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VI. Cairo and Khartoum on the Arab Question, 1915-18

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2010

Elie Kedourie
Elie Kedourie
Affiliation:
The London School of Economics and Political Science
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Extract

The Arab question in British diplomacy, it is remarkable to observe, has conjured up, both among those directly involved and among subsequent commentators, an amount of passionate discussion, of anguished retrospection, of accusation and self-denunciation, quite out of proportion to its intrinsic importance. For after all, compared to the great issues of Europe, America, the Commonwealth, and India, the Husain-McMahon Correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration, are small and paltry transactions which, as luck would have it, have turned out, it is true, to be inopportune and profitless and the cause of much loss and tribulation. For the historian of the Middle East, of course, the British connexion must loom very large by reason of its immediate impact and of its ultimate consequences, but in British history can the short-lived middle-eastern episode be more than a passing incident in the Indian summer of the Empire? For they are perhaps right, those who assert that had Britain been able to retain India, her middle-eastern position could probably have been maintained, regardless of mistakes and confusions in middle-eastern policy itself, and that, once India gone, neither virtue nor virtuosity would have availed to preserve Suez, Haifa and Habbaniyya. But this cool, sceptical view is rarely met in the writings either of the participants or of the subsequent commentators, whose mode is one of burning regret, and vehement lamentations, and who are for ever weighing good faith against bad faith, promises kept and promises broken, scrutinizing motives and examining scruples, like the diligent followers of some strict pietism, oppressed by sin and dolefully thirsting for justification.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1964 , pp. 280 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

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References

1 Wingate Papers (hereafter referred to as W.P.), file 141/4. I am grateful to Mr Richard Hill and the School of Oriental Studies, Durham University, for allowing me to consult these Papers. Crown copyright material is quoted with the kind permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office.

2 W.P. file 134/5.

3 Curzon to Crotner, 9 June 1915, W.P. file 134/7.

4 The other members of the Committee were Mr G. R. Clerk of the Foreign Office, Sir T. W. Holderness of the India Office, Admiral Sir H. B. Jackson of the Admiralty, Maj.-Gen. C. E. Callwellof theWarOffice.SirM. SykesandSirH. LI. Smithof the Boardof Trade. There is a copy of its Report in the Austen Chamberlain Papers (Box AC 19) at Birmingham University, for permission to consult which I am indebted to the Librarian, Mr K. W. Humphreys.

5 W.P. file 135/3.

6 Tel. Wingate, Khartoum, to Clayton, Cairo, 18 Oct. 1015, W.P. file 135/4.

7 W.P. file 135/1, note of 24 July 1915.

8 W.P. file 135/4, letter to Gen. C. E. Callwell at the War Office, London, 19 Oct. 1915.

9 W.P. file 135/5, tel. Wingate to Clayton, 14 Nov. 1915.

10 W.P. file 135/4, letters from Clayton to Wingate, 9 and 27 Oct. 1915, and file 135/5, tel. from Clayton to Wingate, 13 Nov. 1915.

11 W.P. file 139/6.

12 W.P. file 135/2, tel. Wingate to Clayton, 30 Aug. 1915, and file 135/4, letter Wingate to Clayton, ao Oct. 1915.

13 W.P. file 135/6, where the English translation of the letter is preserved.

14 See Kedourie, E., England and the Middle East (1956), p. 54Google Scholar.

15 Arab Bulletin Supplementary Papers No. 2, 1 March 1918, ‘Position and Prospects of King Husein’, by Commander D. G. Hogarth.

16 Arab Bulletin Supplementary Papers No. 5,24 June 1918, ‘King of the Arabs’, by Lt.-Col C. E. Wilson.

17 W.P. file 135/5. Wingate advanced the same argument in a letter to General Callwell of 33 Dec., file 135/7.

18 W.P. file 135/5, tel. foreign McMahon to Foreign Office repeated to Wingate in Clayton's tel. of 13 Nov. 1915, and letter from Clayton to Wingate on 12 Nov.

19 W.P. file 135/7, McMahon's tel. repeated to Wingate in Clayton's tel. of the same date.

20 See Kedourie, op. cit. p. 36.

21 W.P. file 135/4, Clayton's letter to Wingate of 9 Oct. 1915, cited above.

22 See Haim, S. G., ‘Islam and the Ideas of Arab Nationalism’, in Laqueur, W. Z., ed., The Middle East in Transition (1958)Google Scholar.

23 For a later formulation of this doctrine see E. Kedourie, ‘Pan-Arabian and British Policy’, in Laqueur, op. cit.

24 See Benrwich, N., Wanderer between Two World (1943), p. 75Google Scholar.

25 W.P. file 135/6. Kitchener, it is interesting to remember, himself proposed buying the French out in the Levant in the autumn of 1915. On this and on the Alexandretta schemes,. see , Kedourie, England and the Middle East, pp. 43–6Google Scholar.

26 W.P. file 135/6, letter Parker to Clayton, 18 Nov. 1915.

27 W.P. file 135/6, Results ofSecond Meeting ofCommittee to discuss Arab Question and Syria.

28 W.P. file 135/6, Parker to Clayton, 25 Nov. 1915.

29 W.P. file 135/7.

30 On this allocation of territory to the future Arab States see the illuminating paper by Marmorstein, E. ‘A Note on “Damascus, Horns, Hama and Aleppo ”’ in St Antony's Papers No. XI (1961), where the author convincingly argues that the plan, originating with Sir Mark Sykes, is an echo of a paragraph in Gibbon's Decline and Fall which described the limits of Muslim territory after the initial conquests of the Crusaders. Evidence to confirm Mr Marmorstein's view occurs in a passage by Rashid Rida in which he says that in June 1917 he heard from one ofGoogle Scholarcollaborators, Sir Mark Sykes's Syrian ‘that he understood from Sir Mark Sykes himself that they wanted to give the whole Syrian littoral to France because this was the territory which the Crusaders had occupied during the famous Crusades’; al-Manar, xxii (1921), 45Google Scholar.

31 W.P. file 135/2.

32 W.P. file 135/4, dispatch from McMahon to Grey, 26 Oct. 1915.

33 In a letter of 1 Nov. 1915 Wingate informs Clayton that he had discussed the boundaries offered to the Sharif with al-Mirghani and explained to him why reservations to the Sharif's proposals concerning Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia had to be made (W.P. file 135/5).

34 W.P. file 136/1, letter to Clayton, 20 Jan. 1916.

35 W.P. file 136/6, letter to Wingate, 22 May 1916.

36 Hogarth, D. G., ‘Wahabism and British Interests’, Journal of the British Institute of International Affairs, iv (1925), 72, 73Google Scholar.

37 W.P. file 135/5, note by Storrs, 12 Nov. 1915.

38 W.P. file 143/3, tel. C.E.Wilson, Jedda, to Wingate, 13 Nov. 1916; file 143/1, tcl. McMahon to Wingate, 14 Nov.; and file 143A/6, letter Clayton to Wingate, 23 Nov.

39 W.P. file 136/2, verbal message attached to note by Storrs, 26 Feb. 1916.

40 W.P. file 136/5, tel. Wingate to Clayton, 23 April 1916.

41 W.P. file 136/1.

42 W.P. file 136/1, letter to Wingate, 17 Jan. 1916.

43 W.P. file 136/6, letter to Wingate, 8 May 1916.

44 W.P. file 136/2, letter to Ibrahim Dimitri, 25 Feb. 1916. A note by Stornof 5 Dec. 1915 (file 135/7) records that Rashid Rida called at the Residency in Cairo and was given details of the offer to Husain, of the ambiguity of which he complained.

45 W.P. file 135/9. The note is unsigned and undated.

46 See , Kedourie, England and the Middle East, p. 62Google Scholar.

47 Ibid. pp. 113-15.

48 W.P. file 145/3, n o tc by Clayton, 10 March 1917, commenting on a request by Sykes to assemble Arab delegates to meet him on a forthcoming journey to Cairo.

49 W.P. file 139/5, letter of 7 Aug. 1916.

50 W.P. file 145/3, tel. F.O. to High Commissioner, Cairo, 14 March 1917.

51 W.P. file 145/4, memo, by Clayton, 3 April 1917.

52 See , Kedourie, England and the Middle East, pp. 37-8 and 97–8Google Scholar.

53 W.P. file 145/7, memo, by Clayton for Symes, 27 May 1917.

54 W.P. file 139/3, tel. Wilson, Jedda, to Wingate, 9 Aug. 1916.

55 The Sharif's words recorded in a note by Fuad al-Khatib, the Deputy Foreign Minister, taken down by Lt.-Col. Newcombe, W.P. 145/7.

56 W.P. file 145/7, memo, by Wilson, 24-27 May 1917.

57 This was apparently the length of the last interview. Sykes and Picot saw the Sharif in Jedda on 18 and 19 May, but Sykes had seen both Faisal and the Sharif on z and 5 May respectively, and explained to them the topics which would be discussed on his return with Picot (W.P. file 145/7, tel. from High Commissioner, Cairo, to F.O., 8 May 1917).

58 W.P. file 145/7, note by Lt.-Col. Newcombe, 20 March 1917.

59 Al-Manar, XXXIII (1933), 797Google Scholar.

60 W.P. file 148/8, letter to Wingate, 21 April 1918.

61 W.P. file 146/1, note on the Anglo-Franco-Russian Agreement about the Near East, by D. G. Hogarth, 9 July 1917; a letter from Wingate to Hogarth of 12 Aug. 1917 (file 146/3) indicates that the note was written to be shown to the authorities in London.

62 W.P. file 146/10, tel. to Foreign Office, 28 Nov. 1917.

63 W.P. file 149/1, dispatch from Clayton, 1 July 1918.

64 See Kedourie, op. cit. pp. III-12.

65 W.P. file 148/12, tel. to F.O. 16 June 1918.

66 Dispatch of 21 Sept. 1918 from Wingate, Cairo (W.P. file 149/7).

67 Austen Chamberlain Papers (Box AC 20). Hancock, Sir Keith in his Smuts, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1962), indicates, pp. 498-9, that both L. S. Amery, then a member of the War Cabinet Offices, and Smuts himself, were opposed to the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Smuts considered it ‘a hopeless blunder of policy’Google Scholar.

68 W.P. file 151/2.

69 U.S. Department of State Archives, tels. from Laughlin London, to Lansing, 10 and 14 Oct. 1918 (767.90b 14/1 and 2).

70 W.P. file 148/10, note by G. S. Symes, 13 June 1918.

71 Tour of Duty (1946), p. 50Google Scholar.

72 Puaux, G., Deux Années au Levant (Paris, 1952), p. 176Google Scholar.

73 K. D. D. Henderson, ed., 1953; the quotation is from a letter to J. W. Robertson, dated Cairo, 11 May 1943, p. 326.