Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.

Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection is David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East." Published in 1989, Fromkin's book is a majestic work that examining how decisions made during and after World War I by European powers, particularly Great Britain and France, led to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent formation of the modern Middle East. The book explores in fascinating detail the complex interplay of diplomacy, military strategy and, of course, imperial ambition that served to reshape the region between 1914 and 1922 and gave rise, for better or worse, to the Middle East as we know it today.

The British and the French, established arbitrary borders and political entities, without much understanding of the region's ethnic and religious complexities, thereby sowing the seeds for many of the conflicts that are ongoing 100 years later.​ Worse, the imperial powers' eagerness to control strategic territories led to their issuing innumerable promises and pursuing differing policies, such as the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot Agreement, that were obviously in conflict with one another and would lead to years of bitter recriminations.

Great Britain, in particular, made contradictory commitments during World War I: promising Arab independence to Sharif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali--disclosed in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence--while simultaneously supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland through the Balfour Declaration.

Fromkin begins by examining the late Ottoman Empire, highlighting the internal and external pressures leading to its decline. The Young Turks' revolution aimed to modernize the empire and restore parliamentary democracy. However, their efforts often alienated non-Turkish minorities, exacerbating internal divisions and weakening the empire's cohesion. In 1914, the Young Turks, desperate to retain their crumbling empire, made a fateful decision to ally themselves with Germany. The decision led to their war, military defeat and the final disintegration of the Ottoman empire at the hands of the British and French.

As a consequence, the victorious powers redrew the map of the Middle East, creating new states such as Iraq, Transjordan and Lebanon. Fromkin argues that these borders were drawn with little regard for historical, ethnic, or religious realities, leading to artificial states prone to instability and conflict. Into the vacuum came also all sorts of mandates and protectorates.

The newly-created League of Nations established mandates, supposedly a form of international trusteeship designed to prepare native populations for self-rule. Fromkin however shows the mandates were often little more than imperial rule in disguise. France received mandates for Syria and Lebanon; Great Britain received Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine.

Fromkin gives significant attention to Iraq, describing it as a prime example of an “invented state.” Britain created the state by combining three former Ottoman provinces--Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. The provinces however had very different ethnic and sectarian compositions:a Sunni Arab minority, a Shia Arab majority and a Kurdish population. To keep the country together, Britain installed Faisal ibn Hussein, a Hashemite prince who had fought alongside T.E. Lawrence. Fromkin argues that this was symptomatic of Britain’s failure to address ethnic or sectarian tensions, relying instead on dynastic solutions.

When it comes to Mandatory Palestine, the British were particularly negligent and reckless, showering promises on one side or another that they had no hope or intention of keeping. The Arabs were promised independence; the Zionists, via the Balfour Declaration, were promised a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, albeit "without prejudicing the rights of existing non-Jewish communities," whatever that meant. To the British, Palestine was valuable as a buffer zone for the Suez Canal and a military staging point in the Eastern Mediterranean.

As Fromkin describes it, British administrators quickly lost control over events in Palestine. Communal violence erupted between Jews and Arabs in the early 1920s and continued without interruption through the following decades. London wavered between contradictory policies, severely damaging its credibility with both sides.

Fromkin is equally harsh when it comes to the other entities the British and French created: Transjordan was a British-invented monarchy, ruled by King Abdullah, another Hashemite. Syria and Lebanon were divided by the French in a way that reinforced sectarian divisions, especially in Lebanon.

"A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East" is very well worth reading. The arbitrary borders and governance structures established in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman empire clearly continue to influence Middle Eastern geopolitics and helps explain why the region remained so unstable--not to mention the enduring and unresolved nature of overlapping nationalist claims, especially in the land that was once the British Mandate of Palestine.