A Peace to End All Peace

Description

David Fromkin examines how the modern Middle East emerged from the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the choices Allied governments made during and after World War I. Covering 1914 through 1922, he follows wartime strategy, imperial competition, diplomatic promises, negotiations, and territorial settlements, with particular attention to the British officials who tried to arrange the region’s political future. The narrative connects decisions made in European offices and conference rooms to borders, governments, and rival claims whose consequences outlasted their makers. Rather than treating the postwar map as inevitable, Fromkin reconstructs the contingencies and competing ambitions behind it, asking how a proposed peace helped create enduring instability and why states designed by distant powers proved unable to settle the conflicts they inherited.

Themes