The Middle East during World War I
When World War I broke out in 1914, modern armies had already become dependent on oil. The British military acquired most of its oil from the Persian Gulf region, which the Ottoman Empire was perfectly positioned to choke off. To avoid this scenario, an Anglo-Indian force captured Al Basrals (Basra) in Southern Iraq in November 1915. In 1916 the British captured Al Kut (Kut al Irnara). They tried but failed to break Ottoman resistance at Baghdad.
The Turks promptly launched a counterattack. Turkish forces recaptured Al Kut from the British. The Ottomans took 10,000 British prisoners of war. Nearly 7,000 of them would die from mistreatment.
The tide turned in 1917, when the British retook Al Kut. On March 11, the British were in possession of Baghdad. The same year, the famed Colonel T.E. Lawrence inspired the Arabs to revolt. The momentum against the Ottomans increased as British forces drove into Palestine. The Union Jack flew over Jerusalem three weeks before Christmas.
The Mandates of France and Britain
The Allies dissolved the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I; but they didn’t simply grant independence to the empire’s former possessions in Middle East. The European nations of the early twentieth century still had imperialist inclinations. Moreover, after fighting World War I, they were intent on “dividing the spoils” of war. During the peace negotiations that followed the war’s end, these motivations frequently put them at odds with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who wanted the peace agreement to embody the ideals of democracy and self-determination.
Wilson’s intercession prevented the Middle East from being carved into outright colonies of the victorious European powers. Instead, a system of “mandates” was created, whereby France and Britain would govern former Ottoman lands at the behest of the League of Nations. The so-called British and French mandates were distributed as follows:
British Mandate: present-day Syria and Lebanon
French Mandate: present-day Israel (Palestine), Jordan, and Iraq