Image above: View from the watchtower of Har Adar, Israel
MANDATES BECOME NATIONS
When WWI ended, the Middle East was divided into mandates that were controlled by Britain and France. Britain and France offered self-rule to Arabs in the mandates, but the European powers held real control over the region’s oil fields.
Increasing demand for oil in the 1920s & 1930s brought European and American oil companies to the Middle East. They dominated the local governments of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The domination of the Middle East by Western powers and the success of Turkey's president Mustafa Kemal in westernizing Turkey increased Arab nationalism. The Arabs wanted independence. In the 1930s, Iraq and Saudi Arabia formed nations. At thee end of WWII in 1945, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan became nations. By the 1970s, all of the territories in the Middle East were independent of European control. In 1960, the oil-producing nations of the world formed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to regulate the supply and price of oil; OPEC gave Middle Eastern nations greater control over the oil in the region. |
Mandate: a territory where countries are granted authority that resembles colonialism by the League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations). After World War I, the League of Nations believed these territories in the Middle East needed the experience and resources of Great Britain and France because they were "peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world." From Article 22 from the Covenant of the League of Nations
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