At the very time that British agents were making promises to the two Arab families, however, two European diplomats, Mark Sykes and Francois George-Picot, were meeting secretly with a map and a pencil, over a civilized cup of tea, to decide how the region should be carved up among the victorious European powers after the war. They agreed which part should go to Sykes’s Britain, which part to Picot’s France, and where a nod to Russian interests might be appropriate. Which part the Arabs should get went curiously unmentioned.
