A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

A Peace to End All Peace covers the events leading up to what Fromkin calls the "Settlement of 1922," when the political boundaries and institutions that were to predominate in the Middle East for most of the next century took shape. The book details the many factors involved, such as the rise of Zionism, the exaggerated sense of importance to the war effort of both Jews and Arabs that predominated in Europe, and the personal ambitions of the many actors on the stage, from Winston Churchill to Sherif Hussein, that led to these fateful outcomes. Fromkin argues in this book that the modern Middle East was created in large part by the actions of a few European countries during the crucial years of 1914 to 1922. Although the book's account ends in 1922 and Fromkin does not even mention the current problems in the Middle East, the implication is that the establishment of arbitrary boundaries for Arab states, the creation of the state of Israel, and the aggravation of hostile sentiments that resulted from cynical political maneuvers on the part of European states to a great degree precipitated the current crises. Indeed, the book jacket declares that "Fromkin shows how the choices narrowed and the Middle East began along a road that led to the endless wars and the escalating acts of terrorism that continue to this day." The main text of A Peace to End All Peace is over 500 pages long, dealing in painstaking detail with the events that led up to the treaties that ended the First World War. It is in some senses a work of journalism, offering a sort of objective play-by-play of events without a great deal of analysis. The benefit of this approach is that the author's biases do not often come through, and the reader is left to draw his or her own conclusions regarding the causes of events. The drawback is that the reader cannot easily draw any general inferences which are necessary for understanding the topic as a whole. In addition, by concentrating so much on details to the exclusion of general trends, Fromkin does not always make it clear whether a certain event was merely the result of a series of accidents, or whether it was bound to occur in any case. Again, this is partly a result of his predilection for a character-driven narrative. The narrative is very well-written, engaging and easy to follow. It is accessible, not assuming a great deal of familiarity of the subject material (the maps at the beginning of the book are invaluable), and logically organized, following events chronologically within a larger thematic structure. Particularly helpful is the way Fromkin will parenthetically re-introduce a person that we have met earlier, rather than expecting the reader to remember the dozens of characters that weave in and out of the narrative. The characters are given depth and motivation, without erring into presumptive amateur psychoanalysis or pseudo-historical "reconstructed" dialogue. Events are related primarily from the British (and particularly Churchill's) perspective, which is somewhat puzzling given the fact that most of the important events actually occurred in the Middle East, and that the roles in these events of Russia and France were nearly as important as Britain's. The book is well-researched and copiously documented, relying on a balance of primary and secondary sources, but most of the these are British in origin and outlook. As mentioned earlier, the book also relies strongly on accounts of the actions and beliefs of certain key individuals (again, mostly British), as opposed to broader movements. As there is little analysis in the book, there is not much room for controversy. Occasionally Fromkin will mention alternative versions of events, but the variances are generally tangential to the main narrative. He is painstakingly objective for the most part (although one can sense some sympathy in his viewpoint for the objectives of Zionism). I suspect that this book will hold up well over time, in part because Fromkin focuses so closely on the individuals in the story whose experiences resonate universally, rather than adopting a broader outlook that would reveal more of the prejudices of our time. This is overall an excellent book, and certainly invaluable for understanding current events in the Middle East. Upon finishing it, one is left wishing for a broader account of the background of some of the movements and forces that are presented fully formed in Fromkin's narrative, but that is as much an endorsement as a criticism: A 500 page book that leaves one wanting more is a rarity.

Fromkin is to be commended for a compilation of historical facts in great detail and thoroughness that I can only envy. This book must have been a great burden to assemble, and the facts that Fromkin has detailed, and put into much better perspective than most of his fellow historians of the period, are very important to understand his title of "The Peace to End all Peace". Some of the best sections deal with the trade-offs of the various governments after WW I who were exhausted and in financial ruin, or who just abandoned their greater responsibilities, like the USA. The whole issue of the "Jewish Conspiracy" of the Bolshevik revolution, anti-Semitism, Zionism, is dealt with in a very open and refreshing way. But the problem with most of these books, whether it is Macmillan's "1919", or Kagan's "On the Origins of War", and other extraordinarily well researched and wonderful books is that they seem to be writing for an audience of their fellow academics and fail to understand the need for modern day historians to place history into proper perspective. I shouldn't pick on Fromkin because he is no more guilty of this than the hundreds of other authors of similar books, but after reading this wonderful book, I felt the same way I do two hours after a totally filling Chinese meal at my favorite restaurant across the street from my home. I'm hungry again. The essential conundrum that this book details is that the Balfour Declaration has set in place a situation where we have had, and probably will have, perpetual war in the Middle East. This conflict has now expanded all around the world, from the World Trade Center, Bali, Madrid, Kenya, Tanzania, etc and the dilemma for Western society is whether to abandon Israel and the Zionist dream in hopes that the Islamist fanatics will go back into their caves, or whether mankind can advance in an area which Islam has held the power for well over a millennium. Fromkin completely skates around this issue. While I am sure there is some lunchroom or annual convention somewhere where a bunch of academics who live their lives in minutia give points to the author of the book with the most extensive bibliography, they really fail the greater society in producing studies of historical value that places things such as WW I, the fall of the Ottoman Empire (or any other empire) in perspective. While they may argue that such was not the purpose of their book, in fact, much of history is an indictment of human nature to have to relive history over and over again. Historians need to get out of their shell and recognize the forest for the trees. If their works are to have any real value at all, it must be that they are written to advance mankind and not have us read such books and observe how foolish our ancestors were. We know that. What a historian needs to do to be relevant is show us the common threads of the past so that we can avoid that path in the future. The fall of the Ottoman, Hapsburg, and other empires is really no different that that of Rome, the Greeks, the Tatars and the Khans, but seldom do you read a book that shows just how much of a treadmill this is for mankind. Churchill stood alone against the Nazis while the USA slept, and Bush if fighting the same ostriches who think that the Islamist fascists are somehow different, but on one connects the dots. If you want to read a book that shows what an extraordinary scholar Fromkin is, and he is, this is a great book to read, even though it will take a long time to do so. If you want to read something that lifts you past the compilation of facts and details of the past and gives you something to think about how to shape the future so that we don't have to keep going "one step forward and two steps back", I recommend Harris' "Civilization and its Enemies" book as a much better use of your time.

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?

'A Peace to End All Peace' is history as it should be written - epic in scope, scrupulous in the use of sources, careful in analysis and effortless in prose. It is the story of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and of the birth of the Modern Middle East from its ashes. It tells of the rise of nationalism, of the clashes of armies, and of the power of ideologies. Mostly, it is the story of how the great statesmen, in ignorance and folly, with motives which professed to be pure but usually weren't, accidentally created the Middle East we know and hate today. With the outbreak of the Great War, the status quo antebellum in the Middle East was shattered. Until the war, British policy was to use the nations of the Middle East (although they didn't know it by that name) as a barrier against expansionist Czarist Russia, which, in the four hundred years leading to the war has expanded in a rate of 50 square miles a day (p. 475). The British main interest was to keep the Ottoman Empire existing. Although situation in the Empire changed a little with the rise of Nationalism, Zionism, and especially the Young Turks movement, the European policy has not quite changed. Indeed, as the war was breaking out, the Ottoman Empire was seen as a state of no importance, and the British continually underestimated it, in a sequence of errors which brought the Empire into the war on the German side, and which culminated in the Gallipoli fiasco. Yet as the war progressed, British officials started to change their view. Great confusion and indecision characterized British decision making, torn between those who saw the East as the key to victory in the war (Lloyd George), those who saw it as a distraction of no importance (Lord Kitchener), and the various bureaucracies who battled for control, power and prestige, while supporting two different and opposing factions in Arabia - King Hussein of Mecca and Wahabbi leader Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud. Increasingly, the British saw the key to the Middle East policy in an upcoming Arab Rebellion, headed by King Hussein. In reality, Hussein held little more power then any other Emir in Arabia, and whatever troops he had were bought with British gold. When his rebellion finally came, it hardly affected the outcome of the war, and whatever aid it did give came primarily because of the Gold and influence of T.E. Lawrence on Hussein's son Feisal. The reality had little effect on British policy makers, and particularly on Mark Sykes, the maverick amateur who negotiated the unworkable agreement with the French on partitioning the Middle East between the two powers. Almost before the ink dried on the Sykes-Pico agreements, however, British officials, both in Cairo and in London, started to undermine the agreement, wishing to give no real independence to the Arabs and make as few concessions as necessary to the French. Things became increasingly complicated as the British became aware of the Zionist claim to Palestine, while Czarist Russia fell and America entered the war on an idealistic but unrealistic platform of independence to the minor nations. As the war came to an end and the negotiations in Paris started, Lloyd George's government wrestled with its conflicting pledges, the situation in the Middle East which it barely understood, and the increasingly anti-Imperialist feeling at Home. The Result was a mess, as the British alienated all of her friends (the Arabs by not granting them real independence, the Turks by supporting Greek occupation of Smyrna, the French by opposing its own colonialist designs in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, and America by continuing the imperialist plan with a new Rhetoric), and had to fight uprisings throughout the Middle East with a dwindling force, due to the lack of support for the imperialist efforts at home. What David Fromkin calls the Settlement of 1922, with the Middle East in boarders more or less as they are today, with new Units such as Palestine (now Israel), Syria, Trans-Jordan and Lebanon in place, was brought more by exhaustion then by the will of the Foreign (Primarily British) statesmen who shaped it. By the end of the War, Fromkin writes "British Society was generally inclined to reject the idealistic case for imperialism (that it would extend the benefits of advanced civilization to a backward region) as quixotic, and the practical case for it (that it would benefit Britain to expend her empire) as untrue." (p. 561)... Britain's Empire, though greater than it has ever been, was no longer feasible, and the Imperialist design for the Middle East, planned in the middle of the War and imposed after it, unworkable. "British policy-makers imposed a settlement upon the Middle East in 1922 in which, for the most part, they themselves no longer believed"(p. 563, italics in the original). The most astonishing theme of the book is the utter ignorance of the decision makers, primarily in London, but also in Cairo, Mecca, Berlin and Washington. "Lloyd George, who o kept demanding that Britain should rule Palestine from (in the biblical phrase) Dan to Beersheba, did not know where Dan was. He searched for it in a nineteenth-century Biblical atlas, but it was not until nearly a year after the armistice that General Allenby was able to report to him that Dan has been located and, as it was not where the Prime Minister wanted it to be, Britain asked for a boundary further North. 'A Peace to End All Peace' gives a fascinating and disturbing portrait of WW1 decision makers. One can only hope that our leaders today are better informed.

This is a gripping account of Britain's misadventures in the Middle East from about 1908 to 1922, with a wonderful rogue's gallery of characters--ambitioius, treacherous, arrogant, and frequently clueless. Nearly every chapter chronicles furious backstabbing, squandered opportunities, catastrophic misjudgements. What the book does best is to reveal the rivalries within the British government over its objectives in the Middle East. During the Great Game period, the conflict had essentially been between Tories, who feared Russian encroachment on India, and Liberals, who, however much they despised the Czarist regime, still saw the Russians as champions of the oppressed Christian nations of the Balkans. Then in 1907 Russia abruptly became an ally--thanks to the more pressing threat posed by Germany. When World War I began, Britain had to rethink its relationship w/ its traditional (albeit odious) ally the Ottoman Empire, and then, once the Young Turks committed to Germany, with the subject peoples within the Turkish empire. The basic conflict w/in His Majesty's Govt., as Fromkin tells it, was between the Arabists of Cairo, who hoped to create a pan-Arab state under Sharif Hussein, but run largely by and for Britain, and the Govt. of India, which wanted British control only of southern Mesopotamia (Iraq) and were wary of the grandiose schemes of the Egyptian administrators, proteges of Kitchner. These latter wanted to name Hussein the new Caliph, imagining the office to be similar to that of the Pope. But there was no separation of Church and State in the Isalmic world, and for Hussein, to be Caliph was to be Emperor. Commitments to the Zionists and to the French famously conflicted with each other and with deliberately vague promises that were made to the Arabs, and Fromkin sorts these out in some detail. Among the things the book does well is to demystify the "Arab Revolt" during WW I, to exculpate Churchill for the Gallipoli fiasco, and to untangle the ambitions and animosties of all the parties negotiating the fate of the Middle East at Versailles and San Remo. (Passions were heated: the U.S. and Italy nearly went to war over Anatolia.) The moral: you generally wind up respecting your enemies but despising your allies. The duplicity of the Turks and Germans toward each other easily matched that of the ex-Allies. This book is based primarily on secondary sources and published memoirs in English. Unfortunately, the references on WW I, Zionism, and some other peripheral subjects don't inspire a lot of confidence; but there are no egregious errors. Fromkin relies heavily on Kedourie and Gilbert in the first half of the book, which is all to the good. He seems to believe Churchill is the central character. It's actually Mark Sykes in the first half, naively trusting one and all and believing all commitments could be reconciled, and the wily Lloyd George in the second half--Little-Englander-turned-Imperialist, pro-Greek, pro-Zionist, and anti-French, and rapidly running out of time and money. Fromkin has a few idee fixes that are not supported by the evidence--i.e., that the British believed that the Young Turks were being run by Jews. But generally this is a fascinating survey and a great read. Some bitter ironies.

This book explains how the Western powers divided the Middle East in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of World War One. To understand the Middle East today, to understand the attitude of Arab and other Middle Eastern nations towards America, the UK, and Israel, it is absolutely indispensible to appreciate what happened at that juncture in history and why. The platitudinous and oversimplified slogans and headlines of our mass media routinely underserve the reader of current events in the Middle East, but an in depth study of history is the antidote. The author is healing ignorance with this book, covering the relevant and required topics evenly and interestingly. Its a big task but Fromkin does it, and the result is complicated but necessarily so. The book includes much important information concerning Zionism, the political movement to settle Western Jews in Palestine and establish a Jewish ethnic homeland there, which culminated in 1947 with the founding of the Jewish state of Israel. However, if I could find only one fault with this book, and only one suggestion for improvement in an updated editing, it would be that this material should be expanded. One can understand why it might have been a light touch, considering how hotly feelings run on the topic among those who are familiar with Middle Eastern history and current events. Yet, the author's narrative economizes on space devoted to this topic to the point of omission. A fantastic book this is, but expansion of the treatment on this topic would bring definite improvement. The challenge of course is that the culmination of the Zionist project was after World War Two, but the time frame in this book precedes it. Perhaps a companion volume could be recommended to the author? Historians may recall the Gordian knot-- legend says that he who could untie it would conquer Asia. Alexander the Great cut it, and conquered Asia. To reverse the legend, it seems to me like understanding the Middle East is like understanding how a new Gordian knot was tied in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. A most difficult task, and this book accomplishes it.

Fromkin's book identifies many of the historical causes of the ongoing malaise in middle-east politics -- this makes it important background info for those trying to figure what US policy should be. And it's fun to read. The book focuses largely on British strategy toward the mid-east during and in the aftermath of WWI, ranged against competing interests on the part of France, the US, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Greece, and other countries. Fromkin identifies how the British government (and others) made a series of poor decisions, often in ignorance of the cultures and political institutions of the mid-eastern geographies they sought to carve up into European-like nation states, frequently misjudging the interests of allies or the preferences of their own voters, sometimes falling into delusional conspiracy theories about the actions of enemies, and all-too-often stumbling against the intransigence of the civilian and military bureaucracies charged with implementing unpopular decisions. In the end, "British policy-makers imposed a settlement upon the Middle East in 1922 in which, for the most part, they themselves no longer believed." The problems with the settlement reverberate today. The book is a page-turner. The arguments are carefully documented, but the narrative is nonetheless fluid and exciting. Fromkin does an excellent job capturing the pyschology of the political actors, e.g., Sykes as enthusiastic and naieve; Lloyd George as smart, over-reaching, and out of touch; TE Lawrence as an adventurer and opportunist; Churchill as clear-sighted, controversial, and indomitable. The reader feels as if he or she has gotten to know these people and how they thought.

I tried to read the full book but was only able to get through the first 250 pages. A thorough historical book, but one that seems to have been written by an academic for an academic. There is no train of history chugging through the pages and giving you a wonderful journey and experience. Too much unnecessary details; one example: In narrating someone's trip from Germany to Palestine the author mentions the day, the itinerary, means of transportation, what countries he passed through on his way... Do I really need to know all this inconsequential detail? Did he floss his teeth too? What was his shoe size? Worse, some of these details also came with footnote reference. Even more distracting and irritating. A good editor is to remove all unnecessary details. I thought the author was knowledgeable but verbose and the editor asleep on the job.

I am an enthusiastic amateur family historian and I have puzzled a while over an important (to my wife and I) family question: how come my wife's great uncle, Captain Thomas John Catchpole (1888 - 1917), of Lidgate, Suffolk, and of the 5th Battalion, the Suffolk Regiment, was killed by the Turks at Gaza? Subsidiary questions have also been in my mind: why were the Turks/Ottomans our enemies in the so-called 'Great War'?; what determined the demise of the Turkish/Ottoman Empire, under which many races, including Jews, Arabs and Turks, had lived relatively peaceably?; and how did the present-day 'Middle East' become such a problem area? I am also a member of the 'what if' school of history: this book is one of those that inspire endless speculation. If decisions had been made differently and events had taken a different course, maybe my wife's great uncle's descendants could still be living at Lidgate. For example, what if the British Cabinet had acted on Winston Churchill's urging in 1911 to make an alliance with the Turks/Ottomans? And if the 'Great War' had gone on for two years only (the German General Ludendorff believed the entry of the Turks/Ottomans into the war allowed the outnumbered Central powers to fight on for two years longer than they would have been able on their own), my wife's great uncle would not have been killed at Gaza in 1917. And if Winston Churchill's Dardanelles plans had prevailed over those of Lord Kitchener in March, 1915, Constantinople would have fallen, and my wife's great uncle would not have been killed at Gaza in 1917. As it was, it appears that numerous attempts were made to subvert, to attack, and to conquer the Turks/Ottomans, the defeat of whom could - and, maybe, should - have been accomplished in 1915, and my wife's great uncle would not have been killed at Gaza in 1917. This brilliant book - an historical thriller through and through - has provided me with much information and most of the answers and I am so grateful to David Fromkin for researching and writing it and to Amazon for selling it to me. It is quite clear to me now that the alliance between Germany and the Turks/Ottomans was at best an unintended mistake and at worst the secret design of a very few of the Turkish leaders. It could have been done very differently, with Turkey and the Ottoman Empire continuing to maintain their neutrality, to the benefit of the British and of the world. And it also appears from Fromkin's account that the successive collapses of the British, French and Russian Governments were directly attributable to the Dardanelles disaster. In the case of Russia, of course, this meant a fatal finale for the Czar and his family and the rise of Lenin and Bolshevism. There came on the scene in 1917 one Woodrow Wilson, as ignorant regarding Britain, France, Russia and the Turkish/Ottoman Empire as many Americans, but as determined, nevertheless, to do down the British as his later successor, Franklin Roosevelt. Despite having some high-flown thoughts, Mr Wilson helped little. All in all, it is once again amazing to me that two great British statesmen, Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, should have been so full of foresight and wisdom. It's all too obvious that the others, including Wilson, were political pygmies. I suppose now and with hindsight that I would probably have preferred for the Ottoman Empire to have been maintained, as Churchill often wanted, or, failing that, for the British Empire to have been vastly extended - for good! I spotted one error (on page 299, in a section on the role of Louis D. Brandeis, later the first Jewish member of the United States Supreme Court): 'Only one Jew [Oscar Strauss] had ever been a member of the president's cabinet.' Not true: Judah Philip Benjamin played prominent roles in the cabinet of President Jefferson Davis. (An extremely interesting piece of information gleaned from the book is that Baghdad and Jerusalem, before the War, were home to the largest populations of Jews in the Middle East. 'Jews in large numbers had lived in the Mesopotamian provinces since the time of the Babylonian captivity - about 600 BC - and thus were settled in the country a thousand years before the coming of the Arabs in AD 634.'). There has been some criticism that this book is too much about Great Britain and its leaders and people. To answer the criticism I quote the following (from page 385): 'The Prime Minister (Lloyd George) claimed that Britain was entitled to play the dominant role in the Middle East, recalling that at one time or another two and a half million British troops had been sent there, and that a quarter of a million had been killed or wounded; while the French, Gallipoli apart, had suffered practically no casualties in the Middle East, and the Americans had not been there at all.' Thoroughly recommended: I couldn't put it down! A personal post-script: In the Autumn of 1917, following two earlier failed attempts by General Murray in the first half of that year, General Allenby invaded (from Egypt, which was under British protection) Palestine, and my wife's great uncle, Captain Thomas John Catchpole, was killed, during the third battle of Gaza, on the 3rd of November (reportedly fatally injured by a Turk soldier and then shot by a fellow British officer, in the presence of his own younger brother, to put him out of his misery, there being no chance that he would live), and lies buried at the Deir El Belah War Cemetery. And the Middle East is still a problem.

This book was originally written some 20 years ago, with an updated afterward in 2009. Nevertheless, it still is highly relevant today. This book is not so much about the fall of the Ottoman Empire, rather it is really a comprehensive examination of British foreign policy immediately before, during and after WW1 and how it changed, from supporting the Ottoman Empire as a buffer against Russian expansion and potential threat to the jewel in the crown - India; to the promises made in the heat of battle during WW1; to the implementation of those promises in world that was fundamentally changed by the Russian Revolution, the rise of Jewish, Arab and Turkish nationalism. Fromkin has a very easy to read writing style that flows effortlessly. He is very good at capturing the key personalities of the leaders in the British government who shaped Middle Eastern policy and the rivalries within. This is a marcoeconomic look - you won't get horrific detailed accounts of the bloody battlefield (like Galipoli) and to the extent that other countries are dealt with (France, Russia, Germany, the US), its really how their policies and actions impacted Britain's analysis and decision making. Nevertheless, for anyone who wants to understand the current Middle East, this is a good place to start.

A masterpiece and incredible tour de force. Detailed but fascinating to read.

A Peace to End All Peace- The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin is a very good book dealing with a time period and events which are still relevant to this day. It is well-written, interesting and opinionated as well as being detailed, for example it deals with conflicts and issues that are not well known about such as events in Central Asia after 1918. The book also shows (admittedly with the benefit of hindsight) how a lack of understanding of differnt cultures and religions combined with departmental conflict and a widespread racial stereotyping led to a solution on the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire that pleased no-one and laid the foundation for future conflicts. However, it is not a military history and therefore I would reccomend caution to someone trying to find out in detail about the military campaigns in Arabia, Mesopotamia and Palestine in purchasing this book for that purpose. Also as a work it does deal with a large expanse of territory and a large number of people which can at times make it a little confusing. It is also a book that deals at times with rather dry and sometimes quite technical subjects and arguments and therefore may not be to everyone's tastes. Overall though it is a good book dealing with the results of a campaign which is rather marginalised in any discussion on the First World War but actually has a great relevance to the state of the modern world and the almost perpetual conflicts, disagreements and controversies in the Middle East.

Well narrated and highly readable and informative despite the distraction caused by describing the minutiae of every note, treaty and communication. History and events describe perfectly Descartes' quote:" Plus ca change plus ca le meme chose."