This is a fascinating book. It's probably fairly common knowledge that the modern national boundaries of the Middle East were imposed by the Allies after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI, but for me (and I'm guessing most people), this was a pretty vague knowledge. This book gives a very thorough account of what that means, how it came about, and its implications, starting from how the Ottoman Empire entered the war and continuing through the Settlement of 1922. The lessons of the book are still highly relevant today (depressingly so, in fact), and indeed, the author provides an afterward to the 2009 edition (the book was originally published in 1989) that draws a clear line from the events 100 years ago to more recent infamous events.
Despite covering such a complex subject so thoroughly, this is a very readable book. Fromkin organizes the book well, concentrating on particular spheres of action methodically in succession, but I think what really drives its readability is how he focuses the action around a succession of the interesting and influential characters -- people such as Churchill, Kitchener, Lawrence, Lloyd George, and Mark Sykes. The book thereby becomes more than an extensive litany of events and facts, it becomes a succession of characters studies and personal stories, just enough to draw in the reader, but not so much as to overshadow the events and facts. That said, the book is very long, and the device loses steam as Fromkin runs out of new characters to introduce, but I hardly think anyone could pull the subject into readable form any better while retaining all the density and comprehensiveness required by the subject.
Throughout, one gets a good sense for the fundamentally condescending and sometimes just plain mistaken attitudes and policies of the Western powers towards the Middle East. International diplomacy is frighteningly error prone for something so impactful, and the best laid plans go awry as a matter of course. At the end, the situation dissolves into a mess of ruined political careers, face-saving, and not-so-graceful exits as the Allies realize the economic limits of military power and face the realities of trying to hold the prizes they had claimed.
The final chapter ties it up well, providing summary and perspective. The Allies tried to impose European-style, nationalistic, secular statism where loyalties were more sectarian and local. Fundamentally, it did not fit, not to mention the bungled execution as they imposed rulers more to appease their political alliances than to serve the local people. Moreover, they did so in the last throes of the imperialistic impulse which they had been used to, but then they could not follow through on the impulse as the imperial eras were on the wane for many powers. In other words, they completely disrupted the region but had no capability to hold it together afterwards. Does any of this sound familiar?
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Reviews with images
print job, impossible to read.
I really wanted to read this book. However the printing was defective, line down the middle of most pages on right side where printing left a blank white line.
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Top reviews from other countries
Le Mic
Marvellous Book about the Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2021Vikas
Good presentation of a complex part of history
Reviewed in India on July 31, 2020