In the modern era, the Middle East, broadly defined to include North Africa, was the seat of a major empire, that of the Ottoman Turks. Ottoman rule at its height dominated Eastern Europe through Hungary and extended across the Middle East and North Africa to include Algeria, with Iran and Morocco excluded from Turkish authority.
From the eighteenth century onward, the Ottomans were directly threatened by the imperial aspirations of two land-based empires, Russia and Austria (Austria-Hungary after 1867). In addition, the Ottoman Middle East became unwittingly embroiled in the rivalries of two seaborne empires, Great Britain and France, illustrating the global scope of imperial competition. The treaty ending the French and …
European imperial expansion in the Middle East to 1914 was a small part of a global takeover of non-Western lands from the mid-nineteenth century onward that saw nearly all of the African continent and independent territories in Asia either occupied or forced to bow to European demands, as in the case of China. Scholars attribute this imperial expansion to several impulses; the primary factors wer…
World War I saw the Ottomans ally with Germany and Austria-Hungary, primarily against Russia, its traditional rival, which formed an Entente with Britain and France. By war's end, Russia, following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, had renounced imperial ambitions, but Britain and France hoped to gain further spoils, against each other if necessary. All possessions held by the losers were to b…
The British mandate for Iraq was affected by its attempt to renege on their wartime promise of 1916 (Sykes-Picot Agreement) to acknowledge French paramountcy in Syria. They did so by installing in Damascus Emir Faisal ibn Husayn of the Hejaz. When the British ploy failed and the French ousted Faisal, Britain gave him the kingship of Iraq in 1921 as compensation and agreed to lessen the scope of it…
The most lasting legacy of Anglo-French imperialism in the Middle East and North Africa following World War I was the creation of states where none had existed previously, the boundaries drawn to suit Anglo-French interests. Out of the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire emerged Iraq, never unified previously, a Syria truncated by France's taking its land for the expanded Lebanon, …
Aldrich, Robert. Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion. London: Macmillan, 1996. Overview of French imperial ideology. Andrew, Christopher, and A. S. Kanya-Forstner. The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914–1924. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1981. Study of French domestic policy debates over imperial goals during World War I. Cain, P. J., and Anthony Ho…
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