The Great War in the Middle East : A Clash of Empires

Traditionally, in general studies of the First World War, the Middle East is an arena of combat that has been portrayed in romanticised terms, in stark contrast to the mud, blood, and presumed futility of the Western Front. Battles fought in Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Arabia offered a different narrative on the Great War, one in which the agency of individual figures was less neutered by heavy artillery. As with the historiography of the Western Front, which has been the focus of sustained inquiry since the mid-1960s, such assumptions about the Middle East have come under revision in the last two decades - a reflection of an emerging 'global turn' in the history of the First World War. The 'sideshow' theatres of the Great War - Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific - have come under much greater scrutiny from historians. The fifteen chapters in this volume cover a broad range of perspectives on the First World War in the Middle East, from strategic planning issues wrestled with by statesmen through to the experience of religious communities trying to survive in war zones. The chapter authors look at their specific topics through a global lens, relating their areas of research to wider arguments on the history of the First World War. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of figures 9 List of tables 11 Contributors 12 Acknowledgements 17 List of abbreviations 19 Maps 20 Introduction: The Great War in the Middle East: the clash of empires and global war 24 Part I Strategy 52 1 British strategy and the imperial axis in the Middle East, 1914–18 54 2 Le front du moyen-orient: the Middle East in French Great War strategy, 1914–18 75 3 Greece’s entry into the Great War: attitudes towards and dilemmas of the Eastern Question 97 4 German Middle East policy and the expedition to Georgia, 1918 120 5 Dismantling empires, expanding empires: the Turks and the Arabs in British propaganda 139 Part II Experience 164 6 From Kut to Mosul: lessons learnt by the Indian Army in Mesopotamia, 1914–18 166 7 Conflicting attitudes towards the enemy: Anzac and Turkish soldiers before and after the Gallipoli Campaign 186 8 ‘A Hope So Transcendent’: the Arab Revolt in the Great War and T.E. Lawrence 201 9 The Third Battle of Gaza, October–November 1917: the integration of air, land, and maritime firepower 218 10 Fighting for Britain, the Yishuv, and Zionism: the Jewish Legion at war, 1917–21 237 Part III Context 260 11 The Great War, Egypt, and British martial law reconsidered 262 12 Reactions to the Ottoman jihad fatwa in the British Empire, 1914–18 279 13 ‘Civilisation and competence’: displaying Ottoman war paintings to their allies 298 14 Land of sin and sand and sepsis! Imperial fiction and the First World War in Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine 331 15 Between Rome and Jerusalem: Catholics negotiating empires and war in Palestine, 1850–1930 344 Index 362