The struggle for the Caucasus began after the collapse of the Tsarist state in 1917 and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire the following year, opening up a large vacuum for someone to fill. Britain found itself in an unanticipated situation of gaining a large region it had not thought possible of taking. It was, […]

At the end of 1918, as a result of its Great War victory, Britain had control of a vast area stretching eastward from Istanbul into Anatolia, the Caucasus and Transcaspia. Behind this area a great belt of land running east from Palestine, through Mesopotamia and into Persia lay in England’s hands, to do what it […]

August/September 2018 marks the centenary of the Battle for Baku, one of the more obscure events of the Great War of 1914 that nonetheless was something of lasting historical importance – even after its result was seemingly nullified a few months after by the British Great War victory. It is a also a fascinating story […]

In the last article, Pasdermadjian and the War in the Caucasus, I noted; “The Azerbaijani Turks were the most unmilitarised element in the whole region, excluded from the Tsar’s army before the Great War and refused enlistment in it during conscription. On the other hand there were hundreds of thousands of Armenians under arms in […]

Looking at the March massacres of 12,000 Azerbaijanis in Baku in 1918 one can only see those killed as victims of a series of events which began in 1907 and which culminated in the Great War of 1914. British understandings of the situation in late 1917-early 1918, that its Great War on Germany and the […]