Britain’s Levantine Empire, 1914-1923 explains the rise and decline and nature and extent of British military rule in the urban eastern Mediterranean during the course of the First World War and its aftermath. Combining novel case studies and theoretical approaches, the book reveals the extent of military control that Britain established and anticipated maintaining in the post-Ottoman world, before a series of confrontations with nationalist and socialist anti-imperialists forced a new division of the eastern Mediterranean, still visible in the political borders of the present day. It tells this story through the eyes and ears of the British servicemen who built this empire, analysing the testimony of over 100 such military personal sent to Alexandria, Thessaloniki, Istanbul and the towns and islands between them, as they voyaged, made camp, and explored and patrolled the city streets. Whereas histories examining soldiers’ experiences in the First World War have almost exclusively focused on their lives at the frontlines, this book provides a much needed in depth history of soldiers’ experience and impact on the urban hubs of the Eastern Mediterranean, where urban planning, nightlife and entertainment, policing and security were transformed by the presence of so many men at arms and the imperialist interventions that accompanied them.
Robin Fletcher