The Struggle That Shaped the Middle East (with James Barr)

James Barr: Thank you for having me, Russ.

James Barr: So, I think before we get to Sykes-Picot, you were just saying Russ about the Ottoman Empire. And, the Ottomans ruled–at the beginning of the First World War, they still ruled the central Middle East. So, by that I’m thinking of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and going down the sort of edges of the Arabian Peninsula. So, that’s–from their capital in Istanbul, they controlled the whole region of what was a part of the Arab world.

They joined the Germans, as you said, in the First World War. And, the Germans convinced the Ottoman Sultan to declare a Holy War against, well, Britain and France, but really this was angled at the British. Because the British had significant Muslim populations in Egypt, which they had run since 1882, which they seized in 1882; and also in India. And, India was a really big part of this story, even though it’s off the map, because India was pretty much the most important British colony at that time.

James Barr: It is run by the Turks, but it’s a multi-ethnic Empire, and it still is. Although it has become a lot more Turkish in the run-up to the First World War, and there’s the sort of–yeah, there’s a kind of Turkish ideology now. Which makes some of the Arab subjects of that Empire feel increasingly like second-class citizens. And, I guess we’ll probably come back to that in a minute.

But so, the key thing is the First World War starts. Famously, it was supposed to be over by Christmas 1914, and of course it wasn’t. The whole war became bogged down on both the Eastern and the Western Fronts.

And, in Britain, people started to think, ‘Well, how do we win this war?’ And, there was a group of people who were known as the Easterners who believed that one option was to attack the Ottoman Empire, because the prevailing view by the beginning of the 20th century was that the Ottomans were the ‘Sick man of Europe.’ They’d already lost a chunk–they used to have an empire that extended well into the Balkans in Eastern Europe, but they gradually lost those possessions over the previous quarter of a century or so. And so, the British view, or the view amongst this faction inside the British government, was that the Ottomans would be easy to knock out of the war.

So, the idea they came up with was to attack Gallipoli, which is on the Dardanelles Peninsula. So, that’s the very narrow straits south of Constantinople, leading from the Aegean into the Sea of Marmara towards the Black Sea. And, that’s about 150 miles from Constantinople, or Istanbul as I should call it.

So, the idea was: Grab the Ottomans by the throat, defeat them, and then march into Istanbul, and then that would be the Ottomans out of the war. And, that would enable the British and the Allies to open up a new front in Southern Europe and force the Germans to disperse their efforts. So, that was the aim of the thing.

But as you said, of course what that did–rather prematurely–was encourage a discussion about what would happen to the Ottoman Empire once this had happened. And, bearing in mind this was assumed that it wasn’t going to be too difficult to achieve.

The British, in true British form, formed a committee which set out to try and investigate options: What could happen to the Ottoman Empire? And, there was a man called Mark Sykes on this committee, and he was in his mid-30s. He had been elected a Member of Parliament for the east coast port of Hull in 1911, but he’d made his name already as an expert on the Ottoman Empire. So, he’d written about it. He’d worked for the British Ambassador in the British Embassy in Istanbul before the war. And, he’d written a couple of big, thick books on the subject and traveled pretty widely. And, he was a member of the landed gentry. His father was Sir Tatton Sykes. He was a devotee famously of church architecture, milk pudding, and keeping his body at a constant temperature. And, Mark Sykes was his only son–the only son of this slightly eccentric character.

And Sykes, really by force of personality–he was a twinkly man–he was quite convincing, and he took on a lot of the work of the committee because he essentially had time on his hands. And, it was he who eventually became the British negotiator of what became the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

The reason the Agreement comes about is that the French find out about what the British are thinking of. They also find out that Britain had, during this time, had made a promise to the Arabs as well. Because of the jihad that I mentioned, the British were very worried about the possibility of a Holy War. And, the way that they decided they would blunt that was by encouraging the ruler of Mecca–the axis point of the Islamic world–to rise up against the Ottomans.

So, the Ottomans controlled Mecca–in theory, but not really. They didn’t really have a particularly tight hold on it. And, they persuaded Sharif Hussein–who, he himself claimed he was a descendant of Muhammad–they persuaded him to rise up in 1916. But, to do that, they made him this big–rather vague–but they made him quite a big promise.

Well, the French found out about that promise through rather nefarious ways. And, once they discovered that, they then forced the question of what would happen to the Ottoman Empire, because they were worried about their own interests.

And, we should talk a bit about those interests. Because, the French had gradually–they had influence in the Ottoman Empire going way, way back, going right back to sort of the 1500s where the Ottoman Sultan at the time had acknowledged that they were the representatives of Christians living in what we think of as the Holy Land–or what Christians think of as the Holy Land–in Israel, Palestine now. And, the French had quite significant cultural influence in what we now think of as Lebanon and Syria, mainly through monastic organizations and institutions, which provided education.

And, a French education–if you could be taught by the monks of one of these monasteries–if you were an Ottoman at that time, that was pretty good. That was better than an Ottoman state education. And so, if you were an aspiring Ottoman, sort of a middle class Ottoman with aspirations, then you would send your children off to a French school where they learn French and they would be taught in the French way. So, the French had this sort of influence through that, primarily in what we now think of as Lebanon and Syria, and they wanted the British to acknowledge that position that they had.

James Barr: Exactly. And, the Sykes-Picot Agreement cuts a line across all this. So, the French come in and François Georges-Picot is their man. And he comes from a family of French imperialists. He hears about what the British are up to and he doesn’t like the sound of it. And, he gets himself appointed the French negotiator. And he comes to London in the autumn of 1915 and starts banging his fist on the desk, essentially, and saying that the French won’t accept whatever the British are up to. The alliance is at stake, effectively. He manages to dramatize that extremely effectively.

And, the British are worried about the strength of the alliance, Russ, because although as you say, they’re allies, they’re relatively recent allies. I mean, a little bit south of where I live in London there is a fort on the North Downs, which is the main ring–line–of hills south of London, built in the 1890s in case there was a French invasion. So, we’re not that far on from that, about 20 years after that fortress was built to resist the French in case they invaded. So, there’s quite significant suspicions lurking below the surface.

And, François Georges-Picot plays on this very, very effectively, and the British realize they’ve got to do a deal. And, Sykes is the man who goes to the top ministers in the British government who’ve got a whole load of other things to worry about–most importantly the question of conscription. Because the war had been fought by volunteers up to this point, but Britain was running out of men and they knew they were going to have to start calling people up, and that was going to be compulsory. So, they were much more worried about that. This comes as a rather unfortunate interruption, really. I think most British politicians at that time would have struggled to place Syria and Lebanon on a map themselves.

And, Sykes says, ‘I would like to draw a line from the E of Acre to the last K in Kirkuk.’ And, he has a map. It’s a square map, which he had helped draw back before the war. And so, he proposes dividing the Middle East along this diagonal line, and the French were going to get most of the area to the north of it–either directly, they were going to control it, or they were going to have some influence over it. And the British were going to get the territory to the south.

And, underlying that is this sort of British strategic concept that they want what they call a belt of English-controlled country running across the Middle East from the Mediterranean Sea–the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea–right through to the border with what is now Iran, was then known as Persia. And, the aim of that was to keep all comers–keep the French, keep the Russians, or whoever, the Germans–away from the approaches to India. That was the crucial thing. So, it was protecting the routes to India.

So, this strategic concept dates right, right back. It motivates what the British are doing through much of the 19th century with Russia.

James Barr: Exactly. The canal, which was opened in 1869, had become really, really important, particularly to the British. It’s owned by an Anglo-French consortium. But, yeah, it’s absolutely critical to the British. So that’s all part of the strategic concept.

The thing was, though, with Sykes-Picot, is that the two sides–the two men–could not agree about the future of what they called Palestine at that time. They both wanted it. The British wanted it for this strategic purpose that you’ve just outlined. And, the French wanted it more for reasons of prestige. It was more about the religious significance of the area that they wanted it, although that also was definitely a factor in British thinking. But, fundamentally, it was a slightly–two slightly different objectives, mentalities at play here.

James Barr: So, Sharif Hussein does rise up against the Ottomans in 1916. But, the revolt that he calls for is a bit of a disaster because the British hadn’t really thought enough about how they were going to support it. And so, within a few months it starts to peter out.

And, the man who goes in to try to fix it has become very famous. It’s Lawrence of Arabia, as he’s now known–Thomas Edward Lawrence. He was then in his 20s. He’d been an archeologist before the war. He’d worked in Syria. And, he had a desk job in Cairo and was fed up with that. He was also probably rather guilty, because two of his brothers had been killed fighting in the war on the Western Front. And there he was, drumming his fingers on a desk, charting Ottoman Army troop movements in the intelligence department in Cairo. So, he was itching to do something, and he basically carved himself a job to go out and look at the situation on the ground and to make recommendations.

But really, what he wanted to do is to find himself a proper job. Which he got.

And so, he then spent the next two years of the war trying to turn the Arab revolt into something. And he succeeds in that in a huge way, far beyond anyone’s expectations. The Arabs captured Aqaba, which is the port at the head of the Red Sea opposite Suez, in July 1917. And then, a year later, they are up in what is now northern Jordan/southern Syria; and they play a role in the final offensive in that part of the First World War, in the Middle East theater, where right at the end of the war, the British, under General Allenby–they’ve already captured Jerusalem at the end of 1917–and then they advance to Damascus in the final weeks of the First World War. And, Lawrence and the Arabs play a part in that.

And the reason that Lawrence is so keen to be involved in that is because this takes the Arabs into the territory that Sykes has conceded to François Georges-Picot. Because the undercurrent of all this is that Lawrence hates Sykes. He thinks he’s a total amateur. Yeah–he absolutely loathes him. He’s only encountered him, I think, once. But, at that point, Sykes told him about the deal that he had struck. And, Lawrence is vehemently anti-French and thinks that it’s a terrible deal on that level. But he’s also quite pro-Arab. It is important not to overstate this. Some people tend to because he becomes more pro-Arab as time goes on. Fundamentally, he’s a British imperialist; but he was also someone who had worked with the Arabs and certainly was sympathetic to their ambitions.

And, I suppose maybe we should get on to the Arab nationalists at this point. Because, since, sort of from the late 19th century onwards, there is a developing nationalist movement–as there is across all kinds of places: across Europe and of course with the Zionists as another nationalist movement. Arab nationalism had been growing in the Ottoman Empire, partly because of this increasing Turkish ideology, held at a sort of government level, but also much, much broader things like just simple literacy and things like that.

People were–Arabs were–becoming much, much more aware of their identity and the fact that they had a different identity to their Turkish rulers.

And, there were significant groups that were underground, really, inside the Ottoman Empire. So, Arab soldiers, Arab officers within the Ottoman Empire kind of drove this Arab consciousness. And, there were secret societies within the Ottoman Army, not really rooting for independence, but they wanted more autonomy and they wanted better prospects for themselves. This sort of is growing before the First World War, and the Arab Revolt helps to galvanize it. So that by the end of the first World War, there is quite a powerful groundswell in favor of greater Arab autonomy.

James Barr: So, I mean, it’s difficult. In a way, it doesn’t play out because the British and the French work–

James Barr: worked to undermine it. But, you are absolutely right. So, the Americans joined the war in 1917. Am I right?

James Barr: I thought it was before that. My brain has suddenly gone. But, the Americans joined the war. And, as they do so, Wilson makes this great–he really attacks all the imperial powers and sort of says, ‘A plague upon you all.’ And, the British and the French feel very, very vulnerable. And, we’ll come back to Balfour because the Balfour Declaration rises directly out of this discomfort, if you like, or at least it’s an attempt to get ’round it.

But, at the end of the war, you have the Peace Conference, Lawrence’s sort of wartime comrade, Faisal, who is Sharif Hussein of Mecca’s son–if you remember back to Sharif. Sharif Hussein starts the revolt. Faisal is his son.

Lawrence identifies Faisal as the friendliest of Hussein’s sons, the man who is most likely to frankly do what he wants. And, Faisal brings a delegation to Paris, and Lawrence acts as the delegation’s interpreter. And, there’s always a bit of a suspicion about how much he is translating and how much he was just ad-libbing.

James Barr: And, Lawrence himself, therefore he attracts quite a lot of suspicion from the French. Because, the French don’t like–they don’t like the Arabs. The French believe that Sykes-Picot has to stand. After all, the British have made this promise; they’ve agreed that they’ll divide the land. And, this area of what we would now call Syria and Lebanon, the French believe that’s theirs by right. And, the British, meanwhile, have had sort of second thoughts. So, the British, having been pretty pro-Arab, or at least certainly willing to entertain Arab aspirations, then start thinking about oil.

And, oil has not really been a big factor in–certainly not in the Sykes-Picot agreement and not really in strategic thinking during the war so far, I would say. But, by the end of the war, two things are clear. Firstly, there’s Woodrow Wilson being anti-imperialist. There’s the fact that actually the Americans have supplied most of the oil that won the war. The oil has not come from the Middle East at that time. In fact, very famously, back in the 1870s, the oil that actually lit the lamps in, I think, the Prophet’s tomb in Medina came from Pennsylvania, which I always think is a nice fact. It gives you an idea of how things have changed.

But, yeah: so the oil had come from America. And, the British government was worried about the Americans’ attitude towards Britain as an imperial power, because Britain had no plans to give up on its empire quite yet.

And so, those things come into play. And so, Britain wants to take a much more direct control of Iraq. British troops had invaded Iraq during–at the very beginning of the First World War. And, right at the end of the war, having realized–they knew there was oil in northern Iraq, but having realized right at the end of the war that that might be oil that Britain wanted to control after the war, they advanced and took over what is now northern Iraq, the area around Mosul–a city that we’ve heard about a lot in recent years. British troops arrive in Mosul actually after the armistice has been declared. So, it’s kind of sort of after the whistle has gone there are still British troops advancing. And they take that over.

And, the British, in order to get the French to recognize this fait accompli, the British realized they’re going to have to honor Sykes-Picot. And so, instead of Versailles acknowledging the aspirations of lots of different groups, but the Arabs for some of them–Versailles was full of different groups with national aspirations all hoping for some sort of recognition. But, what actually happens is that the British and the French close ranks. And, the British accept that if they’re going to get what they want–if they’re going to get Palestine and also Iraq and create this sort of chain of states across the Middle East that are under British control–they’re going to have to accept French control over Lebanon and Syria as well. [More to come, 29:23]