Gelvin The Modern Middle East Summary

In chapter ten of Gelvin’s The Modern Middle East, the state building process after World War One was discussed. This chapter focused on the states that were created by the decree of Great Britain and France. Gelvin focuses on the states that were created in the Levant and Mesopotamia. The states created are present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. The process in which these states were constructed was by the mandated power of Great Britain and France, and they were created in ways that benefited the Britain and France not the local population. To begin with, at the outbreak of World War One, Europe divided into two sides, the central powers and the entente powers. The central powers were comprised of Germany, Austria, …show more content…
Each of the entente powers, they had certain areas of the Middle East that they wanted to have control of. For example, Russia has always wanted a warm water port, specifically the Turkish Straits. They, also, were interested in the Ottoman Palestine area for religious reasons. France thought they had ‘historic rights’ to the area of Syria and Lebanon. It is this area which France wanted to possess. The British wanted to control land that protected their sea route to India. These are the areas in which the entente powers negotiated to obtain in their secret agreements. They made these agreements to control their other allies and to encourage others, not allied with the entente or central, to help the entente powers. As the war came to a close, the entente powers had won. Once victory was declared, the entente powers wanted to implement the secret agreements, but this never came to fruition. One reason for these agreements failing is the involvement of the United States and Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points.” Instead of using their secret agreements, a mandate system was developed and used to reorganize the Middle East into …show more content…
Their spoils were the territory of the fallen Ottoman Empire. They controlled this territory under the mandate system. Under this system, the territories were under the control of a sovereign state, in this case Britain and France, because they were not ready to run themselves. Furthermore, this system was supposed to take into account the needs and wants of the territories being mandated. Although this seemed like a positive of the system, it was not implemented when Britain and France divided the territories into states. In addition, the mandatory powers had complete control over the mandates. This meant that they could reorganize the territories however they saw fit. The ultimate goal of this program was to prepare the territories to become independent. Even though this was not how Britain and France wanted to gain control of the Middle East, they accepted the mandate system so they could still control the areas that benefited them the most. Under the mandate system, France got control of the areas of Syria and Lebanon, while Britain got Israel, Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Iraq. When Britain and France organized the territory into states, they did it in a way that was most beneficial to themselves. In doing this, the new states that were developed caused major issues that still affect the area in the present. For example, the Palestine/ Israel conflict started during this time period and