Upon seizing power in 1917, the Bolsheviks gained access to the previous Russian regime's files, including the Sykes-Picot Agreement named after the British and French politicians who, with Russian and Italian support, agreed in 1916, during the First World War, to carve up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire after the war, taking various parts of South West Asia (including Palestine) for themselves. On November 23, 1917, the Bolsheviks began publishing information about the agreement in their newspapers. Britain's Manchester Guardian newspaper follwed, reporting on November 26 about the agreement and the Bolsheviks revealing of it.