Left to their own fractious politics, the Arabs, they suggest, would actually have ended up with even more, and smaller, states than was the case: "great-power interference ensured the advent of a string of Middle Eastern states that were significantly larger than the political entities that would otherwise have been created. Finally, there is the notoriously disputed subject of Middle Eastern boundaries.
Arabs routinely heap blame on the Sykes-Picot agreement of May - a secret deal by Britain, France, and Russia to divide up the Middle East - for their still-festering border quarrels.
In The Arab Awakening , a very influential study published in , George Antonius denounced that agreement as "a shocking document" and a "breach of faith" by the great powers. Still today, the Assad regime ruling in Syria denounces the long-ago Sykes-Picot deal as the source of the "false borders" that divide the Middle East and have caused so many problems. Most scholars echo this view. But the Karshes boldly present Sykes-Picot as honorable - an honest attempt by the British to reconcile their prior obligations to France with their new ones to the Arabs.
In a statement bound to cause scholarly heartburn, they praise Sykes-Picot as the "first ever great-power recognition of the Arabs' right to self-determination. On a wide range of other issues, too, this wall-to-wall revisionist account upends the conventional narrative. It establishes that Ottoman and not Russian aggressiveness caused the Turks to lose control of the Balkans; that Great Britain found itself ruling Egypt more on account of Ottoman mistakes than out of its own imperial desires; that the Arab Revolt of World War I was inspired less by nationalist sentiments or other "lofty ideals" than by "the glitter of British gold.
Arab leaders, they demonstrate, made fraudulent claims about the extent of their own political authority, gave empty promises of military action, and bargained continuously with the Central Powers with an eye to double-crossing the British.
In all, I can hardly remember last reading so important and daring a reinterpretation of Middle Eastern history, or one so laden with implications. Already the Karshes' radical rejection of prevailing wisdom has prompted strong reactions from the scholarly community, as anyone visiting the relevant websites can attest. In time, indeed, some of their views may end up being refuted or heavily qualified. Nevertheless, their key ideas are likely to prevail, and even to become the new standard account.
And who knows? This book could eventually affect the academic study of other areas of East-West contact, including Africa, India, and East Asia. Conceivably it could affect political attitudes as well-and much for the better. Empires of the Sand shreds the main reason for Europeans to feel guilt-ridden toward the Middle East. If Sykes-Picot was not a "breach of faith," and if the British and French generally behaved with at least as much honor as their Middle Eastern counterparts, might not the British, the French, and other Europeans begin to rethink their stock responses to the issues that currently bedevil the region?
And why stop with Europeans? Arab Middle Easterners have long sought comfort in the notion of their victimization at the hands of the perfidious, conspiratorial West. By coming instead to accept that they themselves largely created their own destiny and made their own history in the 20th century, they might persuade themselves they can do the same in the 21st - only this time by throwing off their habitual sense of grievance, reigning in their autocratic rulers, reforming their moribund economies, and overcoming their radical ideologies.
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