ABSTRACT
The post First World War settlement had the effect of partially insulating the Near East from international affairs. In a great band running through most of the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, British and French influence predominated. North and south of that band were independent states but they had nowhere to go since no other great power either could or would challenge British and French influence: Germany was beaten, Italy was too weak, the Soviet Union was absorbed in revolutionary reconstruction and the United States had returned to isolation. Only if Britain and France had fallen out would there have been an opportunity for Near Eastern states to manoeuvre in the international field and this did not happen. Until Anglo—French supremacy was threatened in the late 1930s the international history of the Near East was quite different from the pre-Lausanne period of international contention, the age of the Eastern Question.
