Sykes–Picot Agreement
The secret deal behind the map of the modern Middle East
In May 1916 British diplomat Mark Sykes and Frenchman François Georges-Picot secretly divided the Ottoman Arab lands into spheres: Syria and Lebanon for France, Mesopotamia for Britain, Palestine under international administration. The Bolsheviks published the text in 1917. The League of Nations mandates largely followed these lines.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 2 years earlier
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 2 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 4 years later
- 1939–1945 World War II — 23 years later
Europe
- 1905 Einstein's miracle year and relativity — 11 years earlier
- 1919 Treaty of Versailles — 3 years later
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin — 12 years later
- 1933 Hitler comes to power — 17 years later
- 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War — 20 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1917 October Revolution — 1 year later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 1 year later
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 13 years later
- 1936–1938 Great Purge — 20 years later
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 25 years later
Africa
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 19 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 12 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 6 years later
- 1935–1937 Italy invades Ethiopia — 19 years later
Asia
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 20 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 5 years earlier
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 7 years later
- 1931 China floods — 15 years later
- 1934–1935 Long March — 18 years later
Americas
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — 6 years earlier
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 3 years earlier
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 2 years earlier
- 1914 Death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon — 2 years earlier
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 23 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 23 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 5 years earlier
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 4 years earlier
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 20 years later
Alive at the time
- Thomas Edison (aged 69)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 60)
- Marie Curie (aged 49)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 47)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 46)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 45)
- Winston Churchill (aged 42)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 38)
- Albert Einstein (aged 37)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 35)