West Asia in the twentieth century (1914 – 2000). Two world wars, decolonisation and the technologies that made the present. These articles cover the century within living memory.
Balfour's letter to Lord Rothschild, approved by the Cabinet and dated November 2, 1917, set beside the McMahon letter of 1915, the 1922 mandate and 2017.
· 1917Sèvres (1920), signed by the sultan's ministers, partitioned Anatolia; Ankara drove Greece from Smyrna, ended the sultanate and won Lausanne in 1923.
· 1923A Bedouin shepherd found seven scrolls in a Qumran cave in 1947. A 1954 Wall Street Journal advertisement offered four of them for sale.
· 1947Dulles to Eisenhower, March 1, 1953; the embassy's "Mosadeq victor" cable of August 16; a decree dated August 13. What the 2017 FRUS volume prints.
· 1953OAPEC cut output 5 percent a month from October 17, 1973, and embargoed the United States. A barrel went from $2.90 to $11.65; the ban ended in March 1974.
· 1973On November 6, 1991, the Emir of Kuwait extinguished the last of the oil-well fires Iraqi forces had set, the Senate recorded, ending a nine-month effort.
· 1991
