David Friskin’s book, A Peace to End all Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, is an important work that reveals how the western allied powers planned and then dismembered the Ottoman Empire. If the historian wishes to understand how the Ottoman Empire fell and, where some of the problem of the modern middle east originate than this work is a start. The book focuses primarily on Britain, as Britain seems to be the primary country responsible for molding the middle east into what it is today. What is readily apparent in reading this book, is that there were many tragic mistakes and misunderstandings involved in the decisions made by Britain and France. For students of the middle east this book serves as a guide to understanding WW1 and how that war lead to the end of the ottoman empire, along …show more content…
Enver Pasha, the leader of the Young Turk movement, dreamed of a unification of the Turkish people of Asia. Pasha was mostly responsible for the German Ottoman Alliance in WW1. Mark Sykes, who “worked out the blueprint” for the partitioning of the Middle East is depicted as misguided and in mistaken in his actions regarding his name sake, the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Kitchener, described as having no “real awareness” of differences in the Middle East , worked along with Prime Minister David Lloyd George with the goal of carving out a new imperial domain in the middle east. Much of the misunderstanding the west has of the Middle East relate back to Lord Kitchener and his choices during World War One. It was he who turned years of Middle eastern policy on it ear in suggesting that Britain should seize chunks of the Ottoman Empire when the war was over. In essence, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire was his