There aren't that many moments in history that are SO pivotal and SO frustrating that they tempt me to dedicate the rest of my life to inventing time travel, but this is one of them.

The title of this book is a summary in and of itself. It covers the time from the end of WWI and the Paris Peace Conference into the 1930s, and chronicles in great detail the solid decade of Sisyphean attempts by Arabs to wrest any scrap of self-determination away from the European powers.

Some popular histories cover topics that are so abundantly researched, known, and talked about that you could essentially learn what's in the book by searching the web yourself. This book is not like that. Professor Thompson clearly spent years digging up half-forgotten sources. Some of the early history was familiar to me (Balfour declaration/Hussein-McMahon Correspondence/Sykes-Picot/the King-Crane Commission) but as soon as we left behind the European negotiations, the book delved into things I had barely any awareness of.

For example, a quick google of Rashid Rida turns up a ton of writing on his religious ideas, but barely anything about how he was once the president of Syria. The chronicle of constitutional debates in the Syrian Congress is interesting enough itself to justify the book. Every stage of Faisal and the Arab Nationalists' campaign and every political gambit is recorded, down to who he met with on what day in Paris. I'm glad I know Robert de Caix's name, now, so that I can curse it. The book drags a little at some points, but my primary emotion was impotent rage rather than boredom.

Now, we look back on WWI with nearly pure cynicism. Sure, the Germans started it, but everyone was gunning for that war. Any attempt to cast a morally "good" versus "bad" side sort of falls flat under the shadow of WWII, compared to which all WWI participants are just states acting according to their interests in a pretty understandable way. We know that the between-war years were not great. We know that they were racist as heck, and still racing upward toward peak racism. We know that economies around the world were about to take a near-fatal hit. We know that colonialism was still alive and flourishing, and that no one had the necessary power and will to make the League of Nations anything but a failed experiment.

In contrast, the rhetoric of the WWI victors was firmly cast in the triumph of modern freedom and self-determination over archaic, old-world despotism. Woodrow Wilson really thought he could make the League of Nations work. For most of the players, though, the freedom and justice and rule of law was just wallpaper over the age-old rule of might makes right that had (has?) always governed international politics.

We know all that. But at the time, they didn't.

Even if the Syrian Arabs had known from the start that freedom is taken, not given, they would have had a rough time. A big problem for them throughout the entire independence effort was that they literally could not, physically, get out to trade or communicate with the rest of the world, given their geographical position. It takes a confluence of factors to make a successful revolution, and I'm not sure they would have succeeded even if they went full-throttle for that option from the beginning.

But it is heartbreaking to watch Faisal and all the other nationalist leaders work so hard to build an inclusive, democratic state. They genuinely believed that if they were just politically smart enough, if they just built a good enough state, if their people were united and their country well-administered, that the Europeans would grant them their independence and welcome them into the international community. Why would they believe something like that?? Because that's what the Europeans said. There was just enough real belief in the new liberal international order, just enough genuine, supportive Westerners like Lawrence of Arabia and Charles Crane, to snooker the future of the Middle East.

The French and the British come off horribly, here. This is one historical period where America wasn't the one ruining everything in the Middle East. But the behavior of the European colonial powers is unfortunately not just a shameful past. You could write the same story about Iran, with America cast as the British. The hypocritical tendency of the French and British to deliberately suppress any burgeoning democracy and instead install corrupt or incapable kings, is something that we still love to do today.

After all, what's easier to control, a whole nation's popular opinion, or one single guy who loves money and power? And yet, this short-term solution begun almost a hundred years ago, has created or exacerbated problems that led to how many millions of deaths in the Middle East, from then until now? How much would it be worth, now, to have a stable, powerful, democratic ally in the Middle East, with a hundred-year history of liberal institutions and civil society? Still, it's hard to see any modern power being able or courageous enough to act differently.

Overall, a very interesting and horrible book. To the victor go the spoils.