Week 4: The First World War

Mini Lecture

Seminar Readings:

Primary Source:

T. E. Lawrence on the Arabs during the war, read onlineLink opens in a new window

Secondary Readings:

Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, 'The Great War as a Global War: Imperial Conflict and the Reconfiguration of World Order, 1911-1923,' Diplomatic History 38, no.4 (2014): 786-800.

Robert T. Harrison, Chap. 10 ‘The Middle East in the Great War 1914-1918,’ in Britain in the Middle East, 1619-1971 (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), pp.121-140.

Eugene Rogan, ‘The Arab Revolt,’ in The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920 (London: Penguin, 2015).

Priya Satia, ‘Sideshows at the Center: British Campaigns in the Middle East during the Great War,’ in Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 71, no.1 (2016): 87-126.

Further Readings:

Eugene Rogan, ‘The First World War and its Legacy in the Middle East,’ in Amal Ghazal and Jens Hanssen (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 92-108.

Priya Satia, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Laila Fawaz, A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, The First World War in the Middle East (London: Hurst, 2009).

Hans-Lukas Kieser, Kerem Oktem and Maurus (eds.), World War I and the End of the Ottomans (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015).

Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Elie Kedourie, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and its Interpretations, 1914-1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2000).

Roger Adelson, London and the Invention of the Middle East: Money, Power, and War, 1902-1922 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

Matthew Hughes, Allenby in Palestine: The Middle East Correspondence of Field Marshal Viscount Allenby June 1917-October 1919 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2004).

James Kitchen, The British Imperial Army in the Middle East: Morale and Military Identity in the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns, 1916–1918 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

Charles Townshend, When God Made Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921 (London: Faber & Faber, 2010).

Touraj Atabaki, Iran and the First World War: Battleground of the Great Powers (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006).

Yigal Sheffy and Shlaul Shai (eds.), The First World War: Middle Eastern Perspective (Tel Aviv, 2000).

D. K. Fieldhouse, Western Imperialism in the Middle East, 1914–1958 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

John Townshend, Proconsul to the Middle East: Sir Percy Cox and the End of Empire (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010).

Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration (New York: Random House, 2010).

Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007).

David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914–1922 (London: Deutsch, 1989).

Engin Deniz Akarli, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)

Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Radika Singha, The Coolie's Great War: Indian Labour in A Global Conflict (London: Hurst, 2020).