John Fisher explores the acquisitive thinking which, from the autumn of 1914, drove the Mesopotamian Expedition, and examines the political issues, international and imperial, delegated to a War Cabinet committee under Lord Curzon. The motives of Curzon and others in attempting to obtain a privileged political position in the Hejaz are studied in the context of inter-Allied suspicions and Turkish intrigues in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a penetrating study of war imperialism, when statesmen contemplated strong measures of control in several areas of the Middle East.
John Fisher explores the acquisitive thinking which, from the autumn of 1914, drove the Mesopotamian Expedition, and examines the political issues, international and imperial, delegated to a War Cabinet committee under Lord Curzon. The motives of Curzon and others in attempting to obtain a privileged political position in the Hejaz are studied in the context of inter-Allied suspicions and Turkish intrigues in the Arabian Peninsula. This is a penetrating study of war imperialism, when statesmen contemplated strong measures of control in several areas of the Middle East.
The profound effects of the British Empire's actions in the Arab World during the First World War can be seen echoing through the history of the 20th century. The uprising sparked by the Husayn-McMahon correspondence and led by 'Lawrence of Arabia'; the Sykes-Picot agreement which undermined that rebellion; and memoranda such as the Balfour Declaration all have shaped the Middle East into forms which would have been unrecognizable to the diplomats of the 19th century. Undertaken during the First 'World' War, these actions were not part of a coordinated British strategy, but in fact directed by several overlapping and competing departments, some imperfectly referred to as the 'Arab Bureau'. The British and the Middle East is unique in its comprehensive treatment of how and why the British generals and diplomats acted as they did. By taking as his starting point the voluminous, contradictory and revealing records of the policy-makers in the British government, Robert H. Lieshout shows convincingly that many concerned with foreign policy making were quite oblivious to the history and complexities of the Islamic World.Covering the full sweep of British involvement in Arabia, Lieshout makes a lasting contribution to our understanding of the period in which the British Empire changed the world, and shows how shallow and confused the understanding of those that shaped the future of the Middle East really was.
Outskirts of Empire: Studies in British Power Projection investigates the substructure of Britain’s interests in the Near East and beyond during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Essays address themes in British power projection in a geographically wide area encompassing parts of the Ottoman Empire, Morocco and Abyssinia, illuminating interlinking elements of Britain’s power and presence through commerce, religion, consular activity, expatriates, travel and exploration and technology. Through careful investigation of the interface of these themes the book develops a deeper sense of Britain’s presence in the Near East and contiguous areas and highlights the network of Britons who were required to sustain that presence.
An examination of how the logistical demands of the British military campaigns in Palestine and Mesopotamia led to a more intrusive and authoritarian form of imperial control in 1917-18. This early example of Western military intervention in the Middle East provoked a localized backlash in 1919-20 whose effects continue to be felt today.
The British Empire at its height governed more than half the world’s Muslims. It was a political imperative for the Empire to present itself to Muslims as a friend and protector, to take seriously what one scholar called its role as “the greatest Mohamedan power in the world.” Few tasks were more important than engagement with the pilgrimage to Mecca. Every year, tens of thousands of Muslims set out for Mecca from imperial territories throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, from the Atlantic Ocean to the South China Sea. Men and women representing all economic classes and scores of ethnic and linguistic groups made extraordinary journeys across waterways, deserts, and savannahs, creating huge challenges for officials charged with the administration of these pilgrims. They had to balance the religious obligation to travel against the desire to control the pilgrims’ movements, and they became responsible for the care of those who ran out of money. John Slight traces the Empire’s complex interactions with the Hajj from the 1860s, when an outbreak of cholera led Britain to engage reluctantly in medical regulation of pilgrims, to the Suez Crisis of 1956. The story draws on a varied cast of characters—Richard Burton, Thomas Cook, the Begums of Bhopal, Lawrence of Arabia, and frontline imperial officials, many of them Muslim—and gives voice throughout to the pilgrims themselves. The British Empire and the Hajj is a crucial resource for understanding how this episode in imperial history was experienced by rulers and ruled alike.
The nature of international diplomacy and Britain’s world role changed immeasurably after the end of the First World War, and this book shows how the various men who headed the Foreign Office during the interwar years sought to operate in the shifting political and bureaucratic environments that confronted them. British Foreign Secretaries in an Uncertain World examines the careers of each of the interwar Foreign Secretaries, including Lord Curzon, Ramsay MacDonald and Anthony Eden. Using an extensive range of primary sources both published and unpublished, official and private, Michael Hughes provides a detailed assessment of how these men approached their role and how influential they were in international diplomacy. The book also looks at the Foreign Secretaries’ successes or failures within the British political system, analysing how influential the Foreign Office was under each Secretary in determining British foreign policy. A fascinating book with a unique focus, British Foreign Secretaries in an Uncertain World takes a rigorous look at a key topic in British history.
Timothy Paris examines Winston Churchill's involvement in the struggle for power in a number of Middle Eastern countries between 1920 and 1925. His study traces the development of the Sherifian policy, a policy that was devised by the British.
The First World War in the Middle East is an accessibly written military and social history of the clash of world empires in the Dardanelles, Egypt and Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia and the Caucasus. Coates Ulrichsen demonstrates how wartime exigencies shaped the parameters of the modern Middle East, and describes and assesses the major campaigns against the Ottoman Empire and Germany involving British and imperial troops from the French and Russian Empires, as well as their Arab and Armenian allies. Also documented are the enormous logistical demands placed on host societies by the Great Powers' conduct of industrialised warfare in hostile terrain. The resulting deepening of imperial penetration, and the extension of state controls across a heterogeneous sprawl of territories, generated a powerful backlash both during and immediately after the war, which played a pivotal role in shaping national identities as the Ottoman Empire was dismembered. This is a multidimensional account of the many seemingly discrete yet interlinked campaigns that resulted in one to one and a half million casualties. It details not just their military outcome but relates them to intelligence-gathering, industrial organisation, authoritarianism and the political economy of empires at war.
Britain emerged from World War II dependent economically and militarily upon the US. Egypt was the hub of Britain's imperial interests in the Middle East, but her inability to maintain a large garrison there was clear to the indigenous peoples. These essays track the decline of the empire.
