In The Makers of the Modern Middle East, historians T.G. Fraser, Andrew Mango and Robert McNamara tell the story of how today's Middle East was created from the remains of the Ottoman Empire during the peace negotiations at the end of the First World War.
The future of the Middle East was a side issue in the Paris peace talks, which an American diplomat described as "the great loot of the war." The Allies came to the table prepared to divide the region among themselves. France had its eye on Syria. Britain was concerned with securing the oilfields of modern Iraq and the route to India. Greece and Italy wanted pieces of Ottoman Europe.
The Allies weren't the only powers that had an interest in the future of the region. Prince Feisal, who led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire with British aid, hoped to build an Arab kingdom based on Syria and Palestine. Dr. Chaim Weizmann had laid the groundwork for British support of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, created the modern, secular Turkish republic against Allied opposition.
Fraser and his co-authors weave the details of competing territorial claims, conflicting political agreements, ignored reports and colorful characters into a narrative as intricate as an Oriental rug, with a warp of Allied imperial ambitions and a weft of the emerging Arab nationalism, Turkish nationalism and Zionism. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins