sean {e} lavelle.com

I tend to read alot. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of history books. I recently finished A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin. It’s a pretty weighty tome – 636 pages of small print, but it illuminated a period of history and a region I am only now starting to get familiar with.

The book really deals with the crucial period between the Young Turks coming to power in the Ottoman Empire through the end of World War One. We’re introduced to a cast of historical figures I’ve known from different contexts or just heard of – A young Winston Churchill, Mustapha Kemal (Ataturk), T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Ibn Saud, and others.

The world was on the brink of post-colonialism, and the actions of the major players still show the colonial mindset. The Middle East was being divided between France, Great Britain and Russia during 1914 at the outset of the war.

The actions and repercussions of this pivotal time are still with us, from the Armenian Genocide, to the beginnings of an Jewish state in Israel and the makeup of modern Iraq.

One of the interesting points Fromkin makes at the end of the book is that it took Western Europe almost 1500 years to arrive at the modern democratic state after living under the Roman Empire. This gives me a little deeper appreciation for the challenges facing a region that has been free from the Ottoman Empire for less then a hundred years.

This is a great book for anyone interested in history, the Middle East, or looking for a deeper understanding of some of the current issues of today. I’d highly recommend this book.