The Berlin Conference: The Falafel Border and the Sykes-Picot Afterlife

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how the Berlin Conference's principles of effective occupation and artificial borders continued to shape the Middle East after World War I — focusing on the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and its aftermath. They discuss how European diplomats, like Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, drew lines across the Ottoman Empire that ignored ethnic and sectarian realities, creating states like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. The conversation highlights the continuity between Berlin's partition of Africa and the post-war division of the Arab world, touching on the 1920 Iraqi revolt, the role of T.E. Lawrence, and the fate of the Kurdish people. Lucas explains how the Mandate system and the 1917 Balfour Declaration set the stage for decades of conflict, and how the Berlin Conference's legacy of arbitrary borders survived into the 20th century and beyond. #SykesPicot #BerlinConference #MiddleEast #WWI #Mandates #Iraq #Syria #Lebanon #Jordan #Palestine #Kurds #BalfourDeclaration #MarkSykes #FrancoisGeorgesPicot #SaudiArabia #Colonialism #History #FexingoHistory #ScrambleForAfrica #KingLeopold Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo