Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 147

BOOK REVIEWS

she writes, “are the regular folks who face the worst
and make the best of it.”
To tell this story, Fawaz focuses each chapter on
a specific theme related to the impact of the war on
Middle Eastern societies. The first chapter provides
a broad overview of the social, political, cultural, and
economic situation in the Middle East on the eve of the
Great War. The following chapter examines how mobilization and the costs of war waged on many fronts
exhausted the Ottoman Empire politically and militarily. The third chapter covers the experience of regular
people facing hardships such as unwanted military
conscription, migration to escape the war’s devastation,
and the great famine caused by the Ottoman hoarding
of food supplies and the allied naval blockade. Whereas
chapter 3 reveals the experience of many who endured
extreme hardships during the war, chapter 4 tells the
story of entrepreneurs and profiteers who often benefited from others’ suffering. Fawaz explains that such
disparate experiences sharpened class consciousness in
many Middle Eastern societies.
Chapters 5 and 6 explore the soldier’s experience—
first from the Ottoman and then from the British
perspective. Fawaz notes that the burden of Ottoman
military service fell heavily on rural populations, as 80
percent of Ottoman soldiers were from rural backgrounds and only 11 percent were literate. On the
British side, ground forces in the Middle East included large contingents of colonial troops from territories such as India, Egypt, and Australia. More than
two hundred thousand Indian troops were deployed
to Middle East by 1916—and almost sixty thousand
died during the war.
Through her exploration of the conflict’s influence on Middle Eastern societies and cultures, Fawaz
demonstrates that “World War I was not one Great
War but rather a series of local or regional wars.”
Fawaz’s investigation pulls back the curtain over the
social experience of one of those subconflicts. A Land
of Aching Hearts provides an intriguing overview
of the relationship between war and society in the
Middle East. By casting the First World War as a key
moment in which to understand the emergence of the
contemporary Middle East, the book will prove useful
for scholars and military practitioners alike.
Capt. Brian Drohan, U.S. Army,
West Point, New York
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2015

THE DELUGE: The Great War, America and the
Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
Adam Tooze, Viking, New York, 2014, 672 pages

A

dam Tooze writes about the emergence of
American power in the midst of World War
I. While American military power enabled
the Entente Powers, also known as the Allies, to defeat
Germany and the Central Powers, its real power was
economic and financial—since it was American loans
that paid for munitions and food from the United States.
Viewed from 1931, Tooze sees that the interwar system of international diplomacy and economics—in which
military power was an afterthought—was sustained by
American power, which was constrained by the limits set
by Congress and public opinion. This emergence was rapid
given that the United States was perceived as insignificant
both before 1914 and after 1931.
This book is a splendid analytic and interpretive narrative that goes beyond Europe and ties together events
in East Asia, Asia Minor, Africa, and Latin America,
as well as the policies created in response, moving from
striking metalworkers in Buenos Aires, to emerging
Chinese nationalism and the foreign reactions to it, and
to postwar American investment in Australia.
After 1916, American economic and financial power
could easily be converted into military power when the
president and the Congress so chose. The prime example is the Nation’s 1916 decision to build a two-ocean
navy. The war left the international system of states and
alliances in a shambles, with devastated and radicalizing
European societies, and it provided glimpses of the possible futures in the events in Germany, Eastern Europe,
and Russia. New countries demanded more influence
based on their wartime activities—notably Japan, China,
Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
Woodrow Wilson emerges in this account as an
annoying, moralistic advocate of American supremacy.
As the various crises between 1916 and 1921 revealed the
weakness of British, French, German, Japanese, and Soviet
power, Wilson appeared as a tough-minded advocate
of American primacy when he believed American vital
interests were at stake. The Americans were the key to
international stability throughout the period; however, by
1924, and with the American rejection of the League of
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