2014/01/01 by Gregory A. Barton · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Islamic Studies and History #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts
paper · doi:10.1057/9781137315922_7
openalex publication_date 2014/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Fierce tribal loyalties, Islam and the extreme desiccation of the landscape convinced the British in the mid-Victorian era, as with the Persians and Romans before them, to turn down opportunities of an extensive formal empire in much of the Middle East and to prefer informal influence in the region. Yet the Middle East straddled the strategic and shortest route to India, and the Ottoman Empire — although considered the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ — managed, merely by holding together the disparate territories of North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Asia Minor, to block the expanse of Russia into the Mediterranean. The British much rather preferred to influence a pliable and weak Ottoman Empire than the expanding and much feared Russian Empire. 1 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.