Edmund Candler was a journalist who traveled with the British forces during the Mesopotamia campaign of World War I. This second volume of his book The Long Road to Baghdad covers the end of the war from 1917-1918. The vast majority of the writing is a blow by blow account of the various battles fought as the British conquered what would become Iraq. It does bring up larger issues however such as the lack of a strategy and the contempt the English had for the Ottomans and Arabs.
The United Kingdom decided to send a military expedition to protect its oil interests in Persia just before the outbreak of World War I. It went from that to taking the three Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul. Candler wrote that once the city of Baghdad was taken there was no real reason to continue north as the Turks were in retreat and there was nothing of military importance beyond it. Yet the British continued to march north and the book documents the seizure of Hamrin, Tikrit, Hit and more. This showed that once the English landed they were intent upon defeating the Ottomans as far north as they could with no other goal than to destroy the enemy. There was no strategy behind it. There was no outstanding goal like seizing Baghdad. It was fighting for fighting’s sake whether it had anything to do with the larger conflict or not.
Candler gives a justification for taking on the Ottomans but he undermines his own argument. He writes that the British had to protect its empire in India and that the Germans wanted to turn the Middle East and central Asia against London. He claimed that the Germans were scheming with the Ottomans to extend its influence into the Middle East to turn the Arabs against England. Then this would extend into Persia and Afghanistan and the next thing would be to threaten India. This was not by using an army but rather by politics. The Ottomans for example could use its caliphate to call on Muslims to rise up against the English. After laying out this domino theory of doom he then states that Berlin never had a chance and all its efforts at spreading its ideas and undermining the British failed. The English could’ve sat at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in Persia where its oil fields were and never entered Mesopotamia.
A consistent theme throughout the book was how much Candler and the British disliked the Turks. On the battlefield the Ottoman soldiers gained the respect of the British because of how hard they fought. When it came to their empire however there was nothing but contempt. Candler wrote again and again about how the Turks did nothing with Mesopotamia. They only came to take from the locals and not build anything. He talked about how the Turks made locals exchange their gold and silver for paper money which was inflationary and decreased in value. He wrote about the massacre of Armenians in central Asia. This seemed to go far and beyond just a description of an enemy the British were at war with to some real hatred.
The Arabs fared no better. Candler said that the British didn’t come to liberate them but since they did take Mesopotamia they could gain their trust by providing services such as irrigation for their fields. They are portrayed as a people without any political aspirations so they could easily be won over. They were also often described as thieves who the British soldiers constantly had to watch out for lest their things be taken. These are common stereotypes European imperialists had of the region and its people.
The Long Road To Baghdad, Volume II is a very quick read despite its length. Most of it is about the fighting between the British and Ottomans during World War I. By the second half of the campaign in Mesopotamia which the book covers the Turks were consistently losing because the British had far more equipment and supplies. You do get the author’s thoughts and observations about how the British saw what would become Iraq. On the one hand it was seen as a virgin and barren land which the Turks had never developed. On the other the locals seemed like pliable people with no agency that could be easily integrated into the British empire. Overall that is what the book is really about imperialism as one power was being eclipsed by another in the Middle East.
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