World War I British military campaign in part of the Ottoman Empire.
In November 1914, within days of the British declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire (which was allied with Germany in World War I), the British landed an Indian Expeditionary Force (IEP) at Basra in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). Meeting scant resistance from the Ottoman Turks, the IEF moved north and, in April 1915, Sir John Nixon took command. Nixon ordered his lieutenant, Sir Charles Townshend, to advance north - up the river Tigris toward Baghdad. By November 1915, Town-shend succeeded in advancing to Ctesiphon, just south of Baghdad, but his supply lines were stretched thin, and he was repulsed by the newly invigorated Ottoman armies under the command of German General Kolmar von der Goltz. Townshend retreated south to Kut al-Amara, where he was trapped by the Ottoman Turks.
The British failed to reinforce Townshend, and after a 146-day siege, he surrendered his entire force on 29 April 1916. Lacking men and matériel, the Turks were unable to take advantage of the victory. Under the command of Sir Frederick Maude, the British again advanced north, retook Kut on 22 February 1917 and entered Baghdad on 11 March. By September, the British were in control of central Iraq, and by the war's end in 1918, they had occupied all of Mesopotamia south of the city of Mosul.
Bibliography
Barker, A. J. The Bastard War: The Mesopotamian Campaign of1914 - 1918. New York: Dial Press, 1967.
Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the OttomanEmpire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: Avon, 1990.
Shaw, Stanford, and Shaw, Ezel Kural. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976 - 1977.
Sluglett, Peter. Britain in Iraq 1914 - 1932. London: Ithaca Press, 1976.
— ZACHARY KARABELL
