The Great War & the Middle East

The story of the First World War in the Middle East - and how it swept away five hundred years of Ottoman rule to lay the foundations for the troubled Middle East that we know today.

The First World War in the Middle East swept away five hundred years of Ottoman domination. It ushered in new ideologies and radicalised old ones - from Arab nationalism and revolutionary socialism to impassioned forms of atavistic Islamism. It created heroic icons, like the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia or the modernizing Atatürk, and destroyed others. And it completely re-drew the map of the region, forging a host of new nation states, including Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia - all of them (with the exception of Turkey) under the 'protection' of the victor powers, Britain and France. For many, the self-serving intervention of these powers in the region between 1914 and 1919 is the major reason for the conflicts that have raged there on and off ever since.

Yet many of the most commonly accepted assertions about the First World War in the Middle East are more often stated than they are truly tested. Rob Johnson, military historian and former soldier, now seeks to put this right by examining in detail the strategic and operational course of the war in the Middle East. Johnson argues that, far from being a sideshow to the war in Europe, the Middle Eastern conflict was in fact the centre of gravity in a war for imperial domination and prestige. Moreover, contrary to another persistent myth of the First World War in the Middle East, local leaders and their forces were not simply the puppets of the Great Powers in any straightforward sense. The way in which these local forces embraced, resisted, succumbed to, disrupted, or on occasion overturned the plans of the imperialist powers for their own interests in fact played an important role in shaping the immediate aftermath of the conflict - and in laying the foundations for the troubled Middle East that we know today.

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

1: Introduction: The Young Turks: War, Empire and the Nationalist Challenge, 1908-1914
2: The Gulf, Suez and Mesopotamia 1914-1915
3: Operations in Gallipoli and Palestine 1915-1916
4: The Afghanistan Mission and unrest in Persia, 1915-1916
5: The Caucasus, Armenia and the Kurds, 1915-1916
6: The Arab Revolt, 1916-1917
7: The Turkish Crisis in Palestine, 1917-18
8: The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1917-1918
9: The Defeat of Turkey, 1918
10: The Caucasus: Baku and the Centro-Caspian Dictatorship, 1917-1919
11: Rebellion in Egypt and Iraq 1919-1920
12: Amritsar, The Third Anglo-Afghan War and the Khalifat Movement, 1919-21
13: Enver Paçha, Amir Amanullah and the Basmachi Revolt, 1920-22
14: East Africa in the Great War and Somalia, 1914-1921
15: The Greco-Turkish War, 1919-22
16: Conclusion: The Greater War in the Middle East
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Rezension:

A very readable 'single volume' for any military history buff to gain an excellent overall picture of what most definitely was not a 'minor sideshow' to the Western Front. Neville Taylor, RUSI-Vic Library