THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Abstract

The First World War in the Middle East swept away five hundred years of Ottoman dominion. It ushered in new ideologies and radicalized old ones – from Arab nationalism and revolutionary socialism to impassioned forms of atavistic Islamism. It created heroic icons, like the enigmatic Lawrence or the modernizing Atatürk, and it completely re-drew the map of the region, forging a host of new nation states, 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 common assertions about the First World War in the Middle East and its aftermath are devoid of context. This article argues that, far from being a mere sideshow to the war in Europe, the Middle Eastern conflict was in fact the centre of gravity in a war for imperial interests. 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. 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.

Keywords:

• Ottoman
• Iraq
• Turkey
• Mesopotamia
• Persia
• Gallipoli
• Suez
• Sykes-Picot

ORCID

Rob Johnson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8969-0033

Notes

1. Hansard, 5^th series, vol. C., col. 2211 [1917].

2. Max von Oppenheim would later author Denkschrift betreffend die Revolutionierung der islamischen Gebiete unserer Feinde (Memorandum on Revolutionizing the Islamic Territories of Our Enemies). See The War: German attempts to fan Islamic feeling, L/PS/11/99 P 4180/1915 India Office Records, British Library, and V.R. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914. London: Macmillan, 1973, p. 143.

3. Committee of Imperial Defence: Asiatic Turkey, Report of a Committee, 30 June 1915, CAB 42/3/12. The National Archives, Kew.

4. David Fieldhouse, Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 49.

5. For a contemporary view see: James Campbell Ker, Political Trouble in India, 1907-1917. 1917, reprinted, Calcutta, 1973.

6. Ziya Golkap, The Principles of Turkism. Ankara, 1920; trans. Robert Devereux, Leiden, 1968, pp. 12–15.

7. Djemal Pasha, Memories of a Turkish Statesman, 1913-1919. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1922, p. 154.

8. Still the best account by far is William Edward David Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars of the Turko-Caucasian Border, 1828-1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953; 2010 edn.

9. The party was led by Sir Richard Pierse.

10. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. III, 1914-1916. London: Heinemann, 1971, p. 222.

11. Robert Johnson, Spying for Empire. London: Greenhill, 2006.

12. C.F. Aspinall-Oglander, Military Operations: Gallipoli, I. London: William Heinemann, 1929, pp. 51–53; Lord M. Hankey, The Supreme Command, 1914-1918, I. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961, pp. 260–262.

13. Aspinall-Oglander, Military Operations: Gallipoli, I (1929), pp. 101–110.

14. The Final report of the Dardanelles Commission, Part II: Conduct of Operations, Cmd 371 (1919).

15. See Paul Guinn, British Strategy and Politics, 1914 to 1918. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.

16. Mesopotamia Commission Report, cd 8610 (1917), pp. 12–15; Brigadier General F.J. Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, I. London: Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, 1923. See also Charles Townshend, When God Made Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921. London: Faber and Faber, 2010.

17. Moberly, Campaign in Mesopotamia, III, pp. 79, 86–90.

18. Archibald Wavell, Allenby: A Study in Greatness. London: 1940, p. 186; John Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader. London: Allen Lane, 2002, p. 150.

19. Cyril Falls and A.F. Becke, Military Operations, Egypt and Palestine, II. London: HMSO, 1930, p. 27.

20. Robertson to Allenby, 1 August 1917, 8/1/67, Robertson Papers, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, London.

21. Serezli Ismail, Diary, January 1918, IWM, translated courtesy of Leo Gough.

22. Rob Johnson, The Great War and the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.