Geopolitics
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“Since in the domain of foreign affairs Great Britain spoke for her whole Empire, and since the seas of the world were controlled by the unchallenged strength of the British Navy, the influence of Europe was predominant over the whole globe, while at the same time no world war was possible without British intervention.” (G.M.…
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“When circumstances alter, the British have the gift of adapting themselves very quickly to new conditions without dwelling upon what is past. Old principles, old ideas, old memories do not influence them. It is, however, very disconcerting to those of their associates who cannot change their attitude with the same facility.” (L’Angleterre d’aujourd’hui, p.19) So…
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The current Turkish President recently made a comment on the Treaty of Lausanne. The present writer makes a point of not intervening in Turkish politics. But since this is a historical matter some comment should be made, particularly as it is of interest how the Treaty of Lausanne was seen at the other end of…
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Britain’s Great War was not only a war on Germany and the Ottoman Empire it was also a war on philosophy – or on the Germany philosophy that England attributed the War to. However, the Great War was not the great war it turned out to be because of German Philosophy. It was a Great…
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In the old Irish song ‘The Jackets Green’ mourning the defeat of Ireland and the Williamite victory in 1690 there are two very memorable and predictive lines: “Yet grief will come to our heartless foes “Their thrones in the dust be seen…” That moment may be arriving with the decision of the English democracy to…
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Marmaduke Pickthall wrote a number of letters on the Armenian issue to The New Age in the year between May 1919 and April 1920. They contained a vigorous defence of the Ottoman Turks and a very forthright and plain-speaking criticism of the Armenians. However, Pickthall found an adversary in Dikran Kouyoumdjian (Michael Arlen), another writer for The New…
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A letter to The New Age in its edition of 6 January 1916 is very interesting. It explains how Britain drove the Ottomans over to Germany’s side in the Great War. It does not suggest that this was intentional, rather that it was a blunder, foreseen, but not avoided. Blunders, foreseen, but not avoided, may…
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In 1915 Marmaduke Pickthall was the most informed man in England on the region governed by the Ottoman Empire. Pickthall was an English Tory and a famous novelist, as well as a journalist. Pickthall published nine novels set in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Yemen and Turkey. E.M. Forster wrote in 1921 that Pickthall was “the only contemporary…
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In the debate on the Treaty of Lausanne, T.P. O’Connor, one of the last remaining Redmondite MPs left in the British House of Commons, made an impassioned plea on behalf of the establishment of an Armenian state in Anatolia, which had been abandoned in the Treaty signed by the British Empire with the Turks. The…
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I noticed that Lord Esher said the following in a biography of Lord Kitchener he had published in the 1920s: “The German invasion of Belgium, although it made no vital difference to the resolve already taken by Asquith and Grey, preserved the unity of the nation, if not the integrity of the Government. The Opposition…
