A Peace to End All Peace summary

With the Ottoman Empire falling apart, a group called the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), also known as the Young Turks, decided it was time for a change in leadership.

The Young Turks had staged a revolution in 1908 with the goal of returning the empire to a parliamentary democracy. Sultan Abdul Hamid had banned the parliament in 1878.

As war began to seem inevitable, the Ottomans feared their power was in danger of continued and even escalated aggression from both Italy and Austria-Hungary. The logical response to this threat? Look for a European ally to help protect Ottoman territory. By the time fighting started in 1914, the Ottomans had formed a secret alliance with Germany after failing to make a pact with Britain. Germany promised to protect the Ottomans against foreign encroachment in return for the empire’s neutrality during the war.

The deal didn’t remain secret for long, however.

In August 1914, Herbert Kitchener became the British Secretary of State for War, an appointment that would greatly affect the country’s Middle East policy.

Kitchener was previously Britain’s colonial administrator in Egypt, which had been under de facto British rule since 1882. As the only cabinet minister with any experience in the Middle East, Kitchener’s opinions on the region were highly regarded.

Based on Kitchener’s misguided advice and inaccurate maps, the British attack at Gallipoli – a peninsula at the entrance to the Sea of Marmara and leading to Constantinople – was a total failure.

This wartime disaster led to the installation of a new prime minister, David Lloyd George. Once in office, he decided a fresh war strategy was needed.

T. E. Lawrence, more popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a British Army officer who acted as a liaison with Hussein’s Arab forces. Much of what we know about the revolt to create an Arab state is thanks to his writings at the time.

The plan got off to a shaky start, as Hussein’s call to arms, directed at Arabic-speaking Ottoman troops, was met with silence. In short, Arab Ottoman staff officer al-Faruqi’s promise to the British that hundreds of thousands of troops would rise up spontaneously was a lie.

As soon as the British signed a pact with Hussein, Mark Sykes, the man who suggested the agreement in the first place, turned around and started separate negotiations with French diplomat François Picot.

Picot came from a family of French colonialists. In 1915, he articulated his ideas and personal views on France’s future in the Middle East to the French government. In meeting with Sykes, Picot was able to explain France’s colonial ambitions in Palestine and Syria.

At the end of 1917, with British troops occupying most of Palestine, France realized that the British had no intention to share the territory.

Britain’s support of Zionism, however, was largely the result of Lloyd George becoming prime minister.

In the last year of the war, the British and their Arab allies advanced into Ottoman territory, and it became clear that the empire’s days were numbered.

Although Sykes still clung to the delusion that the British could keep their promises to everyone, the reality of a post-war Middle East soon revealed itself. Hussein, the puppet caliph and key player in the British conquest of Palestine, was the first to be betrayed.

With Allied forces thinly stretched throughout the region, local resistance became common. Meanwhile, on the Arabian Peninsula, the power struggle between two of Britain’s puppet leaders, Hussein and Ibn Saud, raged on.

During the war, the British had also provided Ibn Saud with funds to prop up his rule. After the war, in 1919, Saud began to encroach on territory ruled by Hussein. In a surprise attack in May, Ibn Saud decimated Hussein’s British-supported army.

Directly after British troops withdrew from Syria, Faisal managed to secure from French leaders the promise of a more informal occupation. This arrangement would essentially grant Syria its independence, with the French acting in an advisory role.

Yet in 1920, when a new French prime minister was installed in Paris, trouble began again.

By the end of 1922, the borders of the Middle East as we know them today had been drawn. Just as in the Americas and in Africa, the Middle East was divided into European-style states.

The real question was, would these countries last?