The Ottoman Empire is Divided up Between the French and the British, and Promises Made to the Arabs Are Ignored.
The partition of the Ottoman Empire (30 October 1918 – 1 November 1922) was a geopolitical event that occurred after World War I and the occupation of Istanbul by British, French, and Italian troops in November 1918. The partitioning was planned in several agreements made by the Allied Powers early in the course of World War I, notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, after the Ottoman Empire had joined Germany to form the Ottoman–German Alliance.
The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states. The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence that granted the Arabs a homeland for joining the war against the Ottoman Empire was ignored. The Arab understanding was (and remains) that the British had promised independence to the Arabs in what is now Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and parts of Syria and Lebanon.
The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey.
When the Ottomans departed, the Arabs proclaimed an independent state in Damascus, but were too weak, militarily and economically, to resist the European powers for long, and Britain and France soon re-established control.
The French claimed mandates in Syria and in Lebanon. The British claimed mandates in Palestine (which included what is now Jordan) and Mesopotamia (which would become Iraq).
On the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabs were able to establish several independent states. In 1916 Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, established the Kingdom of Hejaz, while the Emirate of Riyadh was transformed into the Sultanate of Nejd. In 1926 the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz was formed, which in 1932 became the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen became independent in 1918, while the Arab States of the Persian Gulf became de facto British protectorates, with some internal autonomy.
Resistance to the influence of Britain and France came from the Turkish National Movement but did not become widespread in the other post-Ottoman states until the period of rapid decolonization after World War II.
During the 1920s and 1930s Iraq, Syria and Egypt moved towards independence, although the British and French did not formally departed the region until after World War II. But in Palestine, the conflicting forces of Arab nationalism and Zionism created a situation from which the British could neither resolve nor extricate themselves from. The rise to power of Nazism in Germany created a new urgency in the Zionist quest to create a Jewish state in Palestine, leading to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
This partitioning would lead to the growth of Arab nationalism which seeks to rid the Arab world of influence from the Western world, and the removal of those Arab governments that are considered to be dependent upon Western hegemony. This form of the ideology is rooted in the undesirable outcome of the Arab Revolt; in successfully achieving their primary goal of dissolving the Ottoman Empire, the Arab rebels simultaneously enabled the partitioning of their would-be unified Arab state by Western powers.
Arab nationalism emerged in the 1920s, as the dominant ideological force in the eastern Arab world, commonly referred to as “the mashriq”. Its influence steadily expanded over subsequent years. By the 1950s and 1960s, the charismatic Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser championed Arab nationalism, and political parties like the Ba’ath Party and the Movement of Arab Nationalists demonstrated remarkable capabilities for mobilization, organization, and clandestine activities. This ideology seemed to be on the rise across the independent Arab states.