The Great War in the Middle East.

• Author: Karaman, Fikriye
• Position: 'The First World War in the Middle East' 'A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War' 'The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East'

The First World War in the Middle East

By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

London: Hurst & Company, 2014, 320 pages, [pounds sterling]27.50, ISBN: 9781849042741

A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War

By Leila Tarazi Fawaz

Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2014, 416 pages, $35.00, ISBN: 9780674735491

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

By Eugene Rogan

New York: Basic Books, 2016, 512 pages, $23.00, ISBN: 9780465097425

The Great War and the Middle East

By Rob Johnson

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 354 pages, [pounds sterling]25, ISBN: 9780199683284

Inspired by the centenary of World War I (WWI), a plethora of history books have been released recently. This article reviews four of the latest studies on the Middle Eastern theater of WWI. Accelerating the fall of the Ottoman Empire and paving the way for the state system (notwithstanding under mandatory rule), WWI was essential to the formation of the modern Middle East. The legacies of WWI continue to be a source of contradictory interpretation and resentment in the Middle East.

The war not only irrevocably transformed the political structure in the region, it also upset the lives of its people, as it involved almost all socio-economic classes through combat, famine, widespread hardship, economic disruption or population displacements, "resulting from the carving out of competing and hostile spheres of influence and control" (Ulrichsen, p. 2). A decade of warfare comprised of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), WWI (1914-1918), and the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922) wreaked havoc across the Ottoman Empire, reducing its population by more than 20 percent. As Ulrichsen highlights, it is sobering to consider "this figure compared to the less than 1 percent decrease of the population of France, where most of the war's most iconic Western Front battles -for which the war is primarily remembered today- actually took place" (p. 3).

The Ottoman entry into WWI changed the parameters of the war. Surprising European policymakers and armies with its resilience, the Ottoman Empire fought effectively on multiple fronts from the mountains of the Caucasus to the beachheads of Gallipoli and the deserts of Mesopotamia, Greater Syria, and Sinai. The Empire disproved the Triple Entente's assumption that as the weakest link of the Central Alliance it could easily be knocked out of the war (Rogan, p. 75). The Ottoman front not only diverted vast numbers of troops that could otherwise have fought on western fronts, it also lengthened the war unexpectedly. Furthermore, with its multi-ethnic troops and Asian battlefields, it was the Ottoman front, besides the United States' intervention in the latter period, that turned Europe's great war into a world war. The Ottoman war zones were often the most international of WWI, as the English, Welsh, French, Scottish, and Irish combatants together with colonial troops from New Zealand, Australia, North Africa, South Asia, Sudan, and Senegal fought against the Turkish, Arab, Kurdish, Armenian, and Circassian soldiers in the Ottoman army and their German and Austrian allies (Rogan, p. xvii).

Despite its significance for the region and the international political economy, the Ottoman front has been treated as a 'sideshow' by most of the Euro-centric works on WWI, creating "a relative imbalance in the existing literature" (Johnson, p. ix). While the Allied side of the trenches has been comprehensively studied, as Rogan notes, "we are only just beginning to come to terms with the other side of the trenches -the experiences of Ottoman soldiers caught up in a desperate struggle for survival against powerful invaders" (Rogan, p. 16). The fact is that far from being peripheral 'sideshows' to the main theatre of the war in Europe, the Ottoman military campaigns in WWI played a pivotal role in reconfiguring the socio-political order of the Middle East and the world.

Aiming to release the Ottoman front from its erstwhile marginal coverage, four major works were published recently. Kristian Ulrichsen's The First World War in the Middle East is one of them. Composed of three parts and eight chapters, Ulrichsen's volume adopts a thematic structure with a multidisciplinary approach. Part I deals with the international political economy of the empires in the Middle East prior to the outbreak of WWI as well as the administrative, logistical, and ecological challenges of campaigning across the region. Part II thoroughly examines the military operations in the region. The final part analyzes the controversies of the wartime secret agreements, and the complications of the post-war settlements that eventually designed the modern Middle East.

Leila Tarazi Fawaz's A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War is another volume published in 2014. Fawaz sheds light on the experience and popular memory of WWI in the Middle East, particularly in Greater Syria. Comprised of chapters entitled "Everyday Heroes," "Living the Great War," "Entrepreneurs and Profiteers," "The Soldiering Experience," "South Asians in the War," and "War Memory," Fawaz's work renders the war not only a military...