Britain, Diplomacy and Money

DI.1) Perhaps the principal disagreement among Britain's pledges and treaties was the conflict between diplomacy and money. Equal to this, however, was the desire to win the war they had been dragged into by treaties and alliances that were supposed to prevent war. Since the machine gun, the tank, and the submarine, invented as weapons so terrible that no one would dare face them, simply made war worse, one should not be surprised that diplomacy would also fail. In fact, treaties and agreements never end war but at best delay it temporarily. Thus, one may see a twisted logic in the SykesCostaud agreement by using treaties, kept and broken, as a means to end a war treaties began.

While the regime of `Abd ulHamid may have engaged in questionable religious interpretations of the Koran to keep their political control, Britain viewed the Young Turks that replaced him with suspicions. They were viewed "as freemasons and Jews", and were suspected by many in both Britain and the Ottoman Empire of conspiracy to impose their "alien ideas" on the whole empire. (Yapp 183) Islam was bad enough, to a "Christian" nation like Britain, but it at least was familiar. Despite this, the Young Turk revolution occurred in many places almost at once, as an apparent reaction to an imminent purge. Turkey in July 1908 had changed leadership again. After Iran in 1906 and Egyptian demonstrations in 1907, Britain became worried enough to meet with Tsar Nicholas II to discuss who got which sphere

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Category: History - B