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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnain.

And I'm delighted to say we are joined once again by the brilliant Eugene Rogan, author of the Arabs and the fall of the Ottomans. In the last episode, Eugene, we were talking about the simmering tensions that existed.

And the way in which the Ottoman Empire was not in favour of any kind of nationalism at all, because it was basically a signal of the end of the Ottoman Empire.

If you had places breaking away and having their own identity and not referring to the centre, that would be it for them.

And we are talking largely about World War I in this episode, which will inevitably lead to the end of the Ottoman Empire.

So can you paint us a picture of this region on the eve of war?

What is actually happening?

And how much are they aware that the war is going to affect them?

Well, in a sense, for the Arab world, the First World War,

was going to bring certain transformative realities home to roost.

So the Ottoman Empire, which had for four centuries, been the only state they'd ever known,

would fall. And national identities would emerge to carve the region at the same time that

European imperial powers are going to be defining their own interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.

And through all of this, the position

of the Zionist movement was going to get an unprecedented boost when it received an endorsement

from one of the great powers of the world. So really, the First World War is the great

transformative moment that takes us from the old world of the 19th century and propels us forward

to what would be the nation state realities of the 20th.

Eugene, how far do you think anyone in the region was aware what was about to hit them?

...