| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Jonathan S. McMurray. Distant Ties: Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the Construction of the Baghdad Railway. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. 2001. Pp. x, 155. $64.00.

Within the tight bounds of barely one hundred pages of text, this monograph attempts to untangle the complexities surrounding the construction of what has traditionally been called the Berlin-Baghdad Railway. In some respects, Jonathan S. McMurray does a competent job by making good use of unpublished German documents, personal memoirs, and travel accounts. But his task is hugely complicated by the necessity of dealing simultaneously with four different scenarios, which he does with wavering dexterity. 1

First, diplomacy. An incredible amount of scholarly toil has been invested in an effort to analyze the involvement of the Ottoman Empire in European affairs. Apart from Germany's infamous Weltpolitik under Wilhelm II, there were English designs to protect claims in the Persian Gulf, French banking interests, Russia's drive to penetrate the Dardanelles, a war with Italy, several Balkan conflicts, the guerrilla campaign by Lawrence of Arabia, and so on. McMurray tries gamely to unfurl this gigantic backdrop, but its intrinsic confusion is all too well reflected in his fitful rendition. The explanatory value of Ulrich Trumpener's Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918 (1968) thus remains intact. . . .

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