The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret treaty Britain and France signed more than a century ago. Many consider it to have seeded a legacy of strife in the Middle East.

Many historians misunderstand Sykes–Picot, the treaty that carved up the Middle East, as a random act of colonial mapmaking. In fact, the secret World War I agreement between France and the United ...

Sykes-Picot: The Centenary of A Deal That Did Not Shape the Middle East 6 minute read Soldier and politician Sir Mark Sykes, 1879 - 1919. Topical Press Agency/Getty Images ...

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret accord between Britain and France, with the assent of Russia, to dismember the Ottoman Empire in the event of its defeat in World War I. It foresaw granting ...

In May 1916, Mark Sykes, a British diplomat, and François Georges-Picot, his French counterpart, drew up an agreement to ensure that once the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I, their ...

Monday marks the 100 years since the signing of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret Anglo-French pact reached during the First World War that proposed splitting the Middle East up into zones of ...

A map, seen above, initialed by Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, shows a broad sweep of the then-crumbling Ottoman Empire carved between French and British spheres of influence.

While there is unlikely to be effective governance in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq anytime soon, the borders of the states created by European colonialism in the 1920s are not about to collapse.