The Lines That Broke the World - May 16, 1916

On May 16, 1916, two diplomats drew a line across a map of the Middle East and called it a peace plan. The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the collapsing Ottoman Empire between Britain and France in secret, without consulting a single person who lived there, and while Britain was simultaneously promising Arab leaders an independent state in exchange for their blood. In this episode, we follow the full arc: from the quiet London office where the agreement was signed to the Bolshevik archives that exposed it, to T.E. Lawrence's personal breakdown, to the borders that ISIS used as propaganda a century later and that are still being contested today. The story of Sykes-Picot is not a story about two villainous diplomats. It's a story about what happens when the people who make consequential decisions never have to live with the consequences.