His 1960 book '' Nationalism '' provoked replies , in '' Thought and Change '' ( 1964 ) and '' Nations and Nationalism '' ( 1983 ) , by his LSE colleague Ernest Gellner , who contested Kedourie 's theories on the potential eliminability of nationalist thought . Kedourie was critical of Marxist interpretations of history and nationalism , which he described as " anti-individualist , despotic , racist , and violent " . Kedourie claimed that nationalism had turned the Middle East into " a wilderness of tigers " . Kedourie also documented and criticised what he saw as the British Empire 's debilitation by excessive self-criticism . In 1970 , he attacked another British celebrity , Arnold J. Toynbee , in the essay '' The Chatham House Version '' , and held him partly responsible for the British abdication of responsibility for the state of the Middle East . Kedourie attacked Toynbee for his criticism of the British Empire , arguing that contra Toynbee that the British Empire had been a positive institution whose decline had brought disaster to its former colonies , most notably in the Middle East . Kedourie argued that multi-national empires like the British Empire , the Ottoman Empire and the Austrian Empire had allowed different peoples to live together in peace , and the break-up of empires had led to wars as nationalists fought each other for dominance . For Kedourie , Toynbee 's work had denied the " civilizing role " played by the British Empire and white-washed the brutal tendencies of Third World nationalists whom Kedourie argued were far worse than the colonial powers they had replaced , which is why Kedourie attacked the " Chatham House version of history " with such vehemence . Kedourie had no use for nationalism , which saw as dividing people up , and believed that importing Western ideas of nationalism into the Middle East had been a disaster , as it turned people who once lived together in harmony into enemies as various peoples started to see themselves as part of this or that nation . The Israeli historian Major Efraim Karsh criticised Kedourie for his thesis that the era of the Ottoman Empire was one of peaceful co-existence of peoples who did not have national identities , citing the Wahhabi raids ; the wars of independence in Greece , Serbia , and Bulgaria ; the anti-Christian pogroms and massacres in the Levant in 1859 – 60 ; and the Hamidian massacres of Armenians , to demonstrate the limits of Kedourie 's " peaceful co-existence " thesis . In his 1976 book , '' In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth : The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and Its Interpretations , 1914 – 1939 '' , Kedourie exposed the myth of " the Great Betrayal " that British high commissioner in Egypt , Sir Henry McMahon had promised in 1914 – 15 the Sharif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali an empire in the Middle East and that the British betrayed the Sharif by signing the Sykes – Picot Agreement with the French in 1916 , followed by the Balfour Declaration in 1917 . Kedourie argued that British decision-makers in the interwar period , motivated in equal measure by a lack of cultural confidence and a desire to renege on their written promises to the French and Zionists had accepted the Arab nationalist claim that the Sharif Hussein had been promised an empire in the Near East , instead arguing that McMahon had made no such promise and the British claim of " defaulting " on their commitments to the Hashemites were entirely a myth created by British themselves
Hamidian massacres
Hamidian massacres
Elie Kedourie