The Sykes-Picot Agreement created the modern Middle East. It represents one of the first installments in a long line of modern European—and subsequent American—meddling in the region. And, in providing a set of unrealistic and impossible promises to the Arabs, it led directly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Asia Minor Agreement, the official name of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, dates to 1916. It was the result of secret deliberations between the British civil servant Mark Sykes and French diplomat François Georges-Picot.
It was made official by the Allied Powers of World War I with the San Remo Conference in 1920.
The agreement provided a general understanding of British and French spheres of influence in the Middle East. The goal was to divide between them the Ottoman Empire’s Arab provinces (not including the Arabian Peninsula).
The line across a map of the Middle East (below) it drew created colonial spheres of influence that cut directly and artificially across a region that had previously been divided along ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines.
