Good day Hivers and Book Clubbers,
In trying to keep up with writing more along with reading, I'm back with another review. As mentioned in the last one, I'll be going back to non-fiction for this one. The book I'm talking about here is titled 'The fall of the Ottomans; the Great War in the Middle-East 1914-1920', written by Eugene Rogan.
I had this book on my wish-list for a while, but I stumbled upon it in a local second-hand bookstore. A stroke of luck, since this particular English copy looked almost as new. The book was originally released in 2015; a time when there was a resurgence in interest in the Middle-East due to the 'Arab Spring', which is mentioned a couple of times in the beginning and end of the book. But I'm not going to deal with modern geopolitics, but with history.
A downward trend
At the end of the 19th century, the Ottoman Turks were a crumbling empire. Known as the 'sick man of Europe' at the time, it faced a series of internal and external struggles that it did not deal with well. After ruling over a significant part of south-eastern Europe, and besieging Vienna twice in 1529 and 1683, the European peoples in the Balkans got free of Turkish rule one by one. Fist the Hungarians, then the Serbs, Romanians, Bosniaks, Bulgarians and Greeks. Their hold on Europe was reduced to the capital Istanbul, and a relatively small countryside of Thrace.
The great powers of Europe were always interested in more; call it greed, call it imperialism, but that was a fact. The Russian Empire had been interested in recovering Istanbul (Constantinople) for a long time; they considered themselves the protectors of Orthodox Christianity, and Constantinople was THE center of that form of Christendom, before the point of gravity moved to Moscow.
Other powers, like Britain and France, were wary of Russian control of Istanbul and the Bosporus; this would mean Russian fleets would have free access to the Mediterranean. So they propped up the Ottomans, especially during the Crimean war (1852-1854).
Britain had its own economic interest in the region: the Suez Canal. This was vital to the British for the shortcut it offered to their shipping between India and Europe. Otherwise you'd have to go around the Cape of Good Hope, which added thousands of miles. The Suez Canal was in the middle of Egypt, which was in a judicial limbo; technically a vassal of the Ottoman Sultan, it was also a subject of the British.
German Ascendance
So there were caveats to Ottoman independence in the late 19th century, yet it lay at many crossroads; trade through te Suez Canal was vital, access to the Black Sea was in their control. But what if the seas could be avoided. The German Empire was thinking in this direction with the Berlin-Baghdad railway; one train line connecting the heart of Germany with the centre of the Middle-East.
It was an ambition plan that never really got to fruition, but German investments meant that the Ottomans were pulled into the gravity of the German Empire. It would be one of the main reasons why it was pulled in their orbit during WWI
The somewhat forgotten front
When people talk about the military side of World War I, most talk and/or pages are devoted to the Western front, where the French and British (and later the Americans) fought the Germans. Some talk is devoted to the East, where the Germans and Austrians fought the Russians.
The battles in the Middle-East are almost an afterthought, and it's the main thrust of the book to keep these memories alive. There were several 'hotspots' of battle:
-Gallipoli: on the far western side of Anatolia, there was a small peninsula where the British, French, and ANZAC (Australia & New Zealand) made landings to gain a foothold. They hoped, in combination with the mighty British Navy, to force their way to Istanbul from here. They failed miserably; several British battleships were sunk completely in the first days of the conflict, and the landing troops never got much farther than the beaches during several months of fighting. Casualties were high on both sides, but overall a big victory for the Turks.
-The Caucasus: where the Turks did well in Gallipoli, they suffered on the Caucasus-front against the Russians. One of the Turkish leaders decided on a daring attack during winter, close to the Caucasus mountains. The troops were not prepared, it was a disaster. The Russians held several Turkish provinces in the east of Anatolia for the duration of the war. They would soon have problems on the home-front during the Russian Revolution, however.
-Suez and Palestine; the Ottomans reasoned that the Suez Canal was of vital importance to the British war effort (they were correct), and tried to take it. Apart from blowing up some ships within the canal, they did not succeed. The loss wasn't nearly as big as in the Caucasus, however. Much later, the British were able to push through the Sinai desert towards Palestine, in tandem with the advance on Mesopotamia.
-Iraq: the British had a hold on the Persian Gulf for decades, through deals made with several sheikhs in the area (Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain etc.). They wanted the Iraqi coastal city of Basra to keep control of the rivers. They succeeded in taking the city, but the further advance was riddled with ups and downs. The British took the city of Kut, then lost it, then gained it again late in the war. This is perhaps the longest-lasting fighting theatre of them all.
Implosion & Conclusion
The Ottomans would be pushed back on several fronts during the war, in part due to an Arab rebellion as well. Some hope was regained after the Russian exit from the war, but after Germany called for peace, the Turks were done as well within weeks. They would lose all their Arabian territory, and would have lost much more, if Ataturk had not continued fighting against its neighbours.
But that is a different story, mentioned in two pages of this book. It's hard to do a 350 page book crammed with info justice in a somewhat short review. It flows very well; it is able to take you along for the ride. Written chronologically, and not in an academic style, it is well-equipped to those that know little about the subject in question (like me, I must admit). It's available on Amazon for those that are interested. I'll be back with more reviews in the near future. So I'll see you all in the next one,
-Pieter Nijmeijer
(Top image: self-made photo of book cover)