As humans, we find it difficult to view a series of events, issues, or procedures through an objective lens. As a result – and with particular regard to our past – we produce a historical conception that is “exceedingly teleological,” perverting key processes by pulling them out of context and forcing them into a contrived chain of events (Hanioglu, p. 1). “It is often assumed,” Turkish professor and scholar, M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, writes, “that the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in Anatolia, and of the neighboring nation-states in the surrounding territories of the disintegrated Ottoman polity, was the inevitable and predictable result of the decline of a sprawling multinational empire,” (Hanioglu, p. 1). This retrospective examination of the late Ottoman Empire, however, has become an incredible handicap in analyzing this period as a whole. In reality, the build up of consular pressure from foreign imperial powers and broken diplomatic promises drove the Ottomans to collapse. American historian James Gelvin argues that the Husayn-McMahon correspondence, the Sykes-Picot agreement, and the Balfour declaration were largely “ineffective in determining the postwar settlement,” (Gelvin, p.
…show more content…
197). In fact, it was this strategic manipulation of the British during and after World War I that ultimately caused the dissolution of the once great Ottoman Empire. When the Ottomans first allied with the Germans in 1914, they were seen as neither a threat to the Entente powers nor as a particularly strong ally to their European counterparts; instead, they were seeking to avoid war altogether because of the heavy toll previous battles of the Balkan Wars and the Italian annexation of Libya and the Aegean Islands had taken on the Ottoman Army. And although the Entente powers began planning the postwar partition of the empire shortly after this new alliance, Britain quickly found itself pinned down by the surprisingly powerful combination of Ottoman and German resistance. In response to the wartime crisis, Britain reached out to Egypt for the beginning of what would become the “most extensive” of the wartime agreements regarding the partition of the Ottoman Empire (Rogan, p. 151). In return for a counter-declaration of jihad led by the Hashemite dynasty, the British High Commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, promised the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn bin Ali, a postwar independent Arab state. The Husayn-McMahon correspondence of 1915, however, completely contradicted two British agreements that followed. In October 1916, Britain and France created a secret pact for the partition of Syria and Mesopotamia amongst themselves, leaving Palestine as an international territory. Not only did Britain inevitably break its promise to the Sharif of Mecca in allowing it to control the vast majority of Syria amongst other Ottoman provinces, but it also neutralized the political authority over Palestine, another Arab guaranteed territory. The third of the British agreements was the Balfour Declaration – a pledge to the Zionist movement to create a Jewish national home in Palestine. This was, as professor and scholar Eugene Rogan quotes of a Palestinian observer, “a startling piece of double-dealing” by the British (Rogan, p. 153). Neither the Sykes-Picot Agreement nor the Balfour Declaration respected the spirit of the Husayn-McMahon correspondence, creating more problems than it had settled. Although Britain left the entire international community in an uneasy limbo state, it wasn’t until the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that it became clear that this diplomatic inefficacy would lead to the collapse of the Ottoman
197). In fact, it was this strategic manipulation of the British during and after World War I that ultimately caused the dissolution of the once great Ottoman Empire. When the Ottomans first allied with the Germans in 1914, they were seen as neither a threat to the Entente powers nor as a particularly strong ally to their European counterparts; instead, they were seeking to avoid war altogether because of the heavy toll previous battles of the Balkan Wars and the Italian annexation of Libya and the Aegean Islands had taken on the Ottoman Army. And although the Entente powers began planning the postwar partition of the empire shortly after this new alliance, Britain quickly found itself pinned down by the surprisingly powerful combination of Ottoman and German resistance. In response to the wartime crisis, Britain reached out to Egypt for the beginning of what would become the “most extensive” of the wartime agreements regarding the partition of the Ottoman Empire (Rogan, p. 151). In return for a counter-declaration of jihad led by the Hashemite dynasty, the British High Commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, promised the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn bin Ali, a postwar independent Arab state. The Husayn-McMahon correspondence of 1915, however, completely contradicted two British agreements that followed. In October 1916, Britain and France created a secret pact for the partition of Syria and Mesopotamia amongst themselves, leaving Palestine as an international territory. Not only did Britain inevitably break its promise to the Sharif of Mecca in allowing it to control the vast majority of Syria amongst other Ottoman provinces, but it also neutralized the political authority over Palestine, another Arab guaranteed territory. The third of the British agreements was the Balfour Declaration – a pledge to the Zionist movement to create a Jewish national home in Palestine. This was, as professor and scholar Eugene Rogan quotes of a Palestinian observer, “a startling piece of double-dealing” by the British (Rogan, p. 153). Neither the Sykes-Picot Agreement nor the Balfour Declaration respected the spirit of the Husayn-McMahon correspondence, creating more problems than it had settled. Although Britain left the entire international community in an uneasy limbo state, it wasn’t until the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that it became clear that this diplomatic inefficacy would lead to the collapse of the Ottoman