Past Read: The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power

McMeekin, Sean. The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2010)

Sean McMeekin’s The Berlin-Baghdad Express: 1898-1918 (2010) explores a topic often omitted in the heavily Anglo- and Francophone focus of scholarship on colonialisms in the Middle East: the imperialist goals of Germany in the late nineteenth century. In a lively, often enjoyable read which covers far more than the rail line of its title, McMeekin traces the alliance between Kaiser Wilhelm II and Sultan Abdulhemid II, the former of whom wished to break British imperial power by sponsoring the latter in a holy war. German support for the idea of an Ottoman-sponsored jihad, McMeekin explains, was rather late in coming as popular Ottoman support for the idea of the caliphate had waned considerably by WWI. Moreover, the Kaiser’s misunderstanding of the Muslim world was apparent in his multiple miscalculations, as he apparently assumed that his alliance with the Sultan meant that he could count on the unswerving loyalty of Sunni and Shia tribes across Central Asia, who would, he imagined, support him in an attack on British India from the Khyber Pass.