Middle East borders were drawn as straight lines by European colonial rulers
Evidence
If we look at the map of Europe, we see a number of lines on the map, most very irregular lines, except for a few that follow geographical features; lines drawn by a thousand years of history and struggle. The frontiers on the map of the Middle East are to a remarkable extent straight lines. They were mostly drawn by statesmen with rulers on maps—statesmen who were not Arab, not Persian, not Turkish, but British or French or occasionally Italian. In this respect the map of the Middle East looks rather like the map of North America where similar reasons produced similar results, with the extraordinary difference that this was not an area of new settlement but of ancient civilizations. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1608
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- ADDENDUM: Connects to the reviewer’s interest in infrastructure/worldbuilding: colonial map-drawing is a form of imposed infrastructure on ancient settled land.