A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (Paperback)
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Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace is a challenging read, but the reader is rewarded with a much clearer understanding of the causes of so many of the regions problems. In a nutshell the inept, myopic and largly ignorant...
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Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace is a challenging read, but the reader is rewarded with a much clearer understanding of the causes of so many of the regions problems. In a nutshell the inept, myopic and largly ignorant bureaucracy of the Entente Powers (Britian and France specifically) laid the foundation for the issues the Middle East now struggles with. From the Sykes and Balfour proposals in Palestine, to the support given the Saud family in Arabia, to the creation of "Trans-Jordan", "Iraq" and "Kuwait" (all of which were artifically created entitites desigend to suit the needs of the European powers) we see the rivalries and tensions that persist to the present day emerge, as voices of reason (T.E. Lawrence, for example) are drowned out by bureaucrats. While Fromkin argues that European involvement in the Middle East had been ongoing for nearly a century by 1918, the bulk of the book is concerned with events between 1917 - 1922. The result was a hodge-podge mosaic of European "mandates" (ie. colonies) and locally run fiefdoms (such as Arabia). Little wonder the area is known for its political instability. A Peace to End all Peace is balanced in its approach to the subject and its treatment of key figures (both European, Jew, and Arab). The only criticism I have is its emphasis on politics at the expense of social and economic factors. It seems to me that one of the major flaws in the creation of the modern Middle East was a lack of understanding of local society and economics - a fact that persists to this day, and an obstacle to the establishment of effective communication between West and East. Nonetheless, I recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in a deeper examination of the Middle East. Comment | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)
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