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

EXCELLENT WRITER AND BOOK... THANKS

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.

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.

If you want to put the Middle East into a historical perspective and understand its present day difficulties there is no better book than this, and despite being 20 years old, it still stands completely unrivaled. It is insightful, well balanced, eloquently written and at times almost reads like an adventure story.The book covers the region from the outbreak of war in 1914 and through to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. Fromkin gets away with covering this enormous canvas on which many books could be written on single topics (and indeed have). He does this by following a clear story line, not over emphasizing certain periods and by not peddling a political agenda.The book is essentially built around Winston Churchill large sections are also devoted to other contemporary grandees such as Asquith, Lloyd George, Balfour, Lord Kitchener, General Allenby, Sir Mark Sykes, Francois Picot, Emir Hussein, King Faisal, Enver Pasha, Attaturk, TE Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and many other splendid characters. These people are richly described and make the book come alive in a way, where most other popular history books fail miserably.The book also elegantly incorporates the imperial political thinking of the time and provides excellent coverage of the drivers and motivations of specially the British in their involvement in the conflict. It covers the intrigues, manipulations and conspirations that took place both within the British government and between the allies, whose main goal it was to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, weakened by gradual disintegration, carve up its constituent parts between them. The Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration being excellent examples hereof. One is left with the impression that this was a game of "Risk" on a massive scale. In fact on such a large scale that it stretched the British Empire beyond its political and military means, which again resulted in appalling execution with extraordinary and needless loss of life.The price of these ambitions proved high for all parties. The Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1922 and Enver Pasha died on a battlefield near Dushanbe in Tajikstan fighting the Red Army in 1924. But also for the British Empire, this was the "beginning of the end". Australia began to lose confidence in Britain following the Gallipoli disaster, after years of fighting hopeless battles in Europe, Iraq and Turkey, British soldiers increasingly became mutinous and were turning against the establishment. In his description of this period, Fromkin really picks up on the political current of the time and describes how Churchill understood this and probably avoided severe social unrest in the UK.The book effectively finishes with the 1923 Lausanne peace treaty. Britain had been replaced by the United States as the world's number one superpower. The US did not favour colonialism and hence the Sykes-Picot Agreement was confined to the historical archives. Instead Churchill and Gertrude Bell drew up a map of a new Middle East, created Palestine (under British mandate) and Syria / Lebanon under French. Feisal needed a kingdom, so they created Iraq. If Feisal was getting a kingdom, Abdullah wanted one too. So they drew Jordan. It was random, sure to create problems for the future and by no stretch of anyones imagination "their finest hour".The book draws on a superb range of sources, is extremely well researched and has a bibliography large enough to populate a small library.

'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.