Michelle Tusan in her new book The Last Treaty (Cambridge University Press, 2023), profoundly reshapes the story of how the First World War ended in the Middle East. Tracing Europe’s war with the Ottoman Empire through to the signing of Lausanne, which finally ended the war in 1923, she places the decisive Allied victory over Germany in 1918 in sharp relief against the unrelenting war in the East and reevaluates the military operations, humanitarian activities and diplomatic negotiations that continued after the signing of Versailles in 1919.

Tusan shows how, on the Middle Eastern Front, Britain and France directed Allied war strategy against a resurgent Ottoman Empire to sustain an imperial system that favored Europe’s dominance within the nascent international system. The prolonged nature of the conflict and ongoing humanitarian crisis proved devastating for the civilian populations caught in its wake and increasingly questioned old certainties about a European-led imperial order and humanitarian intervention. Its consequences would lead to a major shift in the postwar world.

SPEAKER:

Michelle Tusan

Professor of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

PANELLISTS:

Ronald Grigor Suny

William H. Sewell Jr Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan; Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History, The University of Chicago

Dawn Chatty

Emerita Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration, University of Oxford

MODERATOR:

s

Soumava Basu

President and Founder, CGC

Thank you for your interest in this event. To attend, please email at [email protected]