Abstract
The sheer complexity of the Middle East after 1914 created a series of problems for British Indian policy-makers, which both challenged the Government of India’s sphere of external operations and presented it with new opportunities. The nineteenth-century certainties of western Asia were destroyed by the war: the Ottoman Empire collapsed; the Russian Empire fell into chaos; and the rise of Arab and Persian nationalism transformed Europe’s relations with the Middle East. In the immediate aftermath of the conflict, British forces held sway — either nominally or practically — over a vast territorial vacuum stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Indian border. With Turkey no longer a key component in the continental balance of power, however, European control over the region could not be prevented.
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© 2003 Robert J. Blyth
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Blyth, R.J. (2003). ‘Basrah is as Near to Delhi as Rangoon’: Realigning the Middle East, 1914–c. 1921. In: The Empire of the Raj. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599116_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599116_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-42308-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59911-6
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