The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920

《中东大战》将是第一本全面介绍第一次世界大战期间中东和北非历史的书，并将在2014年战争爆发一百周年之际出版。这本书将基于对阿拉伯、土耳其和西方资料的最新研究，包括档案和出版资料，以所有交战国家的观点为基础，提供一个平衡的叙述。虽然有很多关于西线的研究，但还没有一个关于中东一战的全面描述。这更令人惊讶的是，与西线的静态杀戮场不同，中东的战争发展迅速，难以预测。英国和自治领原本有望战胜奥斯曼帝国的战役，却在达达尼尔海峡和美索不达米亚遭到了彻底的失败。《中东大战》将是第一本考察所有中东战线的书——埃及、加里波利、美索不达米亚、阿拉伯起义和巴勒斯坦战役。虽然有很多关于个别运动的书（仅关于T.E.劳伦斯和阿拉伯起义的书就有几十本），但它们很少涉及中东其他地区的运动。然而，不同的战线显然是有联系的。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失败的尝试，最终以库特阿马拉的灾难性投降告终。许多参加加里波利战役的英国和奥斯曼士兵再次参加了巴勒斯坦战役。这种联系体现在T.E.劳伦斯在阿拉伯起义中使用的步枪中，现在保存在帝国战争博物馆。这把步枪是从加利波利一名死去的英国士兵身上收集来的，作为战利品送给了大马士革的奥斯曼指挥官Cemal Pasha，后者后来把它送给了麦加的埃米尔·费萨尔（Amir Faisal），后者又把它交给了劳伦斯，让他转而对抗土耳其人。正如劳伦斯的步枪经过许多人的手所证明的那样，共同研究中东战场比各自孤立地研究要有意义得多。这本书将论述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，对中东平民来说，战争年代是一段极其艰难的时期。成千上万的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，因为中东的许多地区都成为了军事行动的战场。平民被迫按照奥斯曼政府设定的价格交付农作物和牲畜，并以纸币支付，而纸币在战争过程中变得越来越一文不值。英国和法国对地中海东部实施海上封锁，封锁了食品和粮食的主要贸易路线。在两年的作物歉收之后，叙利亚的大部分海岸线都陷入了饥荒，据报道，数十万人在饥荒中丧生。成千上万的奥斯曼平民遭受流放，亚美尼亚人成为第一次现代种族灭绝的目标，因为他们真正或可疑地忠于俄罗斯。最后，这本书将研究战争导致的政治发展，包括奥斯曼帝国阿拉伯省份民族主义运动的出现，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完全的法国公民身份。这本书将展示中东如何将欧洲冲突变成世界大战，以及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.