FOURTEENModernizing Rulers in the
Independent States
In the last four chapters we have written about Middle Eastern peoples and
countries that fell under European control. Actually, there was no area, ex¬
cept for the inaccessible deserts of Arabia and the highest mountains of
Anatolia and Persia, that did not feel the impact of the West by 1914. As
you have seen, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent came under Western rule,
direct or indirect, before or during World War I. Even the regions that
escaped—Anatolia, central Persia, and most of Arabia—were being eyed as
potential colonies. The Allied secret agreements during the war would have
awarded Istanbul and the Straits to czarist Russia and parts of western and
southern Anatolia to Italy and France. Meanwhile, British agents were con¬
tacting the tribes of Arabia and Persia. Treaties were drafted that would
have made their lands virtual British protectorates, as indeed Kuwait,
Bahrain, the Trucial States (now called the United Arab Emirates), and
Oman had become by 1914. Aden remained a settlement of the Indian gov¬
ernment and formally became a crown colony in 1937. In 1917 the Bolshe¬
vik Revolution pulled Russia out of the war and out of the contest for
influence over its Middle Eastern neighbors, at least for a while. Once the
Ottoman Empire and Germany surrendered in 1918, there seemed to be
no one left to stem the spread of Western—especially British—power
throughout the whole Middle East.
But the tide did turn. At least three areas of the Middle East did manage to
salvage their independence after the war. The Turks in Anatolia drove off the
Western invaders, terminated the moribund Ottoman Empire, and set up
the Republic of Turkey. A group of soldiers and civilian nationalists blocked
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