Practice Flashcards
What was the McMahon-Hussein correspondence (1915-16)?
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All Flashcards in Topic 21.13
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21.13.112 cards
What was the McMahon-Hussein correspondence (1915-16)?
Letters between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein of Mecca, in which Britain promised support for Arab independence in exchange for an Arab revolt against the Ottomans.
What was the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916)?
A secret Anglo-French agreement dividing the Middle East into British and French zones of control, contradicting the promises made to Hussein.
Who led the Arab Revolt in the field, and which British officer advised him?
Faisal (son of Hussein) led Arab forces; T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") was his British adviser.
What did the Balfour Declaration (1917) promise, and to whom?
Arthur Balfour promised British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, in a letter to Lord Rothschild, while stating non-Jewish communities' rights should not be harmed.
What is a League of Nations mandate?
A system where a stronger power governed a territory 'temporarily' under League of Nations supervision, in theory to prepare it for self-rule, but in practice functioning like colonial control.
Which mandates were French, and which were British?
French: Syria and Lebanon. British: Iraq and Transjordan. All four were Class A mandates.
Why was Faisal made King of Iraq in 1921?
After France expelled him from Syria (defeating his forces at Maysalun in 1920), Britain compensated the Hashemite family by making Faisal King of Iraq and his brother Abdullah Emir of Transjordan.
Compare British and French styles of mandate rule.
Britain favoured indirect rule through client monarchs (Faisal, Abdullah); France favoured direct rule by French officials and deliberately divided Syria into smaller statelets to weaken nationalism.
What was the Wafd Party?
Egypt's dominant nationalist party, formed from Saad Zaghlul's 1918 delegation (wafd) demanding full independence; became a mass movement after the 1919 Revolution.
What triggered the Egyptian 1919 Revolution?
Britain's refusal to let Zaghlul's delegation argue Egypt's case at the Paris Peace Conference, followed by his arrest and exile to Malta in March 1919.
What were the 'Four Reserved Points' of the 1922 Declaration of Independence?
Britain kept control of: (1) security of imperial communications/Suez Canal, (2) Egypt's defence, (3) protection of foreign interests and minorities, (4) the status of Sudan.
Why is 1915-1922 often described as a period of 'broken promises' in the Middle East?
Britain made three overlapping, contradictory promises (McMahon-Hussein, Sykes-Picot, Balfour) over the same territory, then replaced hoped-for independence with the mandate system — disappointing Arab and Egyptian nationalists alike.
21.13.212 cards
What did the Balfour Declaration (1917) promise?
British support for establishing a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, while stating the rights of existing non-Jewish communities should not be harmed.
Why did British Palestine policy keep failing between the wars?
It tried to honour two incompatible promises at once — a Jewish national home and Arab self-determination/rights — so every step to please one side provoked a crisis with the other.
What did the Peel Commission (1937) recommend?
The first official proposal to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, since Arab and Jewish demands were judged irreconcilable.
What triggered the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–1939?
Rising Jewish immigration after 1933, land purchases displacing Arab tenant farmers, and Arab frustration at British policy failing to limit Zionist settlement.
How did the Great Arab Revolt end and with what effect?
Britain deployed over 20,000 troops and used collective punishment to crush it by 1939; Palestinian Arab leadership was devastated (many killed, jailed, or exiled) for years afterwards.
What did the 1939 MacDonald White Paper do, and why is its timing significant?
It capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years — right as Nazi persecution of Jews was intensifying towards the Holocaust, making the restriction especially controversial.
What major political change did Ataturk make in 1922–1924?
He abolished the Ottoman sultanate (1922) and then the caliphate (1924), ending over 600 years of Ottoman rule and founding a secular Turkish Republic.
Name three of Ataturk's westernizing/secularizing reforms.
Any three of: replacing Arabic script with the Latin alphabet (1928), banning the fez, adopting secular legal codes, closing religious courts/schools, giving women the vote (1934), adopting the Western calendar.
What is 'etatism' as used in Ataturk's Turkey?
State-directed economic development — the government led industrialization and protected Turkish industry from foreign competition.
How did Reza Shah come to power in Iran?
Reza Khan, an army officer, seized power in a 1921 coup, then crowned himself Shah in 1925, founding the Pahlavi dynasty.
Compare Reza Shah's Iran to Ataturk's Turkey.
Similar: both modernized education, infrastructure, and dress, and weakened clerical power. Different: Iran's power stayed concentrated in the Shah personally (no reforming party), relied heavily on oil revenue, kept land concentrated among elites, and Reza Shah was forced to abdicate by British/Soviet occupation in 1941.
Why was Reza Shah forced to abdicate in 1941?
Britain and the Soviet Union occupied Iran and forced his abdication, fearing his government's ties to Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
Topic 21.13 study notes
Full notes & explanations for War and change in the Middle East and North Africa 1914–1945
History exam skills
Paper structures, command terms & tips
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