297. Gaza in WW1: A Rematch For Gallipoli (Part 7)

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durymple. And I'm delighted to say we are joined once again by the brilliant Eugene Rogan, author of The Arabs and the Fall of the Ottomans. In the last episode, Eugene, we were talking about the simmering tensions that existed and uh the way in which the Ottoman Empire was not in favour of any kind of nationalism at all because it was basically a signal of the end of the Ottoman Empire.

If you had places breaking away and having their own identity and not referring to the centre, that would be it for them. And we are talking largely about World War One in this episode, which will inevitably lead to the end of the Ottoman Empire. So can you paint us a picture of this region on the eve of war? What is actually happening and how much are they aware that the war is going to affect them?

Well, in a sense, for the Arab world, the First World War was going to bring certain transformative realities home to roost. So the Ottoman Empire, which had for four centuries been the only state they'd ever known, would fall. and national identities would emerge to carve the region at the same time that European imperial powers are going to be defining their own interests in the eastern Mediterranean. And through all of this, the position of the Zionist movement was going to get an unprecedented boost when it received an endorsement from one of the great powers of the world. So really the First World War is the great transformative moment.

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