British imperial interests in Iraq during and after the First World War are well known and have often been studied. But what of British policy towards the Mesopotamian provinces before 1914? In this well-documented study, Stuart Cohen provides the first coherent account of growing British interest in these provinces, in which the defense of India, commercial considerations, the protection of Shia Muslim pilgrims, and fear of a German-dominated Berlin-to-Baghdad railway all had a vital role to play. First published in 1976 and now available in paperback for the first time, this book is essential reading not only for an understanding of the making of British policy towards the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire, but also of the last days of Turkish rule in Iraq itself.

First Published in 2004. Throughout the half-century between the Crimean War and the outbreak of the First World War, few countries confronted successive British governments with the complexity of problems posed by the Ottoman Empire. This study attempts to attain three main objectives. The first is an analysis of the growth and development of British policy at two levels: the Embassy and the Foreign Office. The second is an assessment of the influence of various embassies on decision-making in the Foreign Office. The third is an estimate of the influence of European and Imperial considerations upon the formulation of Britain's policy towards the Ottoman Empire.

Britain has been engaged in the Middle East for over two centuries. During the Napoleonic Wars it expelled the French from Egypt. During World War I it helped to dismantle the Ottoman empire. During World War II, it defeated the Italians and Germans. In the post-war years, it attempted to reassert its domination of the Middle East but with little success. Today British forces in the region are fighting ISIS. Variously seen as intruders by most of the local populations and nationalists and as protectors by local pliant rulers, the British have been key arbiters in Middle Eastern politics. They created new states, determined who could hold power, resolved disputes and offered security to their clients. In this major new study, Peter Mangold shows how Britain sought to protect its changing interests in the region and assesses the British response to Arab nationalism. He examines the successes and failures of British policy and the reasons it has often proved controversial and accident prone.And he evaluates Britain's complex legacy in the Middle East - its contribution to the stability of Jordan (at least to date) and the Gulf states, set against the instability which has plagued Iraq and the unresolved Palestine conflict. In tracing the history of Britain's relationship with the Middle East, Mangold reveals how Britain's involvement in the Middle East sowed the seeds for today's crises.

A study of Anglo-Iranian relations during World War I. This book analyzes such diplomacy as an example of great power politics in regional affairs, examining Britain's concern to maintain stability in Iran and exclude foreign interests from the Persian Gulf and the approaches to India.

Railway expansion was the great industrial project of the late 19th century, and the Great Powers built railways at speed and reaped great commercial benefits. The greatest imperial dream of all was to connect the might of Europe to the potential riches of the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire. In 1903 Imperial Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, began to construct a railway which would connect Berlin to the Ottoman city of Baghdad, and project German power all the way to the Persian Gulf. The Ottoman Emperor, Abdul Hamid II, meanwhile, saw the railway as a means to bolster crumbling Ottoman control of Arabia. Using new Ottoman Turkish sources, Murat Ozyuksel shows how the Berlin-Baghdad railway became a symbol of both rising European power and declining Ottoman fortunes. It marks a new and important contribution to our understanding of the geopolitics of the Middle East before World War I, and will be essential reading for students of empire, Industrial History and Ottoman Studies.

A milestone in the understanding of British history and imperialism, this ground-breaking book radically reinterprets the course of modern economic development and the causes of overseas expansion during the past three centuries. Employing their concept of 'gentlemanly capitalism', the authors draw imperial and domestic British history together to show how the shape of the nation and its economy depended on international and imperial ties, and how these ties were undone to produce the post-colonial world of today. Containing a significantly expanded and updated Foreword and Afterword, this third edition assesses the development of the debate since the book’s original publication, discusses the imperial era in the context of the controversy over globalization, and shows how the study of the age of empires remains relevant to understanding the post-colonial world. Covering the full extent of the British empire from China to South America and taking a broad chronological view from the seventeenth century to post-imperial Britain today, British Imperialism: 1688–2015 is the perfect read for all students of imperial and global history.

The Sykes -Picot Agreement map signed in May 1918 by the Imperial powers of Great Britain and France, constituted the blueprint for redrawing the map of the Middle East after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, by the victorious Allies thus dividing the Arab territories as well as Kurdistan into its current form. In this book, the author makes an ambitious attempt to provide a comprehensive new insight into the Kurdish national movement and its struggle against the mandatory power (the British) and the Iraqi government for achievement of national self-determination from 1918 to 1932. The book explores both Kurdish and Arab nationalism within the context of power relations in international politics at the time on the one hand, and in relation to domestic political development in Iraq on the other. Thereby, salient issues are explored, inter alia, the reasons for the British failure to create a modern national state in Iraq, the reluctance of the Anglo-Iraqi authorities to accommodate Kurdish rights and their policy to incorporate Kurdistan into the nascent Iraqi state, the U.S. interests and implication in the region, and the impact of the principle of self-determination advocated by President Wilson on Kurdish and Arab nationalism. Revised with a new chapter.