Cover -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Maps -- Abbreviations -- 1. Introduction: Britain, Germany, and the Middle East, 1871-1904 -- 2. The Specter of Muslim Unrest and German Support, 1905-1914 -- 3. Germany as Wartime "Revolutionary," Fall 1914 -- 4. The Thickening Plot and Holy War, Fall 1914 -- 5. Failed Expectations on Both Sides, 1915 -- 6. The German Threat on the Periphery, 1915 -- 7. A Sense of Crisis on Both Sides, Fall 1915 -- 8. Britain as Wartime "Revolutionary": The Arab Revolt, 1916 -- 9. Toward an Allied Victory, 1917 -- 10. Epilogue: The War's End, 1918 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
This volume examines how the Ottoman Army was able to evolve and maintain a high level of overall combat effectiveness despite the primitive nature of the Ottoman State during the First World War. Structured around four case studies, at the operational and tactical level, of campaigns involving the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire: Gallipoli in 1915, Kut in 1916, Third Gaza-Beersheba in 1917, and Megiddo in 1918. For each of these campaigns, particular emphasis is placed on examining specific elements of combat effectiveness and how they affected that particular battle. The prevalent historiography attributes Ottoman battlefield success primarily to external factors - such as the presence of German generals and staff officers; climate, weather and terrain that adversely affected allied operations; allied bumbling and amateurish operations; and inadequate allied intelligence. By contrast, Edward J. Erickson argues that the Ottoman Army was successful due to internal factors, such as its organizational architecture, a hardened cadre of experienced combat leaders, its ability to organize itself for combat, and its application of the German style of war. Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I will be of great interest to students of the First World War, military history and strategic studies in general.
The campaigns fought by the Ottomans against the British in Palestine are often neglected in accounts of the Great War, yet they are fascinating from the point of view of military history and critically important because of their impact upon the modern Middle East. Edward Erickson's authoritative and absorbing account of the four-year struggle for control of Palestine between 1914 and 1918 of the battles fought for Suez, Sinai, Gaza, Jordan and Syria opens up this little-understood aspect of the global conflict and it does so in a strikingly original way, by covering the fighting from the Ottoman perspective. Using Turkish official histories and military archives, he recounts the entire course of the campaigns, from the initial attack by German-led Ottoman forces on Sinai and the Suez Canal, the struggle for Gaza and the outbreak of the Arab Revolt to the British offensives, the battle for Jerusalem, the Ottoman defeat at Megiddo and the rapid British advance which led to the capture of Damascus and Aleppo in 1918.
Edmund Allenby, Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe, as he became later, was the principal British military figure in the Middle East from 1917 to 1919. He fulfilled a similar proconsular role in Egypt from the latter year until 1925. In these two roles Allenby's eight years in the Middle East were of great impact, and in probing his life an especially revealing window can be found through which to observe closely and understand more fully the history that has resulted in the terminal roil afflicting the Middle East and international affairs today. In this biography Brad Faught explores the events and actions of Allenby's life, examining his thinking on both the British Empire and the post-World War I international order. Faught brings clarity to Allenby's decisive impact on British imperial policy in the making of the modern Middle East, and thereby on the long arc of the region's continuing and controversial place in world affairs.
Woodward uses graphic eyewitness accounts from the diaries, letters, and memoirs of British soldiers who fought in that war to describe in detail the genuine experience of the fighting and dying in Egypt and Palestine.
WINNER OF THE BRITISH ARMY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 'A riveting account of T. E. Lawrence's battles on and off the battlefield... Using scrupulous research and succinct prose, Johnson provides a gold mine of stratagems... a must-read for military leaders to come!' Arnel P. David, Lt Col, US Army Special Advisor to the Chief of the General Staff (UK) 'An innovative study of Lawrence that carefully and intelligently examines his campaigns and thinking on irregular warfare, and in doing so produces an accessible and intellectually stimulating work of military history.' James Kitchen, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst 'This is a major contribution to the literature on the Middle East in the Great War, and the history of military ideas - and it is highly relevant to contemporary armed force.' Professor Gary Sheffield, University of Wolverhampton Lawrence of Arabia is one of the most iconic figures of the First World War, seen by many as a heroic and romantic guerrilla leader in a period of savage and deeply impersonal industrial warfare. While Lawrence himself has been the subject of many biographies, and an award-winning film, the context of his war in the desert, and his ideas on war itself, are less well known. Lawrence of Arabia on War is a study of those ideas and of his campaign of irregular warfare which has informed tactical theory and decision-making down to the present day, juxtaposed alongside the operations conducted by the Ottoman Empire and those of the Allied army in Palestine. It explores the challenges he faced in a complex environment against a more numerous and better armed adversary, and the manner in which he assessed what was changing, what was distinctive, and what was unique to guerrilla warfare in the desert. Setting Lawrence in his historical context, it examines the peace settlement process he participated in during 1919–20, analyses how other military writers made use of his ideas, and describes the ways in which his legacy has informed and inspired those partnering and mentoring local forces today.
Dunes, sandstorms, freezing crags and searing heat; these are not the usual images of World War I. For many men from all over the British Empire, this was the experience of the Great War. Based on soldiers' accounts, this book reveals the hardships and complexity of British Empire soldiers' lives in this oft-forgotten but important campaign.
The British Empire played a crucial part in the First World War, supplying hundreds of thousands of soldiers and labourers as well as a range of essential resources, from foodstuffs to minerals, mules, and munitions. In turn, many imperial territories were deeply affected by wartime phenomena, such as inflation, food shortages, combat, and the presence of large numbers of foreign troops. This collection offers a comprehensive selection of essays illuminating the extent of the Empire’s war contribution and experience, and the richness of scholarly research on the subject. Whether supporting British military operations, aiding the British imperial economy, or experiencing significant wartime effects on the home fronts of the Empire, the war had a profound impact on the colonies and their people. The chapters in this volume were originally published in Australian Historical Studies, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, First World War Studies or The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs.
During World War I, the British Empire enlisted half a million young men, predominantly from the countryside of Egypt, in the Egyptian Labor Corps (ELC) and put them to work handling military logistics in Europe and the Middle East. British authorities reneged on their promise not to draw Egyptians into the war, and, as Kyle Anderson shows, the ELC was seen by many in Egypt as a form of slavery. The Egyptian Labor Corps tells the forgotten story of these young men, culminating in the essential part they came to play in the 1919 Egyptian Revolution. Combining sources from archives in four countries, Anderson explores Britain’s role in Egypt during this period and how the ELC came to be, as well as the experiences and hardships these men endured. As he examines the ways they coped—through music, theater, drugs, religion, strikes, and mutiny—he illustrates how Egyptian nationalists, seeing their countrymen in a state akin to slavery, began to grasp that they had been racialized as “people of color.” Documenting the history of the ELC and its work during the First World War, The Egyptian Labor Corps also provides a fascinating reinterpretation of the 1919 revolution through the lens of critical race theory.
