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The Sunday Times (London)
February 15, 2015 Sunday
Fighting over the bones: Every country wanted to feast on the failing
Ottoman Empire, and we're still dealing with the mess today
by Max Hastings
THE FALL OF THE OTTOMANS The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920
by EUGENE ROGAN Allen Lane £25/ebook £19.99 pp485
It is an impossible task, either to identify a nation's rightful
frontiers, or to arbitrate beyond controversy where virtue lies in
international disputes. The Ottoman Empire, the 19th century's Sick
Man, was a focus of greed for all the European powers, licking their
lips for a share of its carcass. The Germans and Russians wanted
control of the Dardanelles, and in the wars of the 1870s Russia helped
itself to the Caucasus and gained sway in several of the newly
independent Balkan states.
The British took Cyprus, controlled Egypt and developed a keen
appetite for Iraqi oil. France grabbed Morocco, and coveted Syria and
Lebanon. Italy gobbled Libya. But was the moral claim of the Ottomans
to rule any of these societies, not to mention Arabia, any stronger
than that of the British to hold India? Few in those days believed in
the rights of relatively "primitive" peoples to self-determination:
the Americans had only just finished exterminating their own
indigenous population. The Ottomans were scarcely enlightened despots.
They drove many ethnic Greeks out of Turkey.
One of the final deeds of the Empire was the 1915-16 Armenian
genocide, vividly described in this book, and probably responsible for
1m deaths. This was the first occasion in modern history when the word
"cleansing" was used, to describe the systematic slaughter of an
unwanted minority, in this case Christians.
To say all this is not to offer a verdict, but merely to reflect on
what a muddle history is, with the Ottoman Empire a bigger muddle than
most. Eugene Rogan is an Oxford history lecturer and author of an
exemplary work called The Arabs, who now addresses the events of the
First World War in the Middle East, after the Young Turks who had
seized control in Constantinople in 1908 threw in their lot with the
Central Powers, entering the conflict in November 1914.
In August, Winston Churchill, first lord of the admiralty, had
summarily requisitioned in their British shipyards two new
dreadnoughts, bought by Turkish public subscription. It remains a moot
point whether this was a necessary act, or a blunder which did much to
drive the Turks into Berlin's arms. Probably fear of Russia and hopes
of using German support to regain their Balkan provinces would have
caused them to fight anyway.
Rogan is an excellent historian, who does a fine job of recounting the
littleknown Russo-Turkish campaign in the Caucasus. The British
operation in Mesopotamia - modern Iraq - was a masterpiece of folly.
Having effortlessly seized the oil port of Basra at the outset, they
should have sat on their winnings.
Instead, they launched the fatally hubristic 1915 drive for Baghdad,
which ended in humiliation when the British garrison of Kut was
obliged to surrender after a siege of 145 days. Lord Kitchener,
secretary of state for war, made a memorable contribution to the Kut
story: assuming that all Turks were infinitely corruptible, he
suggested that, rather than try to fight its way into Kut, the relief
force should offer the local enemy commander an enormous bribe to
retreat. Instead, the British commander, Major General Sir Charles
Townshend, was forced to capitulate. Shamefully, British officer
prisoners, headed by the general himself, accepted comfortable terms
of confinement, while their 13,000 men suffered unspeakable
privations, and many died. Not until 1917-18 was a British army strong
enough to venture a snail's pace advance on Baghdad. Further west,
having repulsed a shambling Turkish advance on the Suez Canal, British
forces launched a drive across Sinai which was also mightily bungled,
and achieved success only when Field Marshal Allenby entered Jerusalem
on Christmas Day 1917.
Rogan's account of the Gallipoli saga is unexceptionable, but,
inevitably, there is little fresh to be said. Lord Curzon, a member of
the War Cabinet, wrote of Britain's 1914-16 operations against the
Turks: "A more shocking exposure of official blundering and
incompetence official blunder-has not in my opinion been made, at any
rate since the Crimean War."
Part of the trouble thereafter was that Britain, having entered the
war in principled support of Belgium, became ever more greedy to
reclaim some of the appalling cost in lives and treasure by acquiring
useful booty from the enemy. Iraq's oil was the most conspicuous
prize, but duplicitous promises were also made for Bedouin services in
the Arab Revolt.
In 1917 the British began to use poison gas against the Turks in
Palestine in 1917. The other side behaved equally badly. Berlin had
been striving to promote a Muslim jihad against the British even
before war came, and the Turks hanged Arab nationalists by the score.
Prisoners of the Ottomans suffered terribly.
Allenby finished his war by capturing Damascus, and only the
Bolsheviks' triumph spared Turkey from Russian predation. At the
Versailles conference, the Ottoman Empire was broken up. The Arabs
lost their Turkish masters, only to substitute British and French
ones. The surge of Jewish immigration to Palestine that followed the
1917 Balfour Declaration provoked rioting in Jerusalem in 1920-21.
Rogan has written an impressively sound and fair-minded account of the
fall of the Ottoman Empire, rather than a ground-breaking one. A
reader is left struggling to decide which nation or faction comes
worst out of the story.
The author concludes by noting that Islamic State tweeted in 2014 that
it was committed to "smashing Sykes-Picot", the notorious 1916
Franco-British treaty that determined the shape of the region. "One
century on," writes Rogan, "the borders of the Middle East remain
controversial - and volatile." Who can say how, in our lifetimes, they
may change? And who dares to decree how they ought? ? Available at the
Bookshop price of £20 (inc p&p) and £19.99 (ebook) on 0845 271 2135
The British campaign in Mesopotamia was a masterpiece of folly
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
February 15, 2015 Sunday
Fighting over the bones: Every country wanted to feast on the failing
Ottoman Empire, and we're still dealing with the mess today
by Max Hastings
THE FALL OF THE OTTOMANS The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920
by EUGENE ROGAN Allen Lane £25/ebook £19.99 pp485
It is an impossible task, either to identify a nation's rightful
frontiers, or to arbitrate beyond controversy where virtue lies in
international disputes. The Ottoman Empire, the 19th century's Sick
Man, was a focus of greed for all the European powers, licking their
lips for a share of its carcass. The Germans and Russians wanted
control of the Dardanelles, and in the wars of the 1870s Russia helped
itself to the Caucasus and gained sway in several of the newly
independent Balkan states.
The British took Cyprus, controlled Egypt and developed a keen
appetite for Iraqi oil. France grabbed Morocco, and coveted Syria and
Lebanon. Italy gobbled Libya. But was the moral claim of the Ottomans
to rule any of these societies, not to mention Arabia, any stronger
than that of the British to hold India? Few in those days believed in
the rights of relatively "primitive" peoples to self-determination:
the Americans had only just finished exterminating their own
indigenous population. The Ottomans were scarcely enlightened despots.
They drove many ethnic Greeks out of Turkey.
One of the final deeds of the Empire was the 1915-16 Armenian
genocide, vividly described in this book, and probably responsible for
1m deaths. This was the first occasion in modern history when the word
"cleansing" was used, to describe the systematic slaughter of an
unwanted minority, in this case Christians.
To say all this is not to offer a verdict, but merely to reflect on
what a muddle history is, with the Ottoman Empire a bigger muddle than
most. Eugene Rogan is an Oxford history lecturer and author of an
exemplary work called The Arabs, who now addresses the events of the
First World War in the Middle East, after the Young Turks who had
seized control in Constantinople in 1908 threw in their lot with the
Central Powers, entering the conflict in November 1914.
In August, Winston Churchill, first lord of the admiralty, had
summarily requisitioned in their British shipyards two new
dreadnoughts, bought by Turkish public subscription. It remains a moot
point whether this was a necessary act, or a blunder which did much to
drive the Turks into Berlin's arms. Probably fear of Russia and hopes
of using German support to regain their Balkan provinces would have
caused them to fight anyway.
Rogan is an excellent historian, who does a fine job of recounting the
littleknown Russo-Turkish campaign in the Caucasus. The British
operation in Mesopotamia - modern Iraq - was a masterpiece of folly.
Having effortlessly seized the oil port of Basra at the outset, they
should have sat on their winnings.
Instead, they launched the fatally hubristic 1915 drive for Baghdad,
which ended in humiliation when the British garrison of Kut was
obliged to surrender after a siege of 145 days. Lord Kitchener,
secretary of state for war, made a memorable contribution to the Kut
story: assuming that all Turks were infinitely corruptible, he
suggested that, rather than try to fight its way into Kut, the relief
force should offer the local enemy commander an enormous bribe to
retreat. Instead, the British commander, Major General Sir Charles
Townshend, was forced to capitulate. Shamefully, British officer
prisoners, headed by the general himself, accepted comfortable terms
of confinement, while their 13,000 men suffered unspeakable
privations, and many died. Not until 1917-18 was a British army strong
enough to venture a snail's pace advance on Baghdad. Further west,
having repulsed a shambling Turkish advance on the Suez Canal, British
forces launched a drive across Sinai which was also mightily bungled,
and achieved success only when Field Marshal Allenby entered Jerusalem
on Christmas Day 1917.
Rogan's account of the Gallipoli saga is unexceptionable, but,
inevitably, there is little fresh to be said. Lord Curzon, a member of
the War Cabinet, wrote of Britain's 1914-16 operations against the
Turks: "A more shocking exposure of official blundering and
incompetence official blunder-has not in my opinion been made, at any
rate since the Crimean War."
Part of the trouble thereafter was that Britain, having entered the
war in principled support of Belgium, became ever more greedy to
reclaim some of the appalling cost in lives and treasure by acquiring
useful booty from the enemy. Iraq's oil was the most conspicuous
prize, but duplicitous promises were also made for Bedouin services in
the Arab Revolt.
In 1917 the British began to use poison gas against the Turks in
Palestine in 1917. The other side behaved equally badly. Berlin had
been striving to promote a Muslim jihad against the British even
before war came, and the Turks hanged Arab nationalists by the score.
Prisoners of the Ottomans suffered terribly.
Allenby finished his war by capturing Damascus, and only the
Bolsheviks' triumph spared Turkey from Russian predation. At the
Versailles conference, the Ottoman Empire was broken up. The Arabs
lost their Turkish masters, only to substitute British and French
ones. The surge of Jewish immigration to Palestine that followed the
1917 Balfour Declaration provoked rioting in Jerusalem in 1920-21.
Rogan has written an impressively sound and fair-minded account of the
fall of the Ottoman Empire, rather than a ground-breaking one. A
reader is left struggling to decide which nation or faction comes
worst out of the story.
The author concludes by noting that Islamic State tweeted in 2014 that
it was committed to "smashing Sykes-Picot", the notorious 1916
Franco-British treaty that determined the shape of the region. "One
century on," writes Rogan, "the borders of the Middle East remain
controversial - and volatile." Who can say how, in our lifetimes, they
may change? And who dares to decree how they ought? ? Available at the
Bookshop price of £20 (inc p&p) and £19.99 (ebook) on 0845 271 2135
The British campaign in Mesopotamia was a masterpiece of folly
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress