Customer Reviews

A Peace to End All Peace, 20th Anniversary Edition: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

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I am reading the Kindle version of "A Peace to End All Peace" but also own the paperback edition of this excellent book. The Kindle version is less functional than the print edition for people who frequently consult the bibliography and index when reading non-fiction.

The Kindle edition's bibliography lacks the paperback's hanging indent format. All lines are left-justified, making the page look like a solid, undifferentiated mass of words. It is hard to see where each entry begins and to look up particular authors.

In addition, one cannot use the Kindle edition's index to navigate to relevant passages in the main text. Because the original page numbers do "not match the pages in your eBook", the index shows only "the terms that appear in the print index". I have had uneven success with the suggested alternative of using "the search function on your eReading device". Further, the lack of formatting that hobbles the Kindle edition's bibliography also reduces the readability and usefulness of its index (i.e., list of terms) as a search aid. No hanging indents or other formatting techniques visually set off multi-line entries from entries that precede or follow them.

As someone new to the Kindle, I don't know how common these formatting and functionality problems are for non-fiction eBooks generally, or how difficult it would be to resolve them. I do know, however, that bibliographies and indexes are an integral part of the reading experience. If eBooks are to become a competitive reading option for non-fiction, especially scholarly works, their bibliographies and indexes need to be as functional as their hard-copy counterparts' are.
A Peace to End All Peace, 20th Anniversary Edition: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of A Peace to End All Peace, 20th Anniversary Edition: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

Fromkin delivers what he promises; how after the fall of the Ottoman Empire during the Great War, the modern Middle East was basically drawn in the map. He explains how the Englishmen were ignorant in Middle Eastern affairs and how the religious fervor in both continents shaped many of the events recounted in the book. The story has a very clear arch. The formation of the Middle East is a counterpoint to the destruction of the Old European Order after the First World War.

Where the book fails is in its internal dynamic. For some people this book lacks details, for others it has too much. I was annoyed by both, some parts of the book don't have detail at all, others are overwhelming. This makes the reading a bit uneven from chapter to chapter, with a consequential loss of insight. Fromkin claims that Chruchill is the central and structural character that shapes the book. I found that to be a failed enterprise.

On the other hand, the book is a very interesting reading, it demystifies a lot, and the insights at the beginning, and specially at the end are really worthwhile. The thesis is that, if Europe needed 1000 years to shape itself after the fall of the Roman Empire, how many year does the Middle East need?

The book has really good information on how the modern middle east came to be, but the layout of the book is sometimes confusing. The timeline jumps around a bit, and the number of people involved make it difficult to understand what is going on at times. Nevertheless, if you take the time, you will learn a great deal from this book.

This is an absolutely first-rate history book: it covers the complexity without simplification, yet tells a riveting story with a huge cast of larger than life characters (Churchill, Ataturk, Lenin, Lawrence of Arabia, and many others). It is also superlatively written.

The book begins with the machinations leading up to the Great War. The Ottoman Empire - in decline for over 300 years, yet a useful "buffer" for the Western powers against the Russian Empire in the "Great Game" - is finally coming apart with the rise of the western-minded "young Turks." That means that it is finally collapsing and Britain and France must decide whether to continue to prop up its vast territorial holdings or to nakedly seek to carve up its territories for the benefit of their own empires. France coveted Syria and Lebanon, GB the rest. In the end, it is what they got.

Once the Great War began, however, the Turks allied themselves with the Germans, for which CHurchill was unjustly blamed (he confiscated two destroyers that Britain's shipyards had just manufactured for the Turks). This led directly to the catastrophically mismanaged invasion of the Dardanelles, in a bid to end the War by pushing a wedge into the Germanic coalition from the South, again Churchill's idea. (Amazingly, the collapse of Bulgaria was what finally ended WWI 4 years later, as the allies entered the gap). As the Turks rallied, the allies turned to making alliances with the Arabs and others under loose Turkish suzerainty.

The greatest accomplishment of the book is to dissect the mentality of British policymakers, which by today's standards was almost ghoulishly primitive. First, they had a 19C colonialist bias, which meant that they were by nature destined to rule the "brown" races, from India to Arabia, for their own good. WHile there was much strategic calculation, such as guarding the Suez canal for freighter traffic, it was principally to maintain the glory of the British Empire as conceived under Queen Victoria. Second, they utterly lacked basic knowledge of not just the Turks, but also the Arabs and Zionists. For example, beyond sensationalist and romantic travel literature, the only available source to understand the Turk was a history written in the 18C! Few of the aristocratic elite spoke any of the languages and most were openly racist and anti-semitic. Third, there were conspiracy theories that would appear absolutely lunatic today (to paraphrase Fromkin). Thus, there were top policy-makers who actually believed that Jews controlled not just the young Turks, but also the emerging Bolshievics and even the German Kaiser's inner circle!

This ignorance and arrogant disregard for other points of view would be laughable were they not responsible for the decisions that set up the system of shakey nation states we see today in the Middle East. To cultivate the non-existent Jewish cabal, the Brits came up with the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the validity of a zionist state. (Interestingly, like many fundamentalists today, this support gained indispensable credence because a state of Jews in Palestine was a Biblical prerequisite for Armageddon and the assumed ascension of Christians to paradise.) In addition, the Brits designated several families, including the Hashemites - Aristocrats chosen first by the Turks and educated in the Harem of the Sublime Port - as a way to gain control over all Arabs tribes as they believed they would obey the dictates of the highest religious authority. Once the Brits chose these people, they were stuck with them, which was how the new states eventually were established.

As the War came to an end, GB and France - now distrustful of eachothers' imperial ambitions to the point that they almost went to war! - were unable to devote attention and resources to nation building, though this did not stop them from setting up what were supposed to become modern states in places that knew neither secular politics nor any sense of national purpose. They just installed people they hoped they could trust (read "control"), which explains who became leaders of what petty kingdoms at that time. Many, though not all of them are still there and almost completely lack political legitimacy over vast territories that were governed by independent tribes under a loose Turkish confederation. It is no wonder that these artificial constructs are so unstable, mixing peoples with modern weaponry and infrastructure who for centuries were isolated and divided by religion, ethnicity, and power politics. The new leaders and their subjects had little idea how to wield the tools of the modern state, while nascent nationalisms were undermining the western empires.

This is the story of the greatest watershed of the 20C: sowing the seeds of the end of western domination as the impulse grew in colonial peoples to govern themselves. Not only did Turkey reinvent itself, but the Soviet Union was born, and the western powers (with the exception of the US) had squandered their human and financial resources catastrophically. Amazingly, what was going on in the Middle East at that time was seen as a backwater sideshow: virtually no one recognized the magnitude of change that was unleashed.

If there is any failing of the book, it is its less diligent effort to penetrate the minds of the Arabs and Turks. The author brilliantly delineates the moribund reasoning from within the 19C western empires, but does not explain what the powerful indigenous peoples were thinking and feeling.

the best and most lucid book on the genesis of the middle east situation.

Caution for Kindle users: the Kindle version of the 2009 edition actually downloads the original 1989 edition, so there's no author's afterward, which can be partially read in the Look Inside. I got about halfway through before realizing this, then asked for and got a refund. For what it's worth, I agree with the reviewers who said that it's a broad overview and the timeline flexes, which is annoying and confusing.

I never thought it was a great idea to bring democracy to the Middle East. I thought 2002 would be a good year to start spending money to get free of oil, rather than fighting a war that had, as an element, protecting supplies of oil. There was too much to overcome. It sounded good, but it seemed fatally flawed.

This is a great book if you want to know how some very broad historical forces come into play in a region that troubles us mightily. Many things are not right. There is a colonial sweep that brings most of the world into a European perspective, but not in the Middle East, as World War One begins. But, that War brings down the Ottoman Empire, and that splits the Empire into a Turkish country, other elements of Islam, plus (very importantly) the Zionists.

Although France, Britain, Russia and the Turks get slices of this region, Colonialism is failing, so the European element is far from sound. The Jews are very successful, eventually, in building a country, as was 'planned' at the end of World War One. Alas, this was never worked out with the surrounding countries, and none of it has held together very well, aside from what is now Israel. Europeans cared, during the War, but they had lost interest a half dozen years later. Good things were not happening in the 20's and 30's, and no country stands out as exemplifying great ideas for unity and peace.

Arguably, the US picked up the colonial banner, as it headed off to fight in the Middle East more recently. But the US had retreated from the World in the 20's. Our goals seem lofty enough (today), the goals of statesman. Alas, the books suggests, though this is not the purpose, this is not remotely easy. The history shows that change in the Middle East is very daunting. There are some explanations for why this is so, but as a region the Middle East seems to be different. This book is mostly about an unending sequence of blunders in European foreign policy. Churchill may look better than most, but that is not saying too much. The US seems to be trying to build a policy on a foundation of blunders a century ago.

The detailed analysis of British, French, Italian, and Greek actions probably shows how frail and impractical Colonialism had become in this century. No one learned the 'lessons' of World War One, and it left more loose ends than it cleared up. There's a pretty direct line from say, 1922, to the world as it exists today. The same tensions exist, like The West versus Islam, the Jews versus Arabs or elements of Islam.

I guess the point may be that there were no real solutions in 1922. Turkey is something of a success, as is Israel, but neither is enough to say the region 'works'. It just doesn't work, and people who continue with 1922 kinds of answers may be doomed to continued lack of success. We simply cannot find a common language in the Middle East. A hundred years of almost total failure is a long time.

This is a history of the decisions affectin the middle east that ultimately created the middle east we are left with today. While many people were not in agreement with the Pico - Sykes agreement, including Sykes himself, by the time the 1st world war ended the allies were stuck with it and it become the blueprint that ultimately created the modern middle east.
I found the book very informative, well written and full of insights into the modern delimma.

"A Peace to End All Peace" examines the events during WWI which set the stage for the modern Middle East. This book offers only a broad understanding of the period. There are much better historic resources to turn if one really wants an educated appreciation of the Middle East (i.e. Charles Smith's works). However, "Peace" reads well and offers enough basic information to give one the ability to carry on a superficial assessment of the region.

... is it not, that people in the Middle East cannot purchase the Kindle edition of this very important book about the creation of states and borders in the Middle East!