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A review by mburnamfink
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin
4.0
A Peace to End All Peace is a serious work of scholarship in understanding the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the foundations of the modern Middle East in the aftermath of World War I. It's deeply researched and painstaking in presenting the different views inside the British government. It is also somewhat scattered, difficult to read, and feels like it's missing key parts.
In 1914, it was obvious to all that the Ottoman Empire was on the ropes. Perpetually broke, technologically backwards, with major concessions to European powers over the rights of Christian minorities and the sovereignty of Egypt, and riddled with radical reformist secret societies, the Ottomans were ready for collapse. When the war came, and they aligned with the Entente, it would just take a few sharp invasions to topple the whole rotten edifice, at least in theory.
In practice, it was a different matter, as the Ottoman's repelled an invasion at Gallipoli, and another in Iraq. The Bedouin revolts promised by Arabian princes were expensive and ineffective, contra the self-made myth of T.E. Lawrence (which takes a knocking in this book). British policy was far from unified, even as events tilted towards them in 1918. The Prime Minister opposed the Minister of War opposed the Government of India opposed the Cairo Bureau opposed the Foreign Office. The bureaucratic infighting involved frequent changes of position, punctuated by major position papers, including the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the secret Sykes-Picot arrangement which divided up the Middle East between Britain and France, and a host of treaties and declaration of principles.
But truth is decided by the facts on the ground, and it is here, in the key period between 1918 and 1922 that the narrative loses steam. Immediately after the armistice, Britain had a million man army spread across the Middle East. They demobilized, and a multisided conflict between European rump armies, Bolshevik missions from Russia, a new ethnic Turkish army, and the Greeks lead to major battles. When the dust finally cleared, the Middle East was much as we see it today, with the building blocks of Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and seeds of the Israel/Palestine conflict. The British were left the inheritors of a system they no longer wanted or had faith in.
In 1914, it was obvious to all that the Ottoman Empire was on the ropes. Perpetually broke, technologically backwards, with major concessions to European powers over the rights of Christian minorities and the sovereignty of Egypt, and riddled with radical reformist secret societies, the Ottomans were ready for collapse. When the war came, and they aligned with the Entente, it would just take a few sharp invasions to topple the whole rotten edifice, at least in theory.
In practice, it was a different matter, as the Ottoman's repelled an invasion at Gallipoli, and another in Iraq. The Bedouin revolts promised by Arabian princes were expensive and ineffective, contra the self-made myth of T.E. Lawrence (which takes a knocking in this book). British policy was far from unified, even as events tilted towards them in 1918. The Prime Minister opposed the Minister of War opposed the Government of India opposed the Cairo Bureau opposed the Foreign Office. The bureaucratic infighting involved frequent changes of position, punctuated by major position papers, including the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the secret Sykes-Picot arrangement which divided up the Middle East between Britain and France, and a host of treaties and declaration of principles.
But truth is decided by the facts on the ground, and it is here, in the key period between 1918 and 1922 that the narrative loses steam. Immediately after the armistice, Britain had a million man army spread across the Middle East. They demobilized, and a multisided conflict between European rump armies, Bolshevik missions from Russia, a new ethnic Turkish army, and the Greeks lead to major battles. When the dust finally cleared, the Middle East was much as we see it today, with the building blocks of Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and seeds of the Israel/Palestine conflict. The British were left the inheritors of a system they no longer wanted or had faith in.