This reproduction of Professor Hurewitz's now classic work is designed 'to unfold European diplomacy in and on the Near and Middle East in modern times'. His collection of documents covers more than 400 years, from the early (1535) Ottoman-French treaty, through Napoleon's instructions to the French mission to Persia, and Treaties for suppressing Slave Traffic and Piracy, up to the modern period including the Sykes-Picot agreement for the partition of the Ottoman Empire, 1916 and a Soviet-Iranian exchange of notes in 1955. The work illustrates the history of diplomacy in the Middle East while recording the great events and cycles of Arab political development.