The modern Middle East is a region troubled by war, terrorism, weak and failed states, and civil unrest. But how did it get this way? The map of today’s Middle East was mostly drawn after the First World War, and the war that planted many of the seeds of conflict that still plague Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Syria and even Iran today.
When the First World War began in 1914, the map of the Middle East looked much different than it does today. Most of the region was part of the Ottoman Empire, and had been for centuries. Britain controlled Egypt and some strategic points in the Gulf, and a weak Persian state was informally under the influence of Britain in the south and the Russian Empire in the north.
After the war ended in 1918, the Ottoman Empire disappeared and a host of new states replaced it – states whose borders were decided in far-off capitals, and whose people were caught up in the chaos and uncertainty of an unstable new order influenced by ideas like nationalism, self-determination, and Zionism. For some, the new order held out hope for a better future, for others, only fear. Even before 1914, the Middle East was a vital strategic region.
Germany built the Berlin to Baghdad railway to extend its influence, Russia wanted Constantinople and saw itself as protector of the Ottoman Empire’s Orthodox Christians, France felt the same way about Middle Eastern Catholics, and Britain was concerned about the safety of the Suez Canal route to British India. Ottoman fear of the Russians, British and French is part of the reason the Empire joined Germany and the Central Powers when the First World War began. For the next four years, fighting raged in Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Sinai, Palestine alongside widespread famine and the Armenian genocide.
As the war dragged on, both the Central Powers and the Allies tried to undermine each other’s empires – the Germans and Ottomans appealed to Muslims under French, British and Russian rule, while the Allies appealed to minority Christians and Arab nationalists living under the Ottomans. The Great Powers also struck secret deals with each other to divide the spoils of war in case they won. All these deals had one thing in mind: winning the war as soon as possible and benefitting from that victory.
The contradictions and conflicts of wartime agreements could be sorted out later, or so they thought. One of these wartime deals was between the British Empire and the powerful Hashemite family of the Hejaz region, part of today’s Saudi Arabia but then part of the Ottoman Empire. The Hashemites were led by the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, who agreed to lead Arab tribes loyal to him in a revolt against the Ottomans.
In exchange, the British promised that the Hashemites would rule a future independent Arab kingdom – but the deal was vague about borders. Hussein hoped that if the British won, his family could lay claim to new territories and power – and the way to legitimize this quest was through Arab nationalism. The Hashemites claimed they represented the desire of Ottoman Arabs for freedom and their own national state, ideas that some Arab intellectuals and nationalist societies had indeed been calling for – though not necessarily under the Hashemites.
This worked for the British, who positioned themselves as liberators: “Many noble Arabs have perished in the cause of Arab freedom, at the hands of those alien rulers, the Turks, who oppressed them. […] these noble Arabs shall not have suffered in vain. ” (Provence 65) So from 1916 to 1918, the Hashemites led the Arab revolt against the Ottomans with British assistance via T.
E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. There is some debate about the military effectiveness of the uprising, but politically, it set high expectations for the peace – expectations that would be disappointed.
The British knew their deal with Hussein violated a 1914 agreement with the French and Russians, which stated any post-war land settlements would involve all the Allies. They also knew the French had their own interests in the Middle East and might not be too keen on Arab independence. In late 1915, French diplomat François-Georges Picot made France’s case clear: “France would never consent to offer independence to the Arabs, though at the beginning of the war she might have done so.
It was unthinkable that the French people would acquiesce in the placing of Christians of the Lebanon under a Mohammedan ruler. ” (Karsh and Karsh 223) So Picot met with British diplomat Mark Sykes, which resulted in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916. Once the Ottomans were beaten, each Ally would get its own sphere of direct and indirect influence in the Arab provinces and part of Anatolia – the French in the north and west, and the British in the southwest and south.
Palestine was to be administered internationally, and earlier agreements gave other areas to Russia and Italy. Any future Arab kingdom would be under French and British influence. But there were doubters, like British Brigadier-General George Macdonough: “It seems to me that we are rather in the position of the hunters who divided up the skin of the bear before they had killed it.
[…] I therefore think that any discussion at the present time of how we are going to cut up the Turkish Empire is chiefly of academic interest. ” (Karsh and Karsh 225) So the British had promised the Hashemites an Arab kingdom, and the British and French had then divided up the same region between themselves. Palestine was the exception – there, the British made another controversial deal to help their war effort.
The Zionist movement had existed since the 19th century, and promoted the idea of a Jewish state. Zionist thinkers like Theodor Herzl considered several possible locations, but most settled on Palestine, which was the ancient homeland of the Jews and still home to a Jewish minority. Even before the war, Zionist Jews had been moving to Palestine, which created tensions with the Arab majority: “[We are] a nation threatened with disappearance by the Zionist tide in this Palestinian land… a nation which is threatened in its very being with expulsion from its homeland.
” (Khalidi 26/27) In 1917, the Allies were still struggling to win the war, and Russia dropped out after the Revolution. At the same time, some in the British government, like David Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour were sympathetic to the Zionist idea, an idea lobbied for by prominent British Zionists like Chaim Weizmann. London hoped that by supporting Zionism, the Jewish diaspora around the world might rally to the British cause.
Some British politicians like Lord Curzon and Edwin Montagu (who was Jewish but anti-Zionist) opposed the idea, but in November 1917, Balfour sent a telegram to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. ” (Mahler 77) This was a dramatic commitment, but a vague one, since it was not clear whether “national home” meant “state” and what the situation of the non-Jewish majority would be in practice. So in order to win the war the British had made a deal with the Hashemites for Arab independence, the British and French made a deal to divide most of the Middle East, and the British promised to support Zionism.
As if this wasn’t complicated enough, in 1917 the United States joined the war and the tangle of contradictions began to unravel. In January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson unveiled his 14 Points for peace. Wilson’s points included the concept of self-determination – that each people who identified as a nation ought to determine their own future.
This seemed simple in principle, but it did not match with the reality of mixed populations and mixed identities on the ground. There were Arab nationalists, but most Middle Easterners were still not familiar with the relatively new concept of national identity. They usually identified more with their religion, tribe, extended family or home region.
Yes, some tribes joined the Hashemite revolt, but most did not question Ottoman rule and remained loyal to the existing system whether or not they were enthusiastic about it. Those who did feel a drive for national self-determination, be they Arabs, Zionists, Kurds or others, now felt there would be a state for them after the war – high expectations that would be very hard to meet. After successful British offensives in Palestine and Mesopotamia, the war finally ended with an Allied victory in November 1918, and a strange interlude began.
The armistice had stopped the fighting, but it would take time to sort out the post-war order. British and French troops occupied the Ottoman Arab provinces and parts of Anatolia, the Americans brought humanitarian aid to feed the starving, and the politicians discussed the fate of Europe and the Middle East at the Paris Peace Conference. Delegations of nationalists made the trip to Paris to argue their case, though most would return without any concrete promises.
Lebanese Christian Patriarch Elias Hoayek was an exception when he lobbied the French government to take a clear role in Lebanon: “All my efforts will be aimed at obtaining, in accordance with the Lebanese national will, the complete independence of my country with the help of France. ” (Daily Le Temps) The resulting peace treaty signed at Versailles in June 1919 not only formally ended the war between the Allies and Germany, it also created the League of Nations, an international organization to maintain peace. The League would play a key role in the fate of the Middle East, especially since the British, French, and Americans now began to argue over how to implement the wartime agreements.
The British felt that since they’d done most of the fighting against the Ottomans, they deserved a bigger share of the spoils. The Americans opposed the secret wartime diplomacy and insisted that the League should oversee the gradual independence of Middle Eastern peoples via so-called Mandates. This meant that a “developed” state would be responsible for “advice” and “assistance” until the new states could function on their own – in theory.
In practice, it wasn’t quite clear the mandate would work in practice, including to the Hashemite would-be rulers of a new Arab kingdom: “What does the word mandate mean? We do not exactly know. I only wish to say that the nations in whose name I speak intend to remain free to choose the Power whose advice they will ask.
Their right to decide their fate in the future has been recognized in principle. Very well! But […] a secret agreement to dispose of these nations has been prepared, about which we have not been consulted.
I ask the Assembly whether this state of things ought to exist or not. ” (Provence 69/70) While the heated discussions were going on, the US Congress changed its mind, and even though the League was President Wilson’s idea, the US refused to sign the peace treaty or join the League when it officially came into being in January 1920. For the British and French, this was an opportunity.
At the San Remo conference in spring 1920, they formalized the military reality on the ground. France became the Mandatory power for Syria and Lebanon, while Britain did the same for Mesopotamia, Transjordan, and Palestine. This allowed them to indirectly rule while not officially taking them on as imperial possessions.
In the words of historian Michael Provence: “The populations of the mandated territories thus assumed all the responsibilities and none of the benefits of national sovereignty. ” (Provence 69) One question the conference did not resolve were the borders – they would have to wait until a peace treaty could be signed with the Ottomans, who still ruled in name only. The League did say France and Britain had to consider the wishes of the population, but British and French administrators mostly ignored local petitions.
The American King-Crane Commission’s survey received conflicting results: some people wanted democracy, some wanted a Greater Syria including Lebanon and Palestine, some wanted British oversight, some French, and some American, and some wanted a Hashemite King. A majority did not want the Mandates at all, and 99% were opposed to Zionist settlement in Palestine. After all the wartime deprivations and sufferings, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and lack of a stable new order, it is not surprising that there was widespread violence in the Middle East after the Great War ended.
Egypt rose in a failed revolution against British rule in 1919, and there were clashes between religious and ethnic groups in Lebanon. There was a major war in Anatolia between the Turkish nationalist forces under Mustafa Kemal and Allied, mostly Greek, troops – which resulted in the creation of the Turkish Republic and the formal dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. In Persia, the British wanted to counter Bolshevik Russian influence and secure access to oil, so they supported a coup by future Shah Reza Pahlavi, who took control of the country in 1921.
But the violence that was the most intractable and arguably impacted the troubled future of the region most of all occurred in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. In Palestine, the British Mandate incorporated the Balfour Declaration, and British authorities encouraged Jewish settlement – some 35,000 Jewish settlers arrived between 1919 and 1923, hoping for a better life. International Jewish organizations often helped settlers buy land, some of which (but not all) was previously infertile.
Some also declared their desire not just for a Jewish homeland, but a Jewish state, which stoked tensions with Palestinian Arabs – as did the British administration working closely with Zionist groups. Some British officials and Jews wanted to curb settlement, but when enthusiastic Zionist supporter Herbert Samuel became British High Commissioner in Palestine, British support for settlement became more explicit. The British and some Zionists argued that settlement would benefit Arabs through economic improvements, but most Arabs saw things differently.
Writer Musa Kazim al-Husseini complained to Colonial Minister Winston Churchill in August 1921: “[Jewish Settlers] depreciate the value of land and property and at the same time manipulate a financial crisis [. . .
]. Can Europe then expect the Arabs to live and work with such a neighbour? ” (Cohen in Cohen 162) In response Churchill reiterated his support for Jewish settlement.
Things turned deadly with Arabs rioting in Jerusalem and an organized firefight at Tel Hai in 1920 claiming the lives of a handful on both sides. Tensions fully b oiled over in May 1921 in the town of Jaffa. A fight between rival Jewish socialist groups near a mosque spun out of control and leading to deadly rioting between Jews and Arabs.
Arabs killed 47 Jews, and the next day, Jewish groups and British police retaliated, killing 48 Arabs. A British commission mostly blamed the Arabs, but admitted their grievances stemmed from the “political and economic consequences” of settlement and “perceived pro-Jewish bias” of the British. Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky felt the time had come to build a metaphorical wall around the settlers: “Zionist colonization […] can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.
"ge (Jabotinsky) French rule in Syria and Lebanon got off to a violent start as well. Hussein’s son Faisal had led Arab forces into Syria in 1918 and announced his claim to the throne of a Syrian Kingdom. But the French would not give up control, so French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and Faisal agreed that Syria would become a de facto state under the French Mandate.
Faisal’s Arab nationalist allies of the Syrian National Congress, however, wanted full independence and control over Lebanon and Palestine. A nationalist society informed Feisal of their position: “We are ready to declare war on both England and France. ” (Fromkin 437) Faisal’s priority was becoming king, so he reluctantly agreed to cancel the deal with the French and was crowned King of Syria on March 7, 1920.
France threatened to inv ade, so Faisal now accepted their terms, but his answer arrived late so a French army invaded Syria anyway from its base in Lebanon, and defeated the ragtag Arab army at the Battle of Maysalun in July. Feisal fled to Mesopotamia, but Maysalun became a symbol for Arab nationalism and resistance to European imperialism as Ali Allawi has written: “It was a military disaster, but its name has gone down in Arab history as a synonym for heroism and hopeless courage against huge odds, as well for treachery and betrayal. ” (Allawi 291) Feisal’s position between the French and the nationalists, and his own family’s ambitions, have caused lots of historical debate about whether he was a power-hungry opportunist, a sincere pan-Arab nationalist, or both.
In Mesopotamia, the British were struggling – their military was stretched thin across the region, bureaucrats fought departmental turf wars, and politicians argued about how much independence Mesopotamia would have – and whether it would be one, two, or even three states. One thing soon became clear: the population was divided. Some of the urban elite were not against British control, while the ex-Ottoman officer’s association and much of the tribal countryside was.
In June 1920, a local Arab politician warned British administrator Gertrude Bell: “You said in your declaration that you would set up a native government drawing its authority from the initiative and free choice of the people concerned, yet you proceed to draw up a scheme without consulting anyone. ” (Fromkin 451) That same month, the Iraqi Revolt, also known as the Iraqi Revolution, began. From a local tribe resisting British troops imprisoning one of their own, the unrest spread across the Middle Euphrates region.
Tribal forces besieged several British garrisons, captured Najaf and Karbala, and defeated multiple British relief columns. It took the British until November, and 450 dead, to put down the revolt, and the settlement included a vague promise of an independent Arab kingdom that had yet to be defined. The fighting though caused some in Britain to question the Mandate: “How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavour to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want?
” (Fromkin 452) The British defeated the Iraqi tribes, but they didn’t understand them. Bureaucrats wrote reports that blamed the revolt on a conspiracy between Turkey and Faisal, a conspiracy between the Germans and the Turks, and possibly the Bolsheviks too, the machinations of the American Standard Oil company, Pan-Islam, or the Jews. (Fromkin 453).
Tribal leader Sayyid Muhsin Abu Tabikh, was more pragmatic: “The British hastened [the revolt’s] timing by their ignorance about the proud personality of the Iraqi and the numerous political mistakes that they committed across the country. ” (Khadim 71) There is a historical debate about the Iraqi revolt or revolution as well. Some see it as a rebellion of different groups who were upset at British rule because it was foreign and heavy-handed.
Others emphasize the role of former Ottoman officers who supported Faisal as future king. Still others consider it a national revolution that laid the foundation for a modern Iraqi identity and eventual independence. The shape of the modern Middle East became more clear by 1921, even though formal peace only came in 1923.
At the Cairo Conference, the Powe rs agreed that Faisal would rule over the Kingdom of Iraq, his brother Abdullah would become King of Transjordan, and that Britain would continue to support the Zionist project in Palestine. Though Britain would still have significant influence, the new Kingdoms enjoyed more autonomy than the British had intended thanks to the Iraqi revolt - independence though, would have to wait. The French soon divided Syria and Lebanon into five separate states, which they would rule for years to come.
They also decided to create Greater Lebanon by attaching several Muslim districts mostly Christian Mount Lebanon, creating an unfamiliar and volatile mix. And so the First World War had swept away the centuries of Ottoman rule and created a new Middle East. It was a region of fragile new states, supposedly on their way to independence thanks to the League of Nations but in fact under British and French imperial control.
There was violence between religious and ethnic communities, and there was violence against foreign domination. And in Palestine, there was the uncertainty of the Zionist project: would it result in the creation of a Jewish state, or would it result in perpetual tensions in Palestine – or perhaps both? The roots of the Middle East conflict were planted after the First World War but it really escalated during the Cold War where the super powers got involved and several wars were fought in the region.
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I am Jesse Alexander and this is a production of Real Time History, the only history channel that knows: It all goes back to the First World War.
