From the Ashes of War: The Creation of the Middle East

The different ethnic and religious groups of the Middle East seem to be constantly at war.

But how did such artificial states come into existence in the first place?

The real story of how the modern Middle East was created has long since been lost in myth and counter-myth.

At the heart of the problem is the common misunderstanding that the Sykes-Picot Agreement is the source of today’s troubles. This notorious agreement, made in May 1916 between British expert Sir Mark Sykes and his French counterpart, M. Georges-Picot, carved up the Middle East between the imperial powers and has since become the scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong in the region.

But in 1917 Sir Edmund Allenby led the British and Australian troops on a successful military campaign to conquer Jerusalem and Damascus in a victory roll that was one of the most outstanding in recent history.

And the campaign rendered most of the Sykes-Picot deal of the previous year redundant.

So what really created the Middle East as we know it today?

In ‘From the Ashes of War: The Creation of the Middle East’ Christopher Catherwood explores this question, challenging the modern assumption that the 1916 pact is to blame, and instead providing evidence that the military achievements of Western Europe in the First World War were much more crucial to the final reformation of the defeated Ottoman Empire.

'From the Ashes of War: The Creation of the Middle East' is a concise, brilliantly argued historical study that will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the modern Middle East.

Dr Christopher Catherwood is Emeritus Archives By-Fellow of Churchill College Cambridge, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has supervised Cambridge undergraduates in British history at Robinson and Homerton Colleges. He has written many books including ‘His Finest Hour - A Brief Life of Winston Churchill’, ‘A Brief History of the Middle East’, ‘The Balkans in WWII’ and ‘Winston Churchill: The Flawed Genius’.

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