The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920

《中东大战》将是第一次世界大战中中东和北非的第一部综合历史，并将于2014年战争爆发一百周年之际出版。这本书将基于对阿拉伯语、土耳其语和西方资料的新研究，包括档案和出版物，以提供一个基于所有交战国视角的平衡叙述。虽然有许多关于西方战线的研究，但还没有一个全面的中东大战的描述。这一点更令人惊讶，因为与西线的静态杀戮场不同，中东战争是快速移动和不可预测的。英国和自治领的战役本可以指望战胜奥斯曼人，但却遭遇了彻底的失败--在达达尼尔海峡以及美索不达米亚。中东的大战将是第一本考察所有中东战线的书--埃及，加利波利，美索不达米亚，阿拉伯起义和巴勒斯坦战役。虽然有许多关于个人竞选的书（有几十本关于T.E.的书）。劳伦斯和阿拉伯起义单独），他们很少在中东其他地区的运动。然而，不同的战线显然是相互联系的。达达尼尔海峡的僵局迫使英国指挥官在1914年对巴格达进行了一次命运多舛的尝试，最终在库特阿马拉灾难性地投降。许多在加利波利作战的英国和奥斯曼士兵将在巴勒斯坦战役中再次作战。这种联系在T.E.使用的步枪中得到了体现。阿拉伯起义中的劳伦斯，现保存于帝国战争博物馆。这把步枪是从加利波利一名阵亡的英国士兵身上捡来的，作为战利品送给了大马士革的奥斯曼指挥官杰马尔·帕夏，后者后来把它送给了麦加的埃米尔费萨尔，费萨尔又把它送给了劳伦斯，让他转而对抗土耳其人。正如劳伦斯的步枪穿过的许多人的手所证明的那样，一起研究中东战场比孤立地研究中东战场更有意义。这本书将讨论战争对中东社会的影响。随着外国军队的到来，该地区见证了电力，汽车和飞机等新技术的引入。然而，战争年代被认为是中东平民遭受巨大苦难的时期。数十万人被征召到奥斯曼军队服役。埃及人被招募为劳工团伙，以协助英国在西方的战争努力。成千上万的北非人被征召到西线的法国军队服役。此外，战争近在咫尺，中东许多地区成为军事行动的战场。平民被迫按照奥斯曼政府设定的价格运送农作物和牲畜，并以纸币支付，在战争过程中，纸币变得越来越一文不值。英国和法国对东地中海实施了海上封锁，封锁了粮食和谷物的主要贸易路线。经过两年的作物歉收，叙利亚海岸线的大部分地区陷入饥荒，据报道数十万人死亡。数以千计的奥斯曼平民遭受流亡，亚美尼亚人成为第一个现代种族灭绝的目标，因为他们真实的或怀疑对俄罗斯的忠诚。最后，本书将探讨战争所导致的政治发展，包括奥斯曼帝国阿拉伯省份民族主义运动的兴起，犹太复国主义的兴起，埃及独立的愿望，以及在西线为法国作战的北非人要求获得完整的法国公民身份。这本书将展示中东如何将一场欧洲冲突变成一场世界大战，以及这场战争如何创造了现代中东。

The Great War in the Middle East will be the first comprehensive history of the Middle East and North Africa in the First World War, and will be published to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the war in 2014. The book will be based on new research in Arabic, Turkish and Western sources, both archival and published, to provide a balanced narrative based on the perspectives of all belligerent states involved.While there are numerous studies of the Western Front, there has yet to be a comprehensive account of the Great War in the Middle East. This is all the more surprising for, unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was quick moving and unpredictable. British and Dominion campaigns that might have expected to prevail over the Ottomans instead met with total defeat -- in the Dardanelles as well as in Mesopotamia.The Great War in the Middle East will be the first book to examine all of the Middle Eastern fronts - Egypt, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, the Arab Revolt and the Palestine Campaign. While there are numerous books about individual campaigns (there are scores of books on T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt alone), they seldom address campaigns in other parts of the Middle East. Yet the different fronts were clearly linked. Stalemate in the Dardanelles drove British commanders to make an ill-fated attempt on Baghdad in 1914 ending in the disastrous surrender at Kut al-Amara. Many of the same British and Ottoman soldiers who fought in Gallipoli were to fight again in the Palestine campaign. Such connections are captured in the rifle used by T.E. Lawrence in the Arab Revolt, now preserved in the Imperial War Museum. The rifle was collected from a dead British soldier in Gallipoli and given as a trophy to the Ottoman commander Cemal Pasha in Damascus, who later presented it to the Amir Faisal of Mecca, who in turn gave it to Lawrence to turn against the Turks. As the many hands Lawrence's rifle passed through demonstrate, it makes far more sense to study the Middle Eastern battlefields together than in isolation of each other.The book will address the impact of war on Middle Eastern societies. With the arrival of foreign troops, the region witnessed the introduction of new technologies like electricity, the motor car and the airplane. Yet the war years were remembered as a time of great hardship for civilians in the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands were conscripted to serve in the Ottoman army. Egyptians were recruited for labour gangs to assist the British war effort in the West. North Africans were conscripted in their tens of thousands to serve in the French army in the Western Front. Moreover, the war was close at hand, as many parts of the Middle East became theaters of military operations. Civilians were forced to deliver crops and livestock at prices set by the Ottoman government and paid for in paper money that became increasingly worthless in the course of the war. The British and French imposed a maritime blockade on the Eastern Mediterranean that blocked key trade routes for food and grain. After two years of crop failures, much of the Syrian coastline was reduced to famine, in which hundreds of thousands were reported to have died. Thousands of Ottoman civilians suffered exile and the Armenians became the target of the first modern genocide for their real or suspected loyalties to Russia. Finally, the book will examine the political developments that resulted from the war, including the emergence of nationalist movements in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Zionism, aspirations for independence in Egypt, and claims for full French citizenship by North Africans who fought for France on the Western Front. The book will demonstrate how the Middle East turned a European conflict into a world war, and how the war created the modern Middle East.