War and Imperial Policy in the Middle East 1918–1919

Abstract

The military occupation of the Middle East at the end of 1918 by British and Indian armies of nearly a million men marked the complete collapse there of the old international order, and heralded a revolution in British imperial policy. The dissolution of the Tsarist empire, and the defeat of Germany and Turkey, transformed the circumstances which had governed British policy in this region for a century and, all at once, made Britain the dominant political and military power in the lands between India in the east, the Caspian in the north, and Constantinople in the west.