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Kirkus Reviews (Print)
January 1, 2015, Thursday
THE FALL OF THE OTTOMANS;
The Great War in the Middle East
NONFICTION
Rogan (Modern History of the Middle East/St. Antony's Coll., Oxford
Univ.; The Arabs: A History, 2009, etc.) corrects Western assumptions
about the "sick man of Europe."In this well-researched, evenhanded
treatment of the Ottomans' role in World War I, especially in its
assessment of the Armenian genocide of 1918, the author delineates the
urgent internal and external causes spurring the crumbling Turkish
empire to seek a defensive alliance with Germany and counter Britain,
France and Russia when war broke out in 1914. The coalition of fiery
Young Turks had risen against the aging autocratic sultan and demanded
a restoration of the constitution in 1908, but during the tumult, they
allowed Turkey's European neighbors to annex more territory.
Russia's territorial ambitions were most feared, while Britain and
France could not be trusted. The war became a "global call to arms"
for all parties, with the Ottomans declaring a jihad in order to unite
Muslims. Rogan walks through the "opening salvos" of the war, at
Basra, Aden and Egypt, showing the vulnerability of the Ottoman
defenses; yet the Ottomans showed enormous spirit and ingenuity
against the Entente assault on the Dardanelles in February 1915. Rogan
elucidates the Allied debacle at Gallipoli-although the lack of maps
is frustrating-a reckless campaign he blames more on Lord Kitchener
than on Winston Churchill and which provoked a government crisis back
in Britain. The dire campaigns in Mesopotamia, Suez and Palestine were
not a "sideshow" to be dismissed by the Allied planners in their hopes
for a quick victory over a weak Ottoman Empire. Actually, they
produced-through the Arab Revolt galvanized by T.E. Lawrence and the
drafting of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration-an
uneasy armistice and partition that promised to be deeply divisive for
another century. An illuminating work that offers new understanding to
the troubled history of this key geopolitical region.
Publication Date: 2015-03-10
Publisher: Basic
Stage: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-465-02307-3
Price: $29.99
Author: Rogan, Eugene
From: Baghdasarian
January 1, 2015, Thursday
THE FALL OF THE OTTOMANS;
The Great War in the Middle East
NONFICTION
Rogan (Modern History of the Middle East/St. Antony's Coll., Oxford
Univ.; The Arabs: A History, 2009, etc.) corrects Western assumptions
about the "sick man of Europe."In this well-researched, evenhanded
treatment of the Ottomans' role in World War I, especially in its
assessment of the Armenian genocide of 1918, the author delineates the
urgent internal and external causes spurring the crumbling Turkish
empire to seek a defensive alliance with Germany and counter Britain,
France and Russia when war broke out in 1914. The coalition of fiery
Young Turks had risen against the aging autocratic sultan and demanded
a restoration of the constitution in 1908, but during the tumult, they
allowed Turkey's European neighbors to annex more territory.
Russia's territorial ambitions were most feared, while Britain and
France could not be trusted. The war became a "global call to arms"
for all parties, with the Ottomans declaring a jihad in order to unite
Muslims. Rogan walks through the "opening salvos" of the war, at
Basra, Aden and Egypt, showing the vulnerability of the Ottoman
defenses; yet the Ottomans showed enormous spirit and ingenuity
against the Entente assault on the Dardanelles in February 1915. Rogan
elucidates the Allied debacle at Gallipoli-although the lack of maps
is frustrating-a reckless campaign he blames more on Lord Kitchener
than on Winston Churchill and which provoked a government crisis back
in Britain. The dire campaigns in Mesopotamia, Suez and Palestine were
not a "sideshow" to be dismissed by the Allied planners in their hopes
for a quick victory over a weak Ottoman Empire. Actually, they
produced-through the Arab Revolt galvanized by T.E. Lawrence and the
drafting of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration-an
uneasy armistice and partition that promised to be deeply divisive for
another century. An illuminating work that offers new understanding to
the troubled history of this key geopolitical region.
Publication Date: 2015-03-10
Publisher: Basic
Stage: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-465-02307-3
Price: $29.99
Author: Rogan, Eugene
From: Baghdasarian