Today’s Important Goodreads ''Lords of Desert''

'Lords of Desert' by british historian James Barr, which published in 2011, about the rivalry between Britain and France for control of the Middle East after World War I.

The book describes a struggle in which the main participants held similar hands, and in which both were forced to compromise, as well as more asymmetrical situation in which the rivalry was between a rapidly declining empire and a rapidly rising one.

'Lords of Desert' by british historian James Barr

However, the British retreat and the American advance across the region in the decades after World War II, was not necessarily entirely decided in advance.

The post-World War I period saw the carving up of the former Ottoman Empire into a system of nation-states whose components were mostly under British or French control, the period after World War II, was characterised by attempts to stabilise or reinforce the existing system in the interests of larger international alliances.

Barr’s book draws for the most part on British cabinet and other records, in addition his natural habitat seems to be the British archives, giving his account an Anglocentric tone.

This is an account of the post-war Middle East as seen from London, and it is conspicuously lacking in voices from the region.

However, including more such voices would have meant writing a different book to the one that Barr has written, about how one foreign power supplanted another in the decade after the end of World War II in the Middle East region?.