An impressive, somewhat revisionist summary of the watershed years
during which the framework was laid for the remainder of the
20th-century's Middle East problems. Fromkin, an international
lawyer and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has
previously written The Independence of Nations and The Question of
Government (not reviewed). If, as Macaulay suggested, history is a
chronicle of great men, then Fromkin has discovered a corollary:
that history, specifically Middle Eastern history, is the chronicle
of great bunglers. For in this heavily researched exploration of
the makings of the modern Middle East, we find a rogues' gallery of
muddled thinkers and misleading politicians, from the imaginative
T.E. Lawrence's large-scale inventions of Arab revolts to the
imperialistic Churchill (the major character in Fromkin's tale);
from the bureaucratic squabbling of Mark Sykes and Gilbert Clayton
(done so stealthily that each thought the other was supportive) to
Lord Kitchener - steeped in a century-old priority to draw the line
on the French frontier in the Middle East. What adds a note of
revisionism here is Fromkin's expansion of the parameters of the
Middle East to include Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan, a
reconfiguration that heightens the "Great Game" aspect of the
affair - for it includes Britain's old desire to "shield the road
to India from the onslaughts first of France and then of Russia."
Russia becomes a prime mover in Fromkin's analysis - causing, for
example, Lord Kitchener to institute a British alliance with the
Arab Moslems, the British to support a Jewish National Home in
Palestine, and the French and British to occupy and partition the
Middle East. The major culprit in the story is pegged by the author
as the creation of artificial state systems in a Moslem world ruled
by religious impulses, a move that has haunted the Middle East to
this day. By 1922, the author implies, British policies fell victim
to two forces - a reversal of their trust in Russia and France as
partners in ruling the area and a public desire to scale back
imperial adventures in general. This is a history with a
Eurocentric tinge (there is minimal concentration on Mideast
personages). But Fromkin's work should, nevertheless, become a
benchmark for all future books on this traumatic 20th-century
headache. (Kirkus Reviews)
Peopled with larger-than-life figures such as Winston Churchill
(around whom the story is structured), General Kitchener and T.E.
Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Attaturk, Emir Feisal and Lloyd George the
book describes the showdown with the Ottoman Empire which erupted
into the devastating Eastern campaign of World War I and led to the
formation - by bureaucracy and subterfuge by Americans and
Europeans - of the states known collectively as the Middle East.
The years 1914-1922 were the creative, formative years when
everything seemed possible, but the events of 1922, the pivotal
year, set the course for a future of endless wars and acts of
terrorism that became the legacy of this period. Issues such as The
Allenby Declaration establishing nominal independence for Egypt,
the Palestine Mandate and the Churchill White Paper (from which
Israel and Jordan sprang), the installing of Hashemite leaders of
predominantly Shi'ite teritories, new leaders for Egypt and Iraq,
the Russian declaration of a Soviet Union intent on re-establishing
her rule over Moslem Central Asia - David Fromkin shows how all
these changed the Middle East (and Europe) forever.
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