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After decades of decline and gradual European encroachment into the Ottoman Empire, disaffected and angry army officers staged a revolt in 1908, forcing the Sultan Abdulhamid II to accept the reinstatement of a reformist constitution. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.c
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At the end of the Second World War an American survey of Jewish survivors in Europe recommended mass Jewish immigration into Palestine. President Harry Truman embraced the study partly out of idealism, but also with his own calculating political considerations, knowing the existing levels of anti Semitism in America. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subs
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Exhausted by the Second World War, Britain was desperate to hold on to influence in the Middle East and yet policy makers were anxious to withdraw from Palestine as quickly as possible. At the same time, Britain was engaged in another hurried departure from India. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive Con
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In 1949, following the creation of the Soviet controlled German Democratic Republic, Walter Ulbricht, the German Communist Party leader unleashed a wave of repression against the last surviving Jews. The repression was inspired by events in the USSR and the Middle East and help to highlight the moral and ideological pragmatism of the GDR. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy
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In 1916 a British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence and an Arab prince, Feisal of Mecca led a guerrilla army of Bedouin against the Ottoman Empire in Arabia. In the 1920s Lawrence became an international celebrity due to his wartime exploits and he has remained a mythologised figure for much of the 20th Century. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe a
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Between 1918 and 1939 France’s overseas colonial empire, like Britain’s, grew with the acquisition of Ottoman territories as mandates. France’s empire was ruled using different ideas and institutions to Britain but both systems struggled to hold together during economically and politically turbulent decades. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and
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Towards the end of the Second World War, zionist terrorist Menachem Begin and the paramilitary organisation Irgun instigated their own war against the British authorities in Palestine. They sought to establish a Jewish state there and saw the British as an obstacle to this ambition Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show &
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In 1936 a British Christian Zionist army officer, Orde Wingate, was posted to the British Mandate in Palestine to help quell the Arab revolt. Wingate’s passionate support for the Jews in Palestine led to him organising a brutal counter insurgency against the Arabs with the Jewish defence organisation the Hagannah, laying down the tactics later employed by the Israeli Defence Force. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We c
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Throughout the 19th Century Britain felt constantly threatened by and suspicious of Russia. Russian expansionism in the Balkans threatened Britain’s ability to access the routes to her Indian Empire and the British were committed to supporting the weakening Ottoman Empire against Russian expansionism. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.
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Why did the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour give an assurance to Britain’s Zionists that there would be a Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1917? This podcast gives a brief outline of the politics of the Balfour Declaration and Britain’s deals with the Arabs, French and Jews. Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show