The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923

McMeekin, Sean

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1846147050 ISBN 13: 9781846147050

Casa editrice: Allen Lane, 2015

'An outstanding history ... one of the best writers on the First World War' Simon Sebag Montefiore

Shortlisted for the Duke of Westminster Medal for Military Literature

The Ottoman Endgame is the first, and definitive, single-volume history of the Ottoman empire's agonising war for survival. Beginning with Italy's invasion of Ottoman Tripoli in September 1911, the Empire was in a permanent state of emergency, with hardly a frontier not under direct threat. Assailed by enemies on all sides, the Empire-which had for generations been assumed to be a rotten shell-proved to be strikingly resilient, beating off major attacks at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia before finally being brought down in the general ruin of the Central Powers in 1918.

As the Europeans planned to partition all its lands between them and with even Istanbul seemingly helpless in the face of the triumphant Entente, an absolutely unexpected entity emerged: modern Turkey. Under the startling genius of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a powerful new state emerged from the Empire's fragments.

This is the first time an author has woven the entire epic together from start to finish - and it will cause many readers to fundamentally re-evaluate their understanding of the conflict. The consequences, well into the 21st century, could not have been more momentous - with countries as various as Serbia, Greece, Libya, Armenia, Iraq and Syria still living with them.

Recensione:

The Ottoman Endgame is a marvellous exposition of the historian's art that will frighten everyone else off the subject for years (Christopher de Bellaigue The Guardian)

Where conventional histories of World War One focus on the trench warfare in the West, Sean McMeekin, combining ground breaking archival research with a genius for historical narrative, tells the story of the war in the East ... There are many histories of World War One; few are as important or as readable as this one (Walter Russell Mead)

A well-timed, well-researched exploration of the empire whose dissolution continues to complicate making sense of the contemporary Middle East. Herein are explanations of how modern Turkey, Iraq, and Syria came to be, as well as how the division of the rest of the region affected its future. Scholars and practitioners alike will benefit from reading it (Henry Kissinger)

Sean McMeekin has an infernal panorama to describe, as, over twelve years, the Ottoman Empire fell apart, giving us problems that have gone on to this day. The subject has found a writer with all the linguistic and scholarly qualifications to do it justice (Norman Stone)

Sean McMeekin's The Ottoman Endgame pleases like a mouthful of Turkish delight, the flavors, scents and views of the old empire combining in a gripping new history that plunges the Turkish Empire into the Great War and locates Constantinople not at the edge of the conflict but at its very heart ... a wry, delightful book, which fills in a neglected face of the war and traces the emergence of the modern Middle East (Geoffrey Wawro)

A tour de force (Philip Mansel)

masterful and sympathetic... McMeekin is suberb on the doers and makers of this era - the cartographers and strategists, the field commanders and diplomats, all figuring out how, and whether, to rescue the empire or dismember it. (Charles King Literary Review)

L'autore:

Sean McMeekin is Professor of History at Bard College, New York. For some years he taught at Bilkent University, Istanbul. His books include the highly successful The Berlin-Baghdad Express (Penguin), The Russian Origins of the First World War and July 1914.