Sykes and the sudden shift to Arab support
In chapter 23, section iv. Sykes -- one of the recurring characters in Fromkin's history -- makes a hairpin turn from scorning the Arabs as a mongrels and displaying a rampant enthusiasm for Arab support. And I wonder how typical of the European powers this kind of change was. What about their view of Middle Easterns made their opinion and support of them so fluid? It might be easy, I suppose, to think that their support was contingent on their perception of what they could get from the Arabs, but there has to be something about their view of the people themselves that makes it so amenable to sudden change like that. Any ideas?
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