Imperial partition of the Middle East created entities not accepted by their inhabitants

Evidence

The frontiers, and the entities which those frontiers enclose, are, with few exceptions, early modern or recent creations. The older ones are Ottoman, the more recent are European imperial artifacts. Not surprisingly, these artificial entities, with their artificial frontiers, were for long not fully well accepted or understood by the people who lived in them. The legacy of imperial partition consisted of a whole series of disputes—over frontiers, over minorities, and a variety of claims arising from these. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1609

Categorization

• XREF: Provides a mechanism-level causal chain (artificial cartography -> non-acceptance -> disputes) that can concretely ground broader Orientalism claims about knowledge production shaping reality.