As a non-historian I found this very accessible and interesting. It covered things I didn't know but should have (like the east African slave trade), put events I knew about in isolation into their proper context (like the siege of Khartoum), and introduced ideas I'd never come across before (like using religious jihad to destabilise British colonies during WW1). I found this genuinely engaging the whole way through, even when we started getting into battle descriptions - and full credit to Faulkner for including diagrams!

Highly recommend this for anyone with even a passing interest in the British Empire or the time period.

Self-assured British hubris versus Arab fanaticism is at the center of this very captivating account of the Anglo-Arab relationships and their many bloody and useless conflicts from the early 1870s to the cursed Versailles treaty of 1919 and the inevitable collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
An engrossing journey through the political and religious shenanigans that continually plagued British imperialism on the African continent and the useless wars that were fought and never really won by either side. Neil Faulkner knows how to hook the reader from the start and take him or her through 50 years of failed actions & disastrous policies.
A rollicking and truculent tapestry of late 19th and early 20th century failed colonialism versus utterly misplaced religious fervor.
And as we can so easily see one hundred years later with the mess in the Sahel and the utter failure of the West in Afghanistan, these ideological and political conflicts are far from being resolved....

Highly recommended to anyone interested in European colonialism studies and modern African history and to be enjoyed without any moderation whatsoever!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Yale University for this fascinating ARC