Books > History > World history > From 1900
|
Buy Now
From the Sultan to Ataturk (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R323
Discovery Miles 3 230
You Save: R94
(23%)
|
|
From the Sultan to Ataturk (Hardcover)
(sign in to rate)
List price R417
Loot Price R323
Discovery Miles 3 230
You Save R94 (23%)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
|
World War I sounded the death knell of empires. The forces of
disintegration affected several empires simultaneously. To that
extent they were impersonal. But prudent statesmen could delay the
death of empires, rulers such as Emperor Franz Josef II of
Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II. Adventurous
rulers Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Enver Pasha in the Ottoman
Empire hastened it. Enver's decision to enter the war on the side
of Germany destroyed the Ottoman state. It may have been doomed in
any case, but he was the agent of its doom. The last Sultan Mehmet
VI Vahdettin thought he could salvage the Ottoman state in
something like its old form. But Vahdettin and his ministers could
not succeed because the victorious Allies had decided on the final
partition of the Ottoman state. The chief proponent of partition
was Lloyd George, heir to the Turcophobe tradition of British
liberals, who fell under the spell of the Greek irredentist
politician Venizelos. With these two in the lead, the Allies sought
to impose partition on the Sultan's state. When the Sultan sent his
emissaries to the Paris peace conference they could not win a
reprieve. The Treaty of Sevres which the Sultan's government signed
put an end to Ottoman independence. The Treaty of Sevres was not
ratified. Turkish nationalists, with military officers in the lead,
defied the Allies, who promptly broke ranks, each one trying to win
concessions for himself at the expense of the others. Mustafa Kemal
emerged as the leader of the military resistance. Diplomacy allowed
Mustafa Kemal to isolate his people's enemies: Greek and Armenian
irredentists. Having done so, he defeated them by force of arms. In
effect, the defeat of the Ottoman empire in the First World War was
followed by the Turks' victory in two separate wars: a brief
military campaign against the Armenians and a long one against the
Greeks. Lausanne where General Ismet succeeded in securing peace on
Turkey's terms was the founding charter of the modern Turkish
nation state. But more than that it showed that empires could no
longer rule people against their wishes. This need not be
disastrous: Mustafa Kemal demonstrated that the interests of
developed countries were compatible with those of developing ones.
He fought the West in order to become like it. Where his domestic
critics wanted to go on defying the West, Mustafa Kemal saw that
his country could fare best in cooperation with the West.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.