Dividing the Middle East

The peace settlement in the Middle East that painfully and violently emerged from the ending of World War I carved up the former Ottoman Empire and established national borders that have, for the most part, lasted to the present day. Some of those new borders were quite literally drawn on old maps, as Allied leaders considered attempting to group peoples by their nationality and languages and to protect their own imperial and economic interests. This map from Woodrow Wilson's papers shows a proposal for a large Armenian state and Jewish homeland that was never implemented.