It is very easy to see the campaigns in this region as a sideshow to the main war in Europe. Worse, it can be seen as Britain and France taking advantage of the war to stage grand imperial land-grabs in the region, snatching lucrative areas of the ailing Ottoman Empire. In short, it can all be seen as political manoeuvrings unrelated to the actual war effort.
There is of course a strong element of this during the war, with the (in)famous Sykes-Picot Agreement and Balfour Declarations as well as lesser known agreements between Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the various Arab forces. There are also some very strong and contradictory forces at play in the British and French Empires concerning the potential reactions of their Islamic subjects to going to war with the Ottoman Empire. However, these factors only come to the fore after the war has started, and ignore the highly compelling reason why a front of this global war needs to be opened in the Sinai Desert: the Suez Canal.
Britain had been effectively running Egypt since the 1880s in order to protect this vital strategic link in their empire. It was the quickest route from Egypt to their major territorial holdings in India, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Massive amounts of the raw materials needed to keep the industrial powerhouse that Britain had become running came from these places. After the outbreak of war, these sources would become even more crucial as Britain struggled to keep increasing her output of war materials (not always successfully, as the Shell Scandal of 1915, for example, showed). Not only Britain, but soon France and Italy (who had small merchant fleets) relied upon British shipping taking the fastest routes possible to drop off cargoes of desperately needed raw materials, before turning around and heading out for more. While ships could go around Africa (and in 1917, as the U-Boat menace in the Mediterranean grew, many ships had to be diverted that way), it took weeks longer and drastically reduced the flow of material coming in.
The Canal was vital to keeping up the flow of tin, rubber, tea (can't find a war without tea!) and of course men - in the first four months of the First World War alone some 164,000 men came up from India, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand. Most of these men were fed straight into the fighting in France, where they relieved and expanded the shattered British Expeditionary Force, saved Ypres and the Channel Ports, and then held the line until the men of the Kitchener Armies could be fully trained and deployed. To have gone around Africa would have led to their probably arriving too late.
Of course, the Ottomans and Germans knew how important the Canal was. The first attack was made on the Suez Canal in February 1915 and was defeated, followed by various attempts to mine it before the next major attack in April 1916. This also failed, as did a much larger attack in August 1916. By the end of that year, the EEF had secured a line on the Egyptian-Palestine border. In March and April, following the British capture of Baghdad, the EEF was ordered to break into southern Palestine to increase the pressure on the Ottomans. Both attacks failed, and the line stabilised for the summer along the Gaza-Beersheba line.
In June 1917 the commander of the EEF, Sir Archibald Murray, was replaced by Sir Edmund Allenby. He was sent out to re-invigorate the EEF, and, according to the Prime Minister David Lloyd George, take Jerusalem as a Christmas present to the allied nations. Allenby launched a third assault on southern Palestine at the end of October 1917, which pushed the Ottomans back 50 miles and secured both Jaffa and Jerusalem by the end of the year. More importantly, this attack had also pre-empted a major Ottoman assault on the Suez Canal and Egypt. The 'Yildirim' ('Thunderbolt') Battle Group was formed from the summer of 1917, and was planned to include a total of 18 Ottoman divisions (out of the 45 divisions fielded by the Ottoman Army at that time). Their attack was to start in early 1918, and they were still in the process of being formed when the British offensive shattered several of those divisions and pushed them 50 miles further back from their objective. It is often over shadowed by the fall of Jerusalem, but the third offensive in southern Palestine was also crucial to protecting the Suez Canal.
There is of course a strong element of this during the war, with the (in)famous Sykes-Picot Agreement and Balfour Declarations as well as lesser known agreements between Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the various Arab forces. There are also some very strong and contradictory forces at play in the British and French Empires concerning the potential reactions of their Islamic subjects to going to war with the Ottoman Empire. However, these factors only come to the fore after the war has started, and ignore the highly compelling reason why a front of this global war needs to be opened in the Sinai Desert: the Suez Canal.
Britain had been effectively running Egypt since the 1880s in order to protect this vital strategic link in their empire. It was the quickest route from Egypt to their major territorial holdings in India, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Massive amounts of the raw materials needed to keep the industrial powerhouse that Britain had become running came from these places. After the outbreak of war, these sources would become even more crucial as Britain struggled to keep increasing her output of war materials (not always successfully, as the Shell Scandal of 1915, for example, showed). Not only Britain, but soon France and Italy (who had small merchant fleets) relied upon British shipping taking the fastest routes possible to drop off cargoes of desperately needed raw materials, before turning around and heading out for more. While ships could go around Africa (and in 1917, as the U-Boat menace in the Mediterranean grew, many ships had to be diverted that way), it took weeks longer and drastically reduced the flow of material coming in.
The Canal was vital to keeping up the flow of tin, rubber, tea (can't find a war without tea!) and of course men - in the first four months of the First World War alone some 164,000 men came up from India, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand. Most of these men were fed straight into the fighting in France, where they relieved and expanded the shattered British Expeditionary Force, saved Ypres and the Channel Ports, and then held the line until the men of the Kitchener Armies could be fully trained and deployed. To have gone around Africa would have led to their probably arriving too late.
Of course, the Ottomans and Germans knew how important the Canal was. The first attack was made on the Suez Canal in February 1915 and was defeated, followed by various attempts to mine it before the next major attack in April 1916. This also failed, as did a much larger attack in August 1916. By the end of that year, the EEF had secured a line on the Egyptian-Palestine border. In March and April, following the British capture of Baghdad, the EEF was ordered to break into southern Palestine to increase the pressure on the Ottomans. Both attacks failed, and the line stabilised for the summer along the Gaza-Beersheba line.
In June 1917 the commander of the EEF, Sir Archibald Murray, was replaced by Sir Edmund Allenby. He was sent out to re-invigorate the EEF, and, according to the Prime Minister David Lloyd George, take Jerusalem as a Christmas present to the allied nations. Allenby launched a third assault on southern Palestine at the end of October 1917, which pushed the Ottomans back 50 miles and secured both Jaffa and Jerusalem by the end of the year. More importantly, this attack had also pre-empted a major Ottoman assault on the Suez Canal and Egypt. The 'Yildirim' ('Thunderbolt') Battle Group was formed from the summer of 1917, and was planned to include a total of 18 Ottoman divisions (out of the 45 divisions fielded by the Ottoman Army at that time). Their attack was to start in early 1918, and they were still in the process of being formed when the British offensive shattered several of those divisions and pushed them 50 miles further back from their objective. It is often over shadowed by the fall of Jerusalem, but the third offensive in southern Palestine was also crucial to protecting the Suez Canal.