The Ottoman empire at it’s height was a large empire that was multicultural multilingual due to its control over most of Southeastern Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa (C&B 38). During the 17th century the empire contained many provinces and a variety of vassal states that were later absorbed into the Ottoman empire (Ibid). While the Ottoman empire remained prominently strong from the start of its formation; during the 1850s the empire started to go through some changes the lead to dissolving after World War I. Internal factors such as Pan-Islam over Ottomanism and the Arab Revolt caused internal strife while external factors such as aligning with Germany during World War I and the desire to become “modern” and join the global economy. These elements lead to the Ottoman empire being split apart into various countries or regions that would in some way under the control of the British or French.
One of the starting factors that influenced the decline of the Ottoman empire was European commerce entering the Middle East to an extraordinary degree (C&B 54). This caused cheap products the flood the market and the amount of consumption changed causing the local handicraft industries to suffer (Ibid). Because of the Europe’s industrial states need for raw …show more content…
They knew of the internal strife that was occurring within the empire that was slowly tearing the empire apart. They knew this through the correspondence letters of Husayn and McMahon and discovered they could offer a Jewish Homeland in Palestine and show their support with Jewish Zionist (AFK 4:4). During this time the British and French knew the Ottoman empire was going to fall and offered support for Jewish immigrants leaving the Ottoman empire. The main reason Britain did this was because they wanted to have American Zionist encourage congress to join the war