The Middle East at 1914 was at the crossroads. The once great Ottoman Empire that had been the dominant political force in the Middle East for 400 years was inexorably decaying, loosing ground to the fledgling independance movements that popped up in various guises with differing religious and political agendas.
In the wings were the British, French, Germans and Imperial Russia. The British, just passed the high tide of their prowess desired to keep her Indian Empire safe and keep everyone else out, but had to come to an accomodation with the French.
The French, still smarting over their loss of Egypt to the British, were eyeing the ripe plum of the Ottoman territory that was about to fall from the tree, and wanted a slice of the action.
Czarist Russia had ambitions too wanting the Black Sea to be her own lake, but after 1917 Russia withdrew from the action due to problems at home. Pissed at this, the Trotsky government of the new Bolsheviks, showed to the world the secret Sikes-Picot agreement of 1916 , that proved the duplicity of the French and especially the English towards their Arab 'friends'.
Germany was on the side that lost WW1, and at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was emasculated, stripped of all her colonies and forced to pay enormous war reparations -so was effectively out of the game. |
