The Fertile Crescent, the region encompassing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, has, despite its name, historically faced challenges to food security from Imperial powers and, more recently, foreign agribusiness. The Empty Bread Basket unravels the paradoxes of food and empire in the Fertile Crescent using a comparative and historical political economy of agrarian change. The structures that condition rural development in the region are traced historically, as the result of capitalist development and colonially mediated state-building that began during the 19th century Ottoman Tanzimat reform and accelerated with the imposition of Western colonialism after World War I. The contemporary food dependence of the Fertile Crescent is explained as the cumulative outcome of these historical processes and the agendas of Western governments and international development agencies.As commodity prices soar across the world, food security is set to become a key issue for students studying Middle Eastern politics and development studies.