ABSTRACT
The year 1916 was a crucial year in World War I in the Middle East. British politicians had gravely and repeatedly misjudged the battlefield capabilities of the Ottoman Army, which by 1916 had conscripted some 3 million soldiers. The war was going very badly for the Entente Powers, and the British Empire specifically. The British military had suffered catastrophic defeats at Gallipoli in 1915, finally withdrawing after some 200,000 casualties in early 1916. A few months later in April 1916 another British colonial army was defeated and surrendered in Iraq. In June, the British-sponsored Arab Revolt, immortalised by T.E. Lawrence, began. At roughly the same time, between late 1915 and the spring of 1916, two diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, met and negotiated the planned post-war partition of the Ottoman State. This chapter investigates some of the connections of and background to the pivotal events and decisions of that year and places them within the context of the war and times.
