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First published in the United States of America by Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group 2015
First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2015
Published in Penguin Books 2016
Text copyright © Eugene Rogan, 2015
Cover photograph: British troops in Baghdad just after the entry by General Sir F. S. Maude, 11 March 1917 © Imperial War Museums (Q 25189).
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-96870-4
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List of Maps
A Note on Nomenclature
Preface
1. A REVOLUTION AND THREE WARS, 1908–1913
2. THE PEACE BEFORE THE GREAT WAR
3. A GLOBAL CALL TO ARMS
4. OPENING SALVOS: BASRA, ADEN, EGYPT, AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
5. LAUNCHING JIHAD: OTTOMAN CAMPAIGNS IN THE CAUCASUS AND THE SINAI
6. THE ASSAULT ON THE DARDANELLES
7. THE ANNIHILATION OF THE ARMENIANS
8. THE OTTOMAN TRIUMPH AT GALLIPOLI
9. THE INVASION OF MESOPOTAMIA
10. THE SIEGE OF KUT
11. THE ARAB REVOLT
12. LOSING GROUND: THE FALL OF BAGHDAD, THE SINAI, AND JERUSALEM
13. FROM ARMISTICE TO ARMISTICE
Conclusion: The Fall of the Ottomans
Notes
Bibliography
Photo Credits
Acknowledgements
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Eugene Rogan is the author of the bestselling The Arabs. He is university lecturer in the history of the modern Middle East at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Antony’s College
‘A timely and capacious history which leaves the over-trodden Flanders mud and football truces in favour of the various campaigns which the Allies waged in the Middle East … Rogan’s clear chronological narrative breathes fresh insights’
Jeremy Seal, Sunday Telegraph
‘This is narrative history at its very best: disciplined, well-paced, judicious and spiked with detail, character and incident … magnificently free of partisan bias’
Barnaby Rogerson, Prospect
‘An assured account. Amid myriad books about the slaughter in Europe, Rogan sets out to tell the story through Ottoman eyes … the book stands alongside the best histories’
Economist
‘Remarkably readable, judicious and well-researched’
Mark Mazower, Financial Times
‘An absorbing study … he has brought a clarity of vision and of description to the war … a thorough and absorbing book’
Anthony Sattin, Observer
‘An absolutely magnificent account of the war from the viewpoint of the Ottoman Empire … [Rogan’s] account is geopolitical and military writing at its best – taut, anecdotal and extraordinarily researched. A tangled story, to be sure, one that both commands and rewards the reader’s attention … the war in the Middle East was no “sideshow,” but a tragedy that was every bit as costly and bitter as the fighting on the Western Front’
Joseph Goulden, Washington Times
‘A clear, authoritative book … this book is distinguished by its ambitious scope and use of Turkish and Arabic sources that will be new to most British readers. I learned a huge amount’
James Barr, BBC History
‘This engrossing history unfolds in the Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War, capturing the complex array of battles, brutalities, and alliances that brought down the six-hundred-year-old Ottoman Empire … His balanced narrative unearths many seeds of current conflicts’
New Yorker
‘A brilliant book … a comprehensive history of one of the most tumultuous and least understood fronts of the Great War … It also gives readers the best single-volume account of the region’s social and diplomatic history at the time’
Middle East Policy
‘Admirable and thoroughly researched … A comprehensive history’
Gerard Russell, New York Review of Books
‘A fresh and meticulous portrait of the Ottoman Empire: modern and modernizing, then declining, and eventually kaput’
Grayson Clary, Washington Independent Review of Books
‘A landmark study … this is a formidable narrative history, written with great verve and empathy … an engrossing picture of a deadly conflict that proved catastrophic for the peoples of the region’
The National (Dubai)
‘A fantastic, readable, and much needed study of the most chronically neglected of all of the Great War’s participants: the Ottoman Empire. Informative and enlightening’
Alexander Watson, author of Ring of Steel
‘A gripping, masterful account of World War One in the Middle East from the vantage point of the Ottoman Empire … There is a great deal of new material here which not only brings events alive but also leads to fresh assessments of all the participants in the Great War but especially Arabs and Turks. If you want to understand the underlying causes of conflict and violence in the Middle East in the last century, you will not find a better book’
Avi Shlaim, author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
‘A vivid account of the fighting that led to the fall of one of the world’s great empires’
Roger Owen, Professor Emeritus of Middle East History, Harvard University
‘This book opens up a window on vital chapters in the shaping of the Middle East as well as the history of the Great War, bringing together vivid personal details with a broad historical panorama of human suffering and heroism’
Rashid Khalidi, author of Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East
‘Eugene Rogan has given us an absorbing history of the war’s principal military and political battles in the Middle East through the eyes of those who fought them’
Mustafa Aksakal, Chair of Modern Turkish Studies and Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University
THE RESEARCH AND WRITING OF THIS BOOK WAS MADE POSSIBLE through the generous support of the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I am enormously grateful to the British Academy and the Association of Jewish Refugees for the award of the 2011-12 Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship. I am equally indebted to the AHRC for the award of a Senior Research Fellowship for the 2012-13 academic year.
As with my previous book, The Arabs, I have benefitted from the knowledge and encouragement of Oxford’s remarkable Middle Eastern studies community. Much of the book was first aired to the critical scrutiny of my Oxford students in the lecture theatre, and I am grateful for their feedback. I also wish to thank my Middle East Centre colleagues Walter Armbrust, Celia Kerslake, Laurent Mignon, Tariq Ramadan, Philip Robins, Avi Shlaim, and Michael Willis.
Knowing of my research interests, a number of friends, family and colleagues have shared books and documents that have contributed enormously to this study. I would like to thank Toufoul Abou-Hodeib and Adam Mestyan for a number of Arabic references on the war in Syria; Ali Allawi for guidance on sources on the war in Mesopotamia; Yoav Alon and Fayez al-Tarawneh for memoirs from the Arab Revolt; and Tui Clark for works on the New Zealand experience of the Ottoman front. Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, offered her library and her own excellent studies of the Anzac and British forces in the Middle East. Henry Laurens generously provided a transcript of French intelligence reports compiled by the Dominican priest, Antonin Jaussen. Margaret MacMillan, while engaged in writing her remarkable study on the origins of WWI, The War that Ended Peace, shared every article she found on the Ottoman war effort. Martin Bunton and Hussein Omar offered valuable documents on the Egyptian contribution to the British war effort. I would like to express particular thanks to my mother, Margaret Rogan, for her research into the life and death in Gallipoli of my great uncle John McDonald.
In approaching the war diaries of Turkish veterans of the Great War, I had the pleasure to work with two brilliant students of late Ottoman history. Djene Bajalan and Kerem Tinaz, both of Oxford University, scoured the bookshops of Istanbul to secure the growing number of published memoirs of Turkish soldiers and officers of the First World War. Djene assisted with the research for the first two chapters of the book, while Kerem helped with the research on chapters 3-13. I could not have done without their help.
Historians are at the mercy of archivists and librarians in finding the articles of their trade. I am particularly grateful to Mastan Ebtehaj, Middle East Centre Librarian, and Debbie Usher, Middle East Centre Archivist, for their generous assistance. I would also like to thank the archivists of the United States National Archives in College Park, Maryland; the Imperial War Museum in London, who continued to serve their readers through the museum’s extensive renovations; and the highly efficient archivists of the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand.
A number of colleagues read my proposal and draft chapters and offered invaluable insights and corrections. I would like to thank in particular Frederick Anscombe, Ben Fortna, Roger Owen, Joseph Sassoon and Ngaire Woods.
I am ever grateful to my agents, Felicity Bryan and George Lucas, for their wisdom and experience in guiding me and my book from inception through publication. The pleasure of publishing with Allen Lane and Basic Books lies first and foremost in getting to work with Lara Heimert and Simon Winder, two of the greatest non-fiction editors in the business.
Yet my greatest thanks go to my family, for their love and encouragement even when my focus on the book came at their expense. Ngaire was my soul mate, chapter by chapter; Richard my delight for the pleasure he takes in all things Arab; and Isabelle my guiding light, for this book is hers too.