For most of human history the attitude toward land was determined by the principle of the right of conquest,

which is to say that if you could take land and keep it, it was yours. That's why there are Arabs in Morocco or Anglo-Saxons in England.

Although it seems logical to us that distinct groups of people should have the right to

self-government, that idea is an incredibly recent thought technology.

It was really only after Napoleon tried to conquer all of Europe in the early 1800s that the European

governments started to propose restricting, through treaty treaty the right of nations to solve problems

by just invading and capturing other countries.

But during the same period, Europe was actively engaged in colonizing half the world, so the idea still needed some ironing out.

The United States gained all of California, Nevada, and Utah in large parts of Arizona,

New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming by defeating Mexico in 1848.

So the right of conquest was still the rule.

At the end of World War I, there were a series of agreements establishing a league of nations and some self-determination

to the various peoples of the world who were subjugated within empires, namely the Hungarian

and Ottoman ones because those are the ones that lost the war.

We'll confine ourselves to the Ottoman world for this show because

it is confusing enough.

Although promises were made throughout the war to the Arab communities of the Middle East that if they helped overthrow the Turks, they would be liberated and granted autonomy after the war. In actual fact, they were mostly all betrayed,

and the entire region was just divided up between France and England.

During this period, several sort of half states were recognized by the European powers, mostly as

pacifying measures within these former Ottoman territories.

The states which had never existed before and only roughly coincided with actual populations and more often were drawn to Curry favor with local chieftains.

These newly formed countries included Lebanon, Syria, Trans-jordan, which became Jordan, Iraq, Yemen,

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