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The Great War & the Middle East : a strategic study / Rob Johnson.

by Johnson, Robert, 1967-

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Oxford University Press, 2016.

World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Middle East.

Middle East -- History, Military -- 20th century.

Middle East -- History -- 20th century.

9780199683284 (hc.)

Alternate title:

Great War and the Middle East : a strategic study

xviii, 354 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Ends and ways: the making of imperial strategy, 1907-14 -- Ways and means: armed forces and decision-making, 1914 -- The strategic defence of Suez and the failure of pan-Islamism, 1914-15 -- Eastern strategy: the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, 1915 -- Strategy of forward defence: Sinai and Palestine, 1915-16 -- The lure of quick victory: the Mesopotamia campaign, 1914-16 -- The decisive battle: the Caucasus and Sarikamis, 1915-16 -- The Arab Revolt in the Hejaz and Palestine, 1916-17 -- Methodical strategy: Mesopotamia, 1917-18 -- The defeat of the Ottoman Empire, 1918 -- The strategy of negotiation: peacemaking, 1919-23 -- Making strategy in war and peace.

"The First World War in the Middle East swept away five hundred years of Ottoman domination. It ushered in new ideologies and radicalized old ones--from Arab nationalism and revolutionary socialism to impassioned forms of atavistic Islamism. It created heroic icons, like the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia or the modernizing Atatürk, and destroyed others. And it completely redrew the map of the region, forging a host of new nation states, including Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia--all of them (with the exception of Turkey) under the "protection" of the victorious powers, Britain and France. For many, the self-serving intervention of these powers in the region between 1914 and 1919 is the major reason for the conflicts that have raged there on and off ever since. Yet many of the most commonly accepted assertions about the First World War in the Middle East do not stand up to scrutiny. Rob Johnson, military historian at the University of Oxford, examines in detail the strategic and operational course of the war in the Middle East, and assesses its immediate consequences. Johnson argues that, far from being a mere sideshow to the war in Europe, the Middle Eastern conflict was in fact the axis of war for imperial preservation. Moreover, contrary to the myths of the First World War in the Middle East, regional actors were not simply the puppets of the Great Powers. The way in which these local forces embraced, resisted, succumbed to, disrupted, or on occasion overturned the plans of the imperialist powers for their own interests played an important role in shaping the immediate aftermath of the conflict. It was this contested interaction that laid the foundations for the troubled Middle East that we know today."--Dust jacket.

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