The Defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I: The History of the Allied Victories that Led to the Collapse of the Turkish Empire
ISBN: 9781979311533
*Includes pictures
*Includes accounts of the fighting
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
Most books and documentaries about the First World War focus on the carnage of the Western Front, where Germany faced off against France, the British Empire, and their allies in a grueling slugfest that wasted millions of lives. The shattered landscape of the trenches has become symbolic of the war as a whole, and it is this experience that everyone associates with World War I, but that front was not the only experience. There was the more mobile Eastern Front, as well as mountain warfare in the Alps and scattered fighting in Africa and the Far East.
Then there was the Middle Eastern Front, fought across the Levant and Mesopotamia, which captured the imagination of the European public. There, the British and their allies fought the Ottoman Turkish Empire under harsh desert conditions hundreds of miles from home, struggling for possession of places most people only knew from the Bible and the Koran.
The Arab revolt has been engraved in modern memories by movies such as Lawrence of Arabia as a widespread nationalistic movement against the cruel Ottoman occupier. The reality is far more complex. In 1914, as the Ottomans entered the war, the Arabs’ loyalty to the Sultan and Caliph was not in question. Arab nationalism did indeed emerge in the wake of the revolution of 1908, but it mostly attracted Arab intellectuals as the local population remained loyal subjects of the Empire. European encroachment on several former Ottoman provinces such as Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt made the danger of a possible Arab revolt relatively clear.
*Includes accounts of the fighting
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
Most books and documentaries about the First World War focus on the carnage of the Western Front, where Germany faced off against France, the British Empire, and their allies in a grueling slugfest that wasted millions of lives. The shattered landscape of the trenches has become symbolic of the war as a whole, and it is this experience that everyone associates with World War I, but that front was not the only experience. There was the more mobile Eastern Front, as well as mountain warfare in the Alps and scattered fighting in Africa and the Far East.
Then there was the Middle Eastern Front, fought across the Levant and Mesopotamia, which captured the imagination of the European public. There, the British and their allies fought the Ottoman Turkish Empire under harsh desert conditions hundreds of miles from home, struggling for possession of places most people only knew from the Bible and the Koran.
The Arab revolt has been engraved in modern memories by movies such as Lawrence of Arabia as a widespread nationalistic movement against the cruel Ottoman occupier. The reality is far more complex. In 1914, as the Ottomans entered the war, the Arabs’ loyalty to the Sultan and Caliph was not in question. Arab nationalism did indeed emerge in the wake of the revolution of 1908, but it mostly attracted Arab intellectuals as the local population remained loyal subjects of the Empire. European encroachment on several former Ottoman provinces such as Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt made the danger of a possible Arab revolt relatively clear.