The term 'Fertile Crescent' is commonly used as shorthand for the group of territories extending around the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Here it is assumed to consist of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Palestine. Much has been written on the history of these countries which were taken from the Ottoman empire after 1918 and became Mandates under the League of Nations. For the most part the histories of these countries have been handled either individually or as part of the history of Britain or France. In the first instance the emphasis has normally been on the development of nationalism and local resistance to alien control in a particular territory, leading to the modern successor state. In the second most studies have concentrated separately on how either France or Britain handled the great problems they inherited, seldom comparing their strategies. The aim of this book is to see the region as a whole and from both the European and indigenous points of view. The central argument is that the mandate system failed in its stated purpose of establishing stable democratic states out of what had been provinces or parts of provinces within the Ottoman empire. Rather it generated basically unstable polities and, in the special case of Palestine, one totally unresolved, and possibly unsolvable, conflict. The result was to leave the Middle East as perhaps the most volatile part of the world in the later twentieth century and beyond. The main purpose of the book is to examine why this was so.

This work attempts to explain why the Middle East is a major focus for international conflict, looking at the period after 1914, when the Ottoman Empire was defeated and its provinces taken over by Britain and France and ending in 1958 when the Iraqi revolution finally ended British influence on the area.

The First World War in the Middle East is an accessibly written military and social history of the clash of world empires in the Dardanelles, Egypt and Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia and the Caucasus. Coates Ulrichsen demonstrates how wartime exigencies shaped the parameters of the modern Middle East, and describes and assesses the major campaigns against the Ottoman Empire and Germany involving British and imperial troops from the French and Russian Empires, as well as their Arab and Armenian allies. Also documented are the enormous logistical demands placed on host societies by the Great Powers' conduct of industrialised warfare in hostile terrain. The resulting deepening of imperial penetration, and the extension of state controls across a heterogeneous sprawl of territories, generated a powerful backlash both during and immediately after the war, which played a pivotal role in shaping national identities as the Ottoman Empire was dismembered. This is a multidimensional account of the many seemingly discrete yet interlinked campaigns that resulted in one to one and a half million casualties. It details not just their military outcome but relates them to intelligence-gathering, industrial organisation, authoritarianism and the political economy of empires at war.

An essential starting point for anyone wanting to learn about life in the largest empire in history, this two-volume work encapsulates the imperial experience from the 16th–21st centuries. From early sixteenth-century explorations to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, the British Empire controlled outposts on every continent, spreading its people and ideas across the globe and profiting mightily in the process. The present state of our world—from its increasing interconnectedness to its vast inequalities and from the successful democracies of North America to the troubled regimes of Africa and the Middle East—can be traced, in large part, to the way in which Great Britain expanded and controlled its empire. The British Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia addresses a broader range of topics than do most other surveys of the empire, covering not only major political and military developments but also topics that have only recently come to serious scholarly attention, such as women's and gender history, art and architecture, indigenous histories and perspectives, and the construction of colonial knowledge and ideologies. By going beyond the "headline" events of the British Empire, this captivating work communicates the British imperial experience in its totality.

At the end of the First World War Britain and to a much lesser extent France created the modern Middle East. The possessions of the former Ottoman Empire were carved up with scant regard for the wishes of those who lived there. Frontiers were devised and alien dynasties imposed on the populations as arbitrarily as in medieval times. From the outset the project was destined to failure. Conflicting and ambiguous promises had been made to the Arabs during the war but were not honoured. Brief hopes for Arab unity were dashed, and a harsh belief in western perfidy persists to the present day. Britain was quick to see the riches promised by the black pools of oil that lay on the ground around Baghdad. When France too grasped their importance, bitter differences opened up and the area became the focus of a return to traditional enmity. The war-time allies came close to blows and then drifted apart, leaving a vacuum of which Hitler took advantage. Working from both primary and secondary sources, Walter Reid explores Britain's role in the creation of the modern Middle East and the rise of Zionism from the early years of the twentieth century to 1948, when Britain handed over Palestine to UN control. From the decisions that Britain made has flowed much of the instability of the region and of the world-wide tensions that threaten the twenty-first century. How far was Britain to blame?

A strategic outpost in the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus was vital to British imperial ambitions in the East as the Ottoman Empire grew increasingly fragile in the nineteenth century. Here, Gail Dallas Hook describes the British occupation of Cyprus from 1878 to 1914, during which British government, science, and capital investment were installed alongside a new British colonial community, building 'British Cyprus' long before the island became a formal part of the British Empire. Protectorate Cyprus further demonstrates how the British attempted to bring 'good government' to Cyprus yet failed to resolve the issues of Muslim and Greek Orthodox divisions. It is a unique representation of Britain's 'informal empire' before World War I that has been little studied. Protectorate Cyprus is a crucial addition to the history of the British Empire.

“Offers us a fascinating new perspective on the Second World War—its impact on local societies in the Middle East.” (Richard J. Aldrich, author of The Black Door) This dynamic history is the first to construct a total picture of the experience and impact of World War II in Iran and Iraq. Contending that these two countries were more important to the Allied forces’ war operations than has ever been acknowledged, historian Ashley Jackson investigates the grand strategy of the Allies and their operations in the region and the continuing legacy of Western intervention in the Middle East. Iran and Iraq served as the first WWII theater in which the U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. fought alongside each other. Jackson charts the intense Allied military activity in Iran and Iraq and reveals how deeply the war impacted common people’s lives. He also provides revelations about the true nature of Anglo-American relations in the region, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the continuing corrosive legacy of Western influence in these lands. “Skillfully brings together the complex range of developments that took place in Iraq and Iran during the Second World War.” —Evan Mawdsley, author of December 1941 “A brilliant book that confirms Ashley Jackson’s place among the preeminent scholars of the British empire.” —Joe Maiolo, author of Cry Havoc “Consistently fascinating and thought-provoking.” —Simon Ball, author of The Bitter Sea “In this lucid work, filled with telling details and well-crafted arguments, Jackson has finally revealed the undoubted significance of Iran and Iraq to the wider war.” —Niall Barr, author of Eisenhower's Armies

In the wake of the devastating WWI, three Jews headed the most valuable territory in the British Empire in addition to a strategically important new addition. Edwin Montagu held the position of Secretary of State for India, Rufus Isaacs (Lord Reading) was the newly appointed Viceroy of India, and Herbert Samuel arrived in Jerusalem as the first High Commissioner of Palestine. Their appointments came at a time of great upheaval as Indian nationalists clamoured for independence, pan-Islamists fought to keep the defeated Ottoman Empire intact and the sultan in Constantinople, and Zionists sought to build on the wartime promise by the British government to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine in face of opposition by Palestinians and pan-Islamists. The task of tackling these issues was made all the more difficult by accusations that Jews were not loyal to the British Empire and its goals, a view promoted by the appearance of the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion in English translation. This book follows this web of divisive imperial politics, and nationalist and pan-Islamist aspirations in India and Palestine, through the lives and work of these three men whose efforts were coloured by the post-war fear of a declining empire that was being corroded from within.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, British intelligence agents began to venture in increasing numbers to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, a region of crucial geopolitical importance spanning present-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. They were drawn by the twin objectives of securing the land route to India and finding adventure and spiritualism in a mysterious and ancient land. But these competing desires created a dilemma: how were they to discreetly and patriotically gather facts in a region they were drawn to for its legendary inscrutability and by the promise of fame and escape from Britain? In this groundbreaking book, Priya Satia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this problem and the myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences of their methodological choices during and after the Great War. She tells the story of how an imperial state in thrall to the cultural notions of equivocal agents and beset by an equally captivated and increasingly assertive mass democracy invented a wholly new style of "covert empire" centered on the world's first brutal aerial surveillance regime in Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources--from the fictional to the recently declassified--this book explains how Britons reconciled genuine ethical scruples with the actual violence of their Middle Eastern empire. As it vividly demonstrates how imperialism was made fit for an increasingly democratic and anti-imperial world, what emerges is a new interpretation of the military, cultural, and political legacies of the Great War and of the British Empire in the twentieth century. Unpacking the romantic fascination with "Arabia" as the land of espionage, Spies in Arabia presents a stark tale of poetic ambition, war, terror, and failed redemption--and the prehistory of our present discontents.