This article is not so much about linguistics as it is about history. Of course, linguistics influence history, especially when the linguistics of diplomats and officials from one country with its language and culture compete with the linguistics of diplomats and officials of a different country with its language and culture. It becomes complicated.
This underscores a principle that I did not grasp when I was in my teens and twenties: That to learn to communicate fluently in a foreign language, one must immerse oneself into the culture associated with that language. Yes, I gave this principle lip service, but I did not truly appreciate it.
I admit that I have never understood the politics of the Middle East crisis, especially the politics that have ensued since 1948. However, I do know that very few people realize that the British Empire created this mess during and immediately after World War I (WWI). It’s natural that we focus on a present problem without much sensitivity to its origins.
I suppose that if I surveyed 1,000 randomly selected people anywhere in Western society, fewer than 1% would know of the Balfour Declaration. Far fewer would know of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. And far fewer yet would know of the preceding correspondence between the British officials and prominent Arab leaders during the First World War. Indeed, I might require my sampling to expand tenfold for my survey to pick up or to sense or to register any sensitivity regarding the correspondence.
And yet, if one were to earnestly study these subjects, it is expected that this studious person will overlook what I refer to later in this article as the foundation to the three landmark events mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Few—perhaps none—of us today can truly imagine living amidst the British Empire that began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It grew to be the largest Empire ever in the history of the world, reaching its peak after WWI, and then diminishing greatly with World War II (WWII). It seems to me that the Empire wanted to control the world as is alluded to in the song “Rule Brittania.”
And we might not realize the meaning of the phrase, “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” It has figurative as well as literal meanings. In its literal sense, it indicates that the Empire was so vast that there was always a part of it exposed to the sun as the earth rotated.
We in the United States had our divorce from the British Empire a little more than a century before the Middle East crisis was instigated. And we have essentially lost our sentiments that the British elites and government (not the people) were greedy, overbearing, pompous, deceitful, and guilty of usury as if the rest of the world owed their blood and treasure to them (my characterization). Since the War of 1812, we had gotten along with the Empire as perhaps it had learned that subjugating us was not worth the effort. After all, many of us originally had fled their oppression by relocating to North America. We were not the usual foreign and supposedly backward, naive peoples that the Empire conquered and subjugated. Essentially, we were/are them and already onto their treacheries and atrocities.
[Meanwhile, we in the United States were occupied committing similar atrocities against the indigenous peoples of North America.]
As already partially alluded to: Reasonably informed people know of the Balfour Declaration (not a formal treaty although later incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles) of 1917 and the Palestine Mandate of 1922. Fewer people know of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and realize that it was egregiously deceitful to the Arabs (Sharif Hussein and his sons, Faisal and Abdullah). As a result of the betrayal by the British, Hussein refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles (1919). And because of Hussein’s refusal to cooperate, the British cultivated the House of Saud as the subsequent representative of the Arabs.
[The victors of WWI eventually appeased Hussein’s sons by installing Abdullah as ruler of Jordan and Faisal as ruler of Iraq.]
The impasse was largely created by the double (actually triple) dealing by the British to avoid losing WWI.
The Allies were essentially comprised of the Russians, the British, and the French. The Allies were pitted against the Central Powers comprised primarily of Austria, Germany, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, although other countries were involved.
The Russians withdrew from the war due to civil strife and the Bolshevik takeover (1917). And this left the proverbial three-legged stool of the Allies with only two legs.
The previously all-powerful and cocky British were now desperate. They seriously feared losing the war and sought to cover their bets by making promises—even empty promises—to anyone who might help them.
Through TE Lawrence (AKA, Lawrence of Arabia) and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner to Egypt, the British negotiated with Hussein. Although there was some military value in the Arab manpower and local knowledge alongside the British Army, the primary reason for the arrangement with Hussein was to counteract the Ottoman declaration of jihad ("holy war") against the Allies, and to maintain the support of the 70 million Muslims in British India (particularly those in the Indian Army that had been deployed in all major theatres of the wider war). [Links and some phrasing from Wikipedia].
In the ten letters between McMahon and Hussein (1915-1916), the British vaguely and indeterminately promised Hussein that he would achieve his ambition of an Arabian state if he agreed to garner his military forces against the eastern flank of the Central Powers by fighting the Ottomans. The Ottomans had control of a significant part of the Arabian Peninsula, and Hussein needed this region for his proposed state.
Simultaneously, the British needed the military support of the United States, which was firmly opposed to involvement in the war. President Wilson had campaigned on the promise to keep the United States out of the war. However, in a sense, the British went around Wilson to promise the Zionists—a very powerful lobby in the United States—a part of the Arabian Peninsula that they had ALREADY promised to Hussein and his sons. This promise to the Zionists was conditional upon the United States fighting the Central Powers on the western front by directly assisting France against the Germans. This condition was subtly prerequisite to the Balfour Declaration, and the United States’ performance condition was not mentioned in the document.
As the British were scheming the first two conflicting deals—deals which enabled them to be flexible and duplicitous if required—they secretly structured a third deal with the French: the Sykes-Picot Agreement. And this deal was formal and official.
Although the British were panicked regarding “What if we lose?”, they were also concerned with “What if we win?”
The British realized that, if they won the war, they would need to carry on in peacetime with the French on friendly terms, and they sought to divvy up the territorial spoils in a way that the French would consider as fair. So secretly, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed in 1917.
The British and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, initialed an agreed memorandum. The agreement was ratified by their respective governments on 9 and 16 May 1916.
But then those pesky Bolsheviks got into the abdicated Czar’s archives and discovered the Sykes-Picot Agreement in November of 1917. I assume that this formal agreement was shared with all the Allies during the last few months of the reign of Nikolas II, and when the Bolsheviks took over, they let the proverbial cat out of the bag. “The British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed, the Turks delighted, [The Manchester Guardian]” and Sir McMahon resigned his post in protest. I suppose that TE Lawrence had a bit of proverbial egg on his face as well.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement awarded control of large swaths of the Arabian Peninsula to the French and the British. For its effect on Hussein and the Arabs, it was far worse than the Balfour Declaration.
The Foundation of the British Greed for the Middle East
All that I have mentioned herein thus far is readily documented and accessed. However, I have only found partial support for what I am about to share. I will denote the points of uncertainty with an asterisk.
It is arguable that the desperate actions of the British illustrated by their triple dealing are entirely due to the Great War. I disagree. This must be partly true, but it does not entirely explain their motivation for the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British had sought control of the Middle East for 14 years before the war began.*
One might wonder what the British Empire wanted with the Middle East. It possessed (colonized) most of the lands of the world that provided riches and resources. Why would it (or any Occidental coalition) want a land largely comprised of barren desert and sand and inhabited by people they considered to be backward?
Russian* geological surveys* were stolen in 1901* from the University of Odessa* by British spy, Sigmund Rosenblum*. These surveys were provided to the British government* and revealed oil deposits throughout the Persian basin*. I have heard that based on these surveys, the British officials were desperate to redraw the map of the Middle East to the Empire’s advantage.
At this time (~1900), the British Empire was bent to convert its naval and commercial ships from coal-fired to oil turbine engines*. As massive of a project as this conversion was, the larger challenge was to find a reliable source of oil. The geological surveys showed where to find it*. William Knox D’Arcy, a British-Australian gold magnate, developed part of the fields in May 1908. British Petroleum was initially registered on April 14, 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Ltd with D’Arcy as a major player with the British banks.
William Knox D'Arcy [Scroll down to see the dateline.]
Again, I underscore the vastness and power of the British Empire. Its consumption of resources was seemingly unquenchable. And its dependency on shipping by sea was pronounced as this was a time before practical air travel or overland travel with prolific highway systems for the automobile and for trucking. The mainstay of travel and shipping was either shipping oversea or train overland. The Empire required the new energy source of oil, especially for ships, while the trains continued to largely harness coal for another 50 years or so.
The British imperative to control the Middle East for its oil and for access to the Suez Canal is the foundation underpinning their manipulation of the region through the Sykes-Picot Agreement during and after WWI. [The French built the Suez Canal (1859-1869), but the British gained control of it in 1882.]
Please alert me to any corrections or additions deserved to this narrative.