Britain and the Middle East during World War I and its Aftermath: The Arab Question, 1914-1919

389 Pages·2016·2.61 MB·English

by  Robert Lieshout

Robert H. Lieshout is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Radboud
University in the Netherlands. He has published widely on the theory and history of
international relations, including two major works of political science: Between
Anarchy and Hierarchy: A Theory of International Politics and Foreign Policy
(1995) and The Struggle for the Organization of Europe: The Foundations of the
European Union (1999). He was President of the Dutch Political Science
Association from 1999 until 2003.
‘An important window into the nuances of the British “official mind” in the Middle East during
one of the most turbulent and significant phases of modern history’
Warren Dockter, author of Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and
Diplomacy in the Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2015)

Published in 2016 by
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Copyright © 2016 Robert H. Lieshout
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To Renée
The part played by the British has had the tendency to make people believe that
they are playing a very deep game, with a very definite aim which will only be
revealed at the right moment.
William Yale, Report #3, 12 November 1917, Library of Congress
I suppose that in this, as in most investigations of British foreign policy, the true
reason is not to be found in far-sighted views or large conceptions or great
schemes. A Minister beset with the administrative work of a great Office must
often be astounded to read of the carefully laid plans, the deep unrevealed motives
that critics or admirers attribute to him. Onlookers free from responsibility have
time to invent, and they attribute to Ministers many things that Ministers have no
time to invent themselves, even if they are clever enough to be able to do it. If all
secrets were known it would probably be found that British Foreign Ministers
have been guided by what seemed to them to be the immediate interests of this
country without making elaborate calculations for the future.
Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years (London, 1926), Vol. I, p. 6
CONTENTS
List of Maps
Preface
Introduction
Part I The Asquith Governments 1914–16
1 I Suppose the I.O. Know How This Can be Done
2 Keeping Better Educated Moslems Busy
3 We Have Got to Keep in with Our Infernal Allies
4 The Whole Subject is Becoming Entangled
5 Rabegh Has Been a Perfect Nuisance
Part II The Lloyd George Government 1916–19
6 Taking the Sherif into the Fullest Confidence Possible
7 Up Against a Big Thing
8 A Whole Crowd of Weeds Growing Around Us
9 Since I Am So Early Done For, I Wonder What I Was Begun For!
10 Getting Out of This Syrian Tangle
11 We Regard Palestine as Being Absolutely Exceptional
Conclusion
Biographical Notes: British Officials, Politicians and Soldiers Connected with British Foreign Policy towards the Arab Middle
East, 1914–19
Bibliography
Notes
LIST OF MAPS
2.1 The Western Arab Middle East (Source: Wavell, The Palestine Campaign)
4.1 The Anglo–French–Russian Agreement of 1916
5.1 Medina, Rabegh and Mecca
9.1 Occupied Enemy Territory, Administrative Zones (Source: Falls, Military Operations Vol. II)
11.1 Palestine, as Claimed by the Advisory Committee on Palestine, November 1918 (Source: Jewish Virtual Library)
11.2 Palestine’s Northern Border, 1919–23 (adapted from IBRU Boundary Security Bulletin 2000–1, p. 74)
PREFACE
It cannot be denied that this study has known a long period of gestation. It all started in the
autumn of 1977, shortly after I had obtained my master’s degree in Political and Social
Sciences from the University of Amsterdam, when I submitted an application for a research
grant to the Dutch Organisation for the Advancement of Pure Research (ZWO). My application
was successful and, in August 1978, I started my PhD project on British foreign policy towards
the Middle East 1914−19. In the early spring of 1984, my supervisor and I reached the
conclusion that a successful defence of my thesis did not require that I cover the whole period
up to and until the end of 1919, and that my analysis of the years of the Asquith governments,
from the autumn of 1914 until the end of 1916, could stand on its own and be presented to the
manuscript committee for examination. After the successful public defence of my thesis
Without Making Elaborate Calculations for the Future: Great Britain and the Arab
Question 1914–1916 in December 1984, it was my intention to complete the second part of my
study but in the meantime, I had become a Lecturer in International Relations and my research
interests began to drift more and more towards other subjects. In the first instance, these
included the development of a general theory of international relations and foreign policy
making, which resulted in my book Between Anarchy and Hierarchy, published in 1995, and
after that the history of the early years of the West European integration process, which led in
1999 to the publication of The Struggle for the Organization of Europe, for which a
thoroughly revised and much enlarged Dutch edition was published in 2004. At the beginning
of 2012, I was set free from all administrative and teaching obligations at the university and
decided, after I had convinced myself that I still had a feel for the subject, to tackle the years of
the Lloyd George government and at last bring my thesis up to the end of 1919.
As a student, I had been much impressed by Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision, in
particular his exposition of the Organisational Process Model and the Governmental Politics
Model, as well as his application of these models to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. It
appeared from Allison’s book that, in spite of the evident irrationality of a nuclear war of
destruction, we can never disregard the possibility that, through the execution of organisational
routines or the fighting out of bureaucratic conflicts, states will somehow end up in such an
irrational war. Foreign policy makers are not coolly calculating people guided by a shared and
clear concept of the national interest; instead, they are people, calculating to be sure, but
enmeshed in standard operating procedures and bureaucratic infighting, justifying their
positions by appeals to a national interest as they see it. Simply put (and admittedly a bit
exaggerated), foreign policy is not the triumph of rationality, but a mess. The central objective
in my research proposal was to find out whether Allison’s depiction of foreign policy making
also applied to Great Britain’s foreign policy towards the Middle East during the period
1914−19, which, in view of the enormous extension of Britain’s influence in the Arab-speaking
Middle East in the course of those years, was generally regarded as the epitome of successful
power politics. I believe that the story I present in Chapters 1 to 11 can lead to no other
conclusion than that it does apply, and how!
I am indebted to the late Professor Frits de Jong Edz., as without his willingness to put his