The First World War in the Middle East

摘要

This punchy, wide-ranging and concise treatment of the First World War in the Middle East is the first study of the Great War in this region - although with Eugene Rogan recently publishing his The Fall of the Ottomans (Basic Civitas, 2014), it will not be the last. The first few pages are hard going; nevertheless, Ulrichsen gets into his stride quickly, with a fine canter through all the major operational areas. Concise it may be at a mere 300 pages, but thin it is certainly not. The scene is set with useful studies of the 1914 political economy of the region and the environmental factors which impacted most strongly on the military campaigning of all combatants. The book then moves onto narrative, strongly buttressed by incisive commentary in the central chapters on the various well-known campaigns of the Middle Eastern theatre. They are all well-covered including Gallipoli and its often-forgotten coda Salonika in northern Greece where an Anglo-French force, much of it deployed from the failed Gallipoli campaign, fought to knock Bulgaria out of the war. This was not in the Middle East but it did have an impact on the role of Turkey. The chapters on the Caucasus, Iraq, and Egypt and Palestine are excellent. In this anniversary year of the genocide of the Armenians and other, mainly Christian, minorities, it is worth mentioning that the author does not shy away from calling history by its name and giving it due and respectful treatment.