![]() The Treaty of Sèvres which the Sultan’s government signed put an end to Ottoman independence. When the Sultan sent his emissaries to the Paris peace conference they could not win a reprieve. With these two in the lead, the Allies sought to impose partition on the Sultan’s state. The chief proponent of partition was Lloyd George, heir to the Turcophobe tradition of British liberals, who fell under the spell of the Greek irredentist politician Venizelos. But Vahdettin and his ministers could not succeed because the victorious Allies had decided on the final partition of the Ottoman state. The last Sultan Mehmet VI Vahdettin thought he could salvage the Ottoman state in something like its old form. It may have been doomed in any case, but he was the agent of its doom. ![]() Enver’s decision to enter the war on the side of Germany destroyed the Ottoman state. Adventurous rulers - Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Enver Pasha in the Ottoman Empire - hastened it. But prudent statesmen could delay the death of empires, rulers such as Emperor Franz Josef II of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Sultan Abdü’lhamid II. The forces of disintegration affected several empires simultaneously. ![]() World War I sounded the death knell of empires. ![]()
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