World War I was an invasion of Iraq

edanto

There is a very interesting suggestion that I first heard about in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSTuMqVK7P4

This sounds convincing to me. But is there other historical evidence to support this, or is there evidence against it? I'm hoping people in this forum will have come across the narrative before and will help to examine it.

I would particularly like help in researching the facts presented. e.g.

the video above wrote:

The first British regiment to be deployed in the First World Was, the Dorset Regiment, goes to Basra

templer6

wel world war 1 was started just after the war between hungry and turkey and all them countries like greece and macedon and albania, and despite wat u here world war one was started by the allies (briton america france etc) when the austrian archduke was assinated

Snickers Man

edanto wrote: »

There is a very interesting suggestion that I first heard about in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSTuMqVK7P4

This sounds convincing to me. But is there other historical evidence to support this, or is there evidence against it? I'm hoping people in this forum will have come across the narrative before and will help to examine it.

I would particularly like help in researching the facts presented. e.g.

There's a lot of truth to what he says, although he embellishes it a bit as a contemporary comedian with an appeal to the zeitgeist. Calling it an "invasion of Iraq" is a clear reference to the recent invasion of Iraq and the installation of a new regime there.

There was no such place as Iraq in 1914. It was all part of a much bigger entity called the Ottoman Empire. Now Britain had traditionally had most cordial relations with the Ottomans. There were very few cultural or commercial ties, but in strategic terms, the Ottoman Empire had been a regular ally of Britain for centuries.

The two countries had not gone to war with each other since the Crusades. Which of course predated the foundation of "Britain" or the United Kingdom. Elizabethan Britain was an ally of the Ottomans.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, apart from a Biblical interest in the Holy Land, there was little about the Ottoman empire to interest Britain. Her main concern, as a maritime power, was the growing strength of the Russian Empire. Russia wanted permanent access to the Mediterranean; Britain wanted to prevent that.

Accordingly, when Russia and the Ottomans came to blows in 1854 (Crimean War) Britain and France intervened on behalf of the Turks to prevent Russian encroachment in the Balkans. That war was still in living memory in 1914.

In more vivid recent memory was the Balkan crisis of the 1880s when Russia and Turkey again went to war. Britain came very close to declaring war on Russia again, and there was little doubt in the public mind why. We have a vestige of that time with us still, namely the presence in the English language of the word "Jingoism". It comes from a music hall song, popular at the time which went:
"We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men and
We've got the money too.
We've fought the bear before and while we're Britons true
The Russians SHALL NOT HAVE CONSTANTINOPLE!"

Every British general that served at Gallipoli was a young officer at the time of that crisis. They were nearly sent to the Balkans to prevent (horror of horrors) the Russians taking Constantinople, but the war came to an end before that became necessary.

So why, less than 30 years later did Britain overturn the strategic position of centuries and go to war with Turkey, attempting in 1915 to capture Constantinople with the express intention of using it as a staging post on a supply route to Russia, the very OPPOSITE position she had occupied until only recently?

Well of course, it was all the Germans' fault. Especially those Germans like Daimler, Benz and Diesel who had pioneered the new technology of the internal combustion engine which was to have the effect of making oil the new gold of the 20th century.

And most of its known reserves at the time were in the territory of the Ottoman Empire. And the western powers knew that. And they were all jockeying for position with the Ottomans. The Germans did it with investment and co-operation; the British and French opted to pick a fight and to divide up the spoils between themselves when it was all over.

OF course they dressed it up more heroically than that.
They fought the Turks to supply the starving Russians.
They fought the Turks to provide a national home for the Jews.
They fought the Turks to bring independence to the Arab people.

And as such they made conflicting promises to a load of different and contrary interest groups, the consequences of which we are still livng with.

The Gallipoli campaign was the first major British offensive of the First World War. Prior to that, she was just trying to repel the German invasion of France and hold the line against them.

Turkey's possessions in Arabia was the real target of acquisition for the British Empire in World War One. A study of the facts makes that conclusion unavoidable.