Westerners and Ottoman Empire History Assignment

Westerners and Ottoman Empire
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Westerners and Ottoman Empire
The emergence of the modern Muslim nation-States out of the early modern Muslim world was through a fascinating and a heartbreaking process. In about a century ago, most Arab countries were part of the Ottoman Empire which was a large multi-ethnic state based in Istanbul. Intricate and complex events of the 1910s resulted in the end of the Ottoman Empire and gave rise to the new modern Muslim nations spread across the Middle East. In essence, the events of the 1910s splitted the entire Muslim nations into what they are today. Although there are many other factors that contributed to this phenomenon, the politics and the agendas of the British and France played a major role in dividing the entire Ottoman Empire.
In 1914, World War I broke out in Europe. The war was brought about by the colonial ambitions, militaristic arms race, mismanagement at government levels and the arising alliances (French, 2014). On one side, the Allied, stood France, Britain and Russia while on the other front stood the Central powers comprising of the Germany and Austria-Hungary. Ottoman did not want to join any side at first but they owed huge debts to European powers. Later, they decided to join the Allied but they were rejected and sided with the Central powers. It was then that the British began to plan how to dissolve the Ottoman Empire so that they could expand their influence on the Middle East (French, 2014). They had earlier successfully taken over India and Egypt and the Middle East was lying between these two important colonies which made them determined to exterminate it as part of their spheres by the end of the world war.
The British designed the strategies to execute their plan and one of them was the Arab Revolt. In this strategy, the British decided to turn the Ottoman Empire’s Arab subjects against the government with the help of Sharif Hussein from Hejaz. Sharif entered in an agreement with British to fight the Muslims and he was offered financial, weapon, spy and soldiers support (French, 2014). In return, he was promised own Arab Kingdom if he triumph in the war. Sharif fought with determination and managed to capture several cities from the Ottoman Empire such as Jerusalem, Baghdad, Jeddah and Makkah among others.
However, even before the Arab Revolt kicked off, the British and French had other plans to execute on the same empire. In 1915, diplomats Francois Georges-Picot of France and Sir Mark Sykes of Britain gathered to chat the fate of the post-Ottoman Arab world in what came to be known a...