England And The Middle East: The Destruction Of The Ottoman Empire, 1914-1921

by Elie Kedourie

Published by Bowes & Bowes

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Elie Kedourie, CBE, FBA was a British historian of the Middle East. He wrote from a liberal perspective, dissenting from many points of view taken as orthodox in the field. He was at the London School of Economics (LSE) from 1953 to 1990, becoming Professor of Politics.

Reviews

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elie Kedourie's England and the Middle East presents an iconoclastic assessment of British involvement in the Middle East, and specifically the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Kedourie was an Anglo-Iraqi scholar of Jewish descent who viewed Arab nationalism, especially its post-WWII model, as a negative influence on the development of the Middle East. Thus Kedourie views Britain's wartime support of the Arab Revolt in a negative light, though not for the reasons most critics would. By encouraging the ambitions of Sherif Hussein, Kedourie argues, the British replaced the Ottoman Empire with regimes governed by countries that stressed Arab identity over pluralism, nationalism over tolerance. But Kedourie isn't a critic of British imperialism as such, merely of the way it's implemented. Thus he finds much to admire in Sir Mark Sykes, who plotted to divide the Ottoman Empire between England and France, while he despises T.E. Lawrence and what he considers Lawrence's absurd, self-promoting romanticism on behalf of unworthy allies. Kedourie's book is arguably strongest when dealing with his home country of Iraq, where the British responded to a native rebellion and ignored the split between Shia, Sunni and Kurds (not to mention the country's then-large Jewish population) by installing Emir Feisal on the throne, implementing an Arab regime that (despite Feisal's efforts to promote ethnic harmony) favored Sunnis and alienated Shiia with its pan-Arab ideology. Kedourie's solution, though, isn't clear; judging from other passages of this book, he would have preferred either continued Turkish rule or direct European domination over Iraq as preferable to the fractious, artificial state ultimately created. Judging by Iraq's subsequent history, it's impossible to argue that Kedourie's criticisms lack foundation. But it's equally hard to argue that the solution to the region's difficulties was the firm command of a foreign power - an approach which has been tried, many times, with catastrophic consequences.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

In England and the Middle East, Elie Kedourie presents the final years of the Ottoman Empire from the high political perspective of the colonizing powers (although he would be loath to refer to them as such). Effectively justifying British actions between the beginning of World War I and the dissolution of the Empire, his work offers a conservative response to the emerging liberal theories of the era in which it was written (the 1950s). Although the edition I read is the third, and was printed in the 1980s, by the author’s own admission little has changed from the original version, as he believes that the new sources that have emerged in the past three decades only strengthen his argument.

Kedourie begins by exploring the machinations that led the powers to decide that partition of the Empire was the best solution and then delves into the notorious Sykes-Picot agreement. He defends the plan by postulating that it was not a secret to anyone who had a stake in its outcome, although he stretches this argument to cover the indigenous population by claiming that Faisal “surely must have known” about it prior to its public revelation. He suggests, in fact, that the Arabs only became a party at all because they were the best option for securing a military victory in the region, and dismisses Sharif Hussein as someone who sought only to bolster his personal power, rather than being a representative of his people. The McMahon Correspondence, he argues, was fulfilled by the Sykes-Picot agreement, but its lack of a provision for an Arab Caliphate headed by Hussein led him to complain about the outcome. He argues that Arab uprisings were a product of this self-aggrandizing Arab nationalist desire and that Ottomanism held little sway among them. Furthermore, the repression of Jamal Pasha had little impact on the movement because most people saw him a legitimately doing his job (although how he comes to this conclusion based on his limited and elite Arabic-language sources is not entirely clear).

This chapter is followed by an examination of the life of Mark Sykes, who transformed from someone trying to salvage the Empire and disparaging nationalism into a supporter of both partition and nationalism. His greatest flaw, according to the author, was that he never understood the how much value Europe could bring to the region by “modernizing” it. Kedourie is much more critical, however, of T. E. Lawrence, whom he sees as acting out of romantic notions and selfish interests and believing more in an “idea” than the attainment of a practical goal. He did not, it is suggested, have faith in any particular figure among the Hussein family, nor did he have a strong belief that Arab nationalism was tenable given the Arabs’ self-conceptualization. He only cared, therefore, about justifying his actions and seeing “how he could manipulate events”.

Returning to the main narrative, the author argues that Hussein only began protesting the Sykes-Picot agreement publically when he realized that people might be sympathetic to his cause if he did so. Regardless, the Declaration of Seven, which promised the Arabs any lands that they captured during the conflict, as well as Woodrow Wilson’s suggestion for a commission to determine what the Arabs wanted as a settlement, effectively nullified Sykes-Picot. This decision, of course, was welcomed by Hussein’s son Faisal, who engaged a political campaign to have people support his own aims and filled representative bodies with nationalists who did not reflect the will of the people (although, again, how he determines this is not entirely clear). Only when the French were prepared to take over Syria, following the British withdrawal, did Faisal seek cooperation, but by then he could not control the factions that he had established that now desired war against the French.

Mesopotamia, meanwhile, was considered essential to British imperial interests, and thus they administered it directly, but they had to contend with nationalists there as well. Kedourie portrays the Arab nationalists as a vocal and aggressive minority whose movement was enhanced by the presence of “semi-settled tribes which had never come under the regular control of government; they were lawless and easily tempted into violence and rebellion”. Faisal instillation as ruler of Iraq, following his expulsion from Syria, was a way to secure British interests in the region without direct rule. Thus they had to make him appear more popular than he truly was and, overall, this move led to more anti-British sentiment from the Shia and instilled a belief in the nationalists that violence was an effective means of attaining their objectives.

The author’s entire argument is predicated on the notion that the Arabs did not have a right to control their own territory and that British strategic and imperial concerns were more important. This in turns stems from his subscription to a teleological perspective of history and modernity that accepts an east-west dichotomy and leaves the former unfit to rule. In Kedourie’s narrative only notable historical figures “matter” and all of the weaknesses of his work are only compounded by his poor signposting and recapitulation. Overall, England and the Middle East is, at best, among the most thoughtful Orientalist works of its time, but one that has not aged well and would be of limited value of regional historians today.