How Arab nationalism was born as the Ottoman empire died
In its dying days, the Ottoman Empire attempted to use religion to prolong its life but nascent Arab nationalism helped speed up the inevitable – with consequences we are living with still.
The Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in Constantinople during the celebrations for his accession to the throne in September 1876, in an engraving by Antonio Bonamore. DeAgostini / Getty Images

John Mchugo
December 4, 2014
Facing an uncertain future, the religious and ethnic minority groups across Iraq and Syria today have also served as a reminder of the region’s great diversity. The end of a year marking the centenary of the start of the First World War seems a propitious time to assess the relationship between nationalism, ethnic identity and religious affiliation that played out in Greater Syria and the toxic mix of colonial self-interest, authoritarianism and religion that still exacts its price today. When the Ottoman Navy launched an attack on Russian naval bases in the Black Sea early in the First World War, the once mighty Ottoman Empire had been in decline for more than two centuries. The great powers of Europe had rolled back its frontiers and encircled it with their colonial possessions, but its main losses had been to the nationalism that spread among its subject peoples as the 19th century wore on
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