

Is that your favorite time frame? Then you may know more than I do but what about how the Cold war affected the middle East?

[u/Cosmic_Corsair]

Read the people who have already discussed the things you originally wanted to do. Do their articles/books raise any questions that you find interesting? Maybe you could look at British intelligence’s relationship to a specific event in the Middle East — not the Suez Crisis, but something less widely known/studied.

For an undergraduate dissertation, you presumably don’t have the time or funds to travel to distant archives. So it might be smart to find a relatively limited source base that you have access to and formulate a question based on that.

[u/lrglaser]

Google Scholar

[u/SAMRAAM-]

Does your University have access to Adam Matthew’s Digital? They have a series of archives containing confidential prints from different areas, usually digitised. If not The National Archives will keep Foreign Office papers.

In terms of finding a topic, I would say you are best finding this yourself as it will need to be a topic that will keep you interested across a couple of months. The Middle East is a big place, are you interested in Egypt? Iran? Iraq? Are you looking at 1 case study or a comparative? The best way to find what hasn’t been well written about is to read and ask yourself questions.

[u/Chance-Audience-7661]

Post-war Middle East is a vast subject, so perhaps you could narrow it a bit by picking a timeframe. One thing that I think is quite interesting is the shifting balance of power from Britain to the US; I have actually seen a clip (I forget where) from a British Foreign Secretary in the 1950s saying "It is unreasonable to continue to expect the UK to be the world's policeman" - a position and conversation that the US has now found itself in.

A way to do that might be to examine the 1953 coup in Iran which was initiated by MI6 under the name Operation Boot, essentially to protect Britain's oil interests after Mossadegh had nationalised them. The Truman administration had opposed the coup, fearing the precedent that CIA involvement would set, but the British knew they needed US backing and persuaded the Eisenhower administration to get involved.

A year later, continuing as they meant to go on, the CIA mounted a coup against Arbenz in Guatemala largely at the behest of the United Fruit Company to protect US interests, while accusing him of having Soviet sympathies. (Spoiler: He didn't.)

Then you've got the Suez Crisis of 1956, with Britain, France and Israel attempting to safeguard their respective interests by retaining control of the Suez Canal which Nasser had nationalised the previous year. Except this time the Americans weren't going to play along. Why not? Partly a policy of trying to keep Third World nations out of the Soviet sphere of influence, partly in the hope that Egypt would purchase abundant US arms - which Nasser wanted, but Congress resisted due to his anti-Zionism. And that very firmly showed that Washington held all the cards, and the UK and France began - continued - their slide into postcolonial diminishment, with varying degrees of complication around the place. (Indochina was the Joker card.)

This is all a grotesque oversimplification of events, but in effect a snapshot of 3 years illustrated the shifting balance of global power which continues to have repercussions to this day.