A Peace to End All Peace Quotes

“Decisions, by all accounts, including those of the participants, were made with little knowledge of, or concern for, the lands and peoples about which and whom the decisions were being made.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“The European powers at that time believed they could change Moslem Asia in the very fundamentals of its political existence, and in their attempt to do so introduced an artificial state system into the Middle East that has made it into a region of countries that have not become nations even today. The basis of political life in the Middle East—religion—was called into question by the Russians, who proposed communism, and by the British, who proposed nationalism or dynastic loyalty, in its place. Khomeini's Iran in the Shi'ite world and the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere in the Sunni world keep that issue alive. The French government, which in the Middle East did allow religion to be the basis of politics—even of its own—championed one sect against the others; and that, too, is an issue kept alive, notably in the communal strife that has ravaged Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East

“لقد كان عصرا اصطُنِعت فيه بلدانُ الشرق الأوسط وحدودُه في أوروبا؛ فالعراق وما نسميه الآن الأردن- على سبيل المثال- هما اختراعان بريطانيان، والخطوط رُسِمت على خارطة بيضاء من قبل سياسيين بريطانيين بعد الحرب العالمية الأولى، بينما أُنشِئت حدود المملكة العربية السعودية والكويت والعراق من قِبل موظف مدني بريطاني عام 1922. ورَسَمت فرنسا الحدودَ بين المسلمين والمسيحيين في سوريا ولبنان. ورَسَمت روسيا الحدودَ بين المسلمين والمسيحيين في أرمينيا وأذربيجان السوﭬياتة.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East

“In fact there was an outside force linked to every one of the outbreaks of violence in the Middle East, but it was the one force whose presence remained invisible to British officialdom. It was Britain herself. In a region of the globe whose inhabitants were known especially to dislike foreigners, and in a predominantly Moslem world which could abide being ruled by almost anybody except non-Moslems, a foreign Christian country ought to have expected to encounter hostility when it attempted to impose its own rule. The shadows that accompanied the British rulers wherever they went in the Middle East were in fact their own.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“European statesmen of the First World War era did—to some extent—recognize the problem and its significance. As soon as they began to plan their annexation of the Middle East, Allied leaders recognized that Islam’s hold on the region was the main feature of the political landscape with which they would have to contend. Lord Kitchener, it will be remembered, initiated in 1914 a policy designed to bring the Moslem faith under Britain’s sway. When it looked as though that might not work—for the Sherif Hussein’s call to the Faithful in 1916 fell on deaf ears—Kitchener’s associates proposed instead to sponsor other loyalties (to a federation of Arabic-speaking peoples, or to the family of King Hussein, or to about-to-be-created countries such as Iraq) as a rival to pan-Islam. Indeed they framed the postwar Middle East settlement with that object (among others) in view.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“warships”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“By the time that the war came to an end, British society was generally inclined to reject the idealistic case for imperialism (that it would extend the benefits of advanced civilization to a backward region) as quixotic, and the practical case for it (that it would be of benefit to Britain to expand her empire) as untrue.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“it should be on an issue directly between us and them.”7 America should not be tied to Allied war goals, whatever their merits; Americans should not be asked to die for other people’s causes.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“The Russian Imperial Chancellor, Prince Gorchakov, put it more or less in those terms in 1864 in a memorandum in which he set forth his goals for his country. He argued that the need for secure frontiers obliged the Russians to go on devouring the rotting regimes to their south. He pointed out that “the United States in America, France in Algiers, Holland in her colonies—all have been drawn into a course where ambition plays a smaller role than imperious necessity, and the greatest difficulty is knowing where to stop.”6”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“In”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“[T]he sheer magnitude of Britain’s commitment and loss at Gallipoli made it seem vital years later that she should play a major role in the postwar Middle East to give some sort of meaning to so great a sacrifice.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East

“Those Greeks and Romans,” he protested, “they are so overrated. They only said everything first. I’ve said just as good things myself. But they got in before me.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“The European powers at that time believed they could change Moslem Asia in the very fundamentals of its political existence, and in their attempt to do so introduced an artificial state system into the Middle East that has made it into a region of countries that have not become nations even today.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“Reginald Wingate… wrote that “Moslems in general have hitherto regarded the Hejaz revolt, and our share in it, with suspicion or dislike”; an that it was important to make Hussein look as though he had not been a failure in order to keep Britain from looking bad.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East

“Clayton and his colleagues believed French colonial administration to be incapable of allowing a country to retain its own character. What the French termed their “civilizing mission” was seen as annexationism by the British; often it seemed to involve imposing the French language and culture on a native society. The British, on the other hand, in Egypt and elsewhere, kept to themselves, dwelt in their own clubs and compounds, and, apart from supervising the administration of the government, left the country and its people alone. In the eyes of Clayton and his colleagues, this was the greatest degree of independence to which Arabic-speaking peoples could aspire.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East

“The Arab revolt for which Hussein hoped never took place. No Arabic units of the Ottoman army came over to Hussein. No political or military figures of the Ottoman Empire defected to him and the Allies. The powerful secret military organization that al-Faruqi had promised would rally to Hussein failed to make itself known. A few thousand tribesmen, subsidized by British money, constituted Hussein’s troops. He had no regular army. Outside the Hejaz and its tribal neighbors, there was no visible support for the revolt in any part of the Arabic-speaking world. The handful of non-Hejazi officers who joined the Emir’s armed forces were prisoners-of-war or exiles who already resided in British-controlled territories.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East

“Fear of Russian expansionism was at the heart of the Porte’s policy. The Turkish ambassador told Deedes that if the Allies won the war, they would cause or allow the Ottoman Empire to be partitioned, while if Germany won the war, no such partition would be allowed to occur. That was why the Porte had become pro-German… (Enver did not mention that, in addition, Germany had given a written guarantee to protect Ottoman territory…)”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East

“Blinded by the prize, they did not see that there was a contest.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“It has been estimated that the total of military and civilian casualties in all of Europe’s domestic and international conflicts in the 100 years between 1815 and 1915 was no greater than a single day’s combat losses in any of the great battles of 1916.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“Those Greeks and Romans,” he protested, “they are so overrated. They only said everything first. I’ve said just as good things myself. But they got in before me.”3”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“The railroad network of the German Empire made the Kaiser’s realm the most advanced military power in the world, and Britain’s precarious naval supremacy began to seem less relevant than it had been.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“population. By the end of 1915 the Allies found the situation so menacing that the Russians, supported by the 8,000-strong Russian-officered Persian Cossacks, occupied the north of the country, taking over the capital city of Teheran and, with it, the weak, recently crowned young Shah. The most pro-German of the politicians fled, initially to the holy city of Qum, and later to Kermanshah, near the Ottoman frontier, where a German puppet government was established, backed by Ottoman troops.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“By the end of 1915 the Allies found the situation so menacing that the Russians, supported by the 8,000-strong Russian-officered Persian Cossacks, occupied the north of the country, taking over the capital city of Teheran and, with it, the weak, recently crowned young Shah. The most pro-German of the politicians fled, initially to the holy city of Qum, and later to Kermanshah, near the Ottoman frontier, where a German puppet government was established, backed by Ottoman troops.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“Baedeker, Karl, Palestine and Syria: With Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylon and the Island of Cyprus: Handbook For Travellers, 5th edn, remodelled and augmented (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1912).”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“while it may have been chauvinist of British officials in the 1920s and 1930s to say that Arab countries were not ready for self-government—which is to say, liberal democratic constitutional regimes with rule of law—evidence as of our own late date does not seem to prove them wrong. The Economist (April 3, 2004, page 47) is on record as saying that “The Arab League’s 22 states remain the most uniformly oligarchic slice of the world. Not a single Arab leader has ever been peacefully ousted at the ballot box.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“For at least a century before the 1914 war, Europeans had regarded it as axiomatic that someday the Middle East would be occupied by one or more of the Great Powers. Their great fear was that disputes about their respective shares might lead the European powers to fight ruinous wars against one another.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“but President Harding told Secretary of State Hughes, “Frankly, it is difficult for me to be consistently patient with our good friends of the Church who are properly and earnestly zealous in promoting peace until it comes to making warfare on someone of the contending religion…”23”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

“It is the Jews and not us that everyone is against,” he wrote. “If the Jews would keep their silly mouths shut they could buy up the whole country.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East