"A story of how empires rattle along until their sheer scale makes them nonsensical... [Reid's] very capable prose just begs to be read" (The Scotsman).

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 fail.

Conflicting and ambiguous promises had been made to the Arabs during the war but were not honored. 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 wartime 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 United Nationns control. From the decisions that Britain made has flowed much of the instability of the region and of the worldwide tensions that threaten the twenty-first century; this thought-provoking book considers how much Britain was to blame.

• We started tracking this book on February 25, 2021.
• This book was $2.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 78 times in the past 1,467 days.
• The current price of this book is $2.99 last checked 18 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past year.
• The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on January 29, 2022.
• This book has been $1.99 4 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $12.99 last reached on June 25, 2021.
• This book has been $12.99 5 times since we started tracking it.

• HistoryEuropeWesternGreat Britain20th Century
• HistoryEuropeWesternUnited Kingdom20th Century

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 606 Pages
• File Size: 26 KB