Westrate, Bruce. The Arab Bureau. British Policy in the Middle East, 1916-1920. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Westrate, Bruce. The Arab Bureau: British policy in the Middle East, 1916-1920 / Bruce Westrate. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-271-00794-X (alk. paper)
1. Arab Bureau ( Cairo, Egypt) 2. Middle East—Foreign relations— Great Britain. 3. Great Britain—Foreign relations— Middle East.
I. Title. DS63.2.G7W47 1992 327.41056'09'041—dc20 91-12353 CIP
Copyright © 1992 The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
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For my loving mother, Joan Koster Westrate
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They that dig foundations deep, Fit for realms to rise upon, Little honour do they reap Of their generation, Any more than mountains gain Stature till we reach the plain.
— Rudyard Kipling "The Pro-Consuls"
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CONTENTS
Preface xi
Introduction: Images of the Arab Bureau 3
1 Flawed Foundations 11
2 Profile of a "Brilliant Constellation" 39
3 Growing Pains: The Hajj, Rabegh, and Monsieur Bremond 55
4 The Way of Wrong Impressions: The Arab Bureau and the Raj 79
5 Wrapping Bananas: The Arab Bureau's Propaganda Dimension 101
6 A Stake in Disorder: In Pursuit of Arabian Balance 113
7 Discordant Mosaic: The Bureau and Arab Unity 135
8 "Un Fait Accompli": The Bureau, the French, and Syria 149
9 Unease in a Promised Land: The Arab Bureau and Palestine 173
10 Demise and Eclipse 187
Conclusion: Triumph of Perversity 203
Notes 209
Bibliography 225
Index 233
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PREFACE
The historical rhythms of the Middle East seem timeless. At this writing, nearly one-half million Americans stand at the ready in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, poised to spring against Iraq's occupation of Kuwait and the hegemonic dreams of its new dictator, Saddam Hussein. And while the Middle East assumes, yet again, its place at center stage in world affairs, the recurring image is stark. The actors in this venerable drama change with time, but its plot seems hauntingly familiar. Perhaps this is why Middle East crises, above all others, appear to fit so nicely into the apocalyptic fantasies of biblical literalists.
For all the economic promise afforded by the region's vast petroleum reserves, the transition from the old world to the new remains fitful and despairingly incomplete. Confronted by the eternal hobgoblins of sect,
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clan, and class, the Middle East lies trapped in a treacherous political mire between tradition and modernity, orthodoxy and secularism, East and West. This entrapment has left the dreams of pan-Arabists stillborn and regional politics chronically debilitated.
Notwithstanding this, the area's geopolitical prominence seems more striking than ever, given its geographic predicament as the flash point of three continents and the Western world's persistent craving for oil. And this unfortunate combination of (to paraphrase Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher) strategic vitality and political unreliability has proved compelling enough during this century to ensure a discomfiting preoccupation among Western powers regarding developments there.
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 would provide those powers with an irresistible opportunity to direct the course of events in the Middle East and to erect the political framework within which subsequent crises would be played out. Ultimately, Great Britain stood to gain the most from the collapse of Turkish power in Asia (exclusive of Anatolia) and the "liberation" of its subject peoples. Many of the region's most nettlesome political problems stem directly from the policies pursued by Britain during this era.
In 1991 as in 1916, Western armies, bolstered by Arab allies, oppose a regionally dominant power. Britain and France, although participants once more, stand reduced in stature beside the military colossus of the United States. Again, a fragile allied coalition, including many "friendly" Arab contingents, is threatened by dissension over the future of Israel/ Palestine; Muslims worldwide fret for the sanctity of Arabia's holy cities and shrines; possession of vital oil fields looms as a pressing concern; and numerous rivals within the Arab world maneuver for position—and a chance at becoming the next Nasser—while the region continues to grope for a highly coveted but elusive political consensus.
Whatever the ultimate outcome, the United States faces a dilemma not far removed from that faced by British imperialists seventy-odd years ago: how to strike the delicate and seemingly unattainable balance in the Arab world between obliging stability and unnerving political unity, so as to safeguard long-term strategic interests in the area on Western terms without resorting to costly, unpredictable military adventures. Unfortunately for the world, those Britons who had a hand in the conception and implementation of complex remedial formulas succeeded only in sowing the seeds of future conflict.
That they did so is not surprising. For in an age well before the advent
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of instantaneous global communication, such endeavors were not always the sole purview of the king's ministers, field marshals, and MPs. Amid the confusion of world war and the enormous constraints of time and distance, even Gordian knots were often left for lesser lights to cleave. This inescapable fact must never be overlooked in examining this subject.
My interest in the Middle East derives originally from study of the British Empire and the obsession of its protectors with the Indian subcontinent. My curiosity was piqued particularly by the saga of the Arab Revolt against the Turks during World War I and the part played in that drama by British advisers. One small group of officers in particular, I felt, had not only been neglected by historians, but essentially eclipsed by the mythic proportions of one of their number—T. E. Lawrence.
The Arab Bureau was a small collection of British intelligence officers gathered in Cairo during 1916 for the purpose of centralizing the collection and dissemination of intelligence about the Arab world. Because policymakers in Cairo, Delhi, and London had persisted in an unseemly competition, operating along different (and often divergent) lines respecting Arab policy, there was no single, impartial, expert source of information and advice available to British leaders grappling with the intricacies of Middle Eastern questions. It was this void that the Arab Bureau was created to fill.
Deprived of the necessary authority to resist, however, the new agency was quickly subsumed by another political power center, Khartoum. Thereafter, its members evolved into advocates of policies that would, at once, advance the war effort against the Turks by shepherding an Arab revolt and lay the groundwork for indirect postwar control by the British of a region long deemed vital to the strategic well-being of the empire, lying as it did athwart the lifeline to India. Bureau officers hoped thereby to accomplish three critical objectives: (1) protect the imperial trunk routes to India, (2) mollify the anticipated upsurge in Arab demands for selfgovernment through the medium of British-sponsored client states, and (3) obviate the burden of direct postwar annexation and/or occupation.
For its efforts, the bureau was vilified, especially in Indian circles, as a group of amateurish, incompetent Arabophiles laboring to appease liberal notions of self-determination best left undisturbed. Such hostility, combined with transcendent British commitments to the French regarding Syria and the Zionists regarding Palestine, would have fatally undermined bureau objectives at any event. Yet it is odd that the agency has subsequently
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borne much of the blame for Britain's terrible mishandling of Middle Eastern policy during and shortly after World War I.
My objective with this book is twofold: (1) to write a history of this intriguing group as an executive participant in unfolding events, and (2) to assess those impressions that persist in light of available documentary evidence so as to determine the nature of the bureau's role and the extent to which the calumny levied against it both by its contemporary and current detractors is justified.
I should also make plain what this book is not. It is not presented as either a comprehensive history of British policy in the Middle East during this period or a history of the Arab Revolt. Nor have I set out to diminish the historical stature of T. E. Lawrence (which, in any case, would probably be a futile exercise) but rather to expand the spotlight to illuminate those colleagues and superiors with whom that remarkable man worked and from whom he took direction. To do less merely contributes to the apotheosis of Lawrence as legendary eccentric, somehow above the machinations of imperialist guile.
Scores of books have been written over the years about British policy in the wartime Middle East. Many of these, while undeniably valuable, are inevitably polemical—wrangling over the actual motives and meanings behind secret treaties and policies that gave rise to a French Syria, a Jewish Palestine, and a Palestinian diaspora. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, the Declaration to the Seven, the Anglo-French Declaration, and the Balfour Declaration have all become mileposts along the road to misunderstanding, recrimination, and impasse.
I have tried to avoid this distracting thicket in order to focus on events from ground level, from the vantage point of bureau officers and their informed perspectives on Syria, Arabia, and Palestine rather than from the rarefied state rooms of Whitehall or the Quai d'Orsay. To the extent that my views challenge old stereotypes of the Arab Bureau, they are revisionist. Rather than a lot of bumbling romantic Arabophiles, I see its officers as a remarkably prescient group of sober-minded tacticians seeking to exploit opportunities proffered by the war, the Arab Revolt, and the Turkish decline in order to secure the region against imperial and commercial competitors. I am confident, moreover, that the research contained herein amply buttresses my view.
This book, therefore, is intended both to chart the bureau's growth and development and to liberate Lawrence's comrades from the obscurity to which the strictures of legend have for so long consigned them, thereby
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gaining a clearer understanding of their perspectives on the formative forces of modern Middle Eastern history: imperialism, Zionism, and Arab nationalism.
The officers of the Arab Bureau schemed, studied, suffered, and fought for common ideals, not the least of which was the integrity of the imperial idea. And the fortunes of the British Empire, they generally agreed, could not be left to the caprice of imperial rivals or the temperament of unreliable aborigines. In the decades of their obscurity since World War I, ironically enough, the self-effacing members of the Arab Bureau may have effected their greatest deception.
My work has taken me to numerous archival sources. The Public Record Office in Kew houses the Arab Bureau files along with related documents from the Foreign Office, War Office, Admiralty, and Jeddah Agency. The personal papers of F. Reginald Wingate, Gilbert Clayton, and Valentine Chirol reside in the Sudan Archive at Durham and were of particular value. The papers of David Hogarth, Harry Philby, and Wyndham Deedes as well as the Sledmere Papers of Mark Sykes were made available to me at St. Antony's College, Oxford University, and I wish to thank archivist Gilian Grant in this connection. The Times opened its files on Philip Graves to me, for which I am very grateful. Times librarian Gordon Philips was especially generous with his time and patience. I gained access to the Arab Bulletin through Houghton Library, Harvard University. My deepest appreciation also to Mrs. Anne Edgerley of Saxmundham, England, for allowing me to examine the personal papers of Alfred Parker. Her hospitality and numerous cups of tea on a particularly brutal autumn day are not forgotten.
During the final stages of preparation of this manuscript, I enlisted the services of several noted scholars in the field, both to read the work and to offer criticism. The latter was forthcoming in abundance and was indispensable to fashioning a better book. Albert Hourani was kind enough to tolerate my intrusion on his retirement and lent invaluable advice. My thanks as well to John Broomfield, author of Elite Conflict in a Plural Society, for similar contributions. Most of all, perhaps, I am beholden to Ernie Dawn of the University of Illinois for allowing me to tap his vast expertise on the Middle East. His contributions, both to the work and to my morale during the ordeal of revision, are impossible to overstate. I also wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to and affection for the late Richard P. Mitchell of the University of Michigan, whose enthusiasm for my project and expansive knowledge of the subject were critically important. Moreover, I would like to thank Peter Potter for his assistance and gentle
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criticism. One could not ask for a more supportive editor. And without the skill and tenacity of typists Nancy Brown and Patti Dyche this project might well have remained eternally hypothetical.
Lastly, I want to thank my wife Sally for the innumerable sacrifices she has made and the inexhaustible forbearance she has exhibited throughout. Thank you, Sally.
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THE ARAB BUREAU
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INTRODUCTION
Images of the Arab Bureau
Much has been written in the last seventy years on the subject of Britain's role in the Middle East during World War I. Scholarly debate still rages over ambiguous diplomatic commitments and alleged prevarications, which stand as glaring examples of failed British diplomacy: the HusseinMcMahon Correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the Balfour Declaration. More often than not, the continuing controversy has turned on an axis of documentary evidence, interpreted so as to indict or acquit British policymakers. In the rush to assign or deflect responsibility for the Middle East muddle, the temptation to focus on key figures such as Lawrence, Kitchener, Sykes, McMahon, or even Winston Churchill in an effort to identify a culprit or discern a clear diplomatic pattern often has proved irresistible to historians. Consequently, scholars have overlooked
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sources of potential illumination in the chase for larger game. The Arab Bureau is a case in point.
Established early in 1916 in an effort to lend some measure of consistency and coordination to a badly disjointed imperial bureaucracy in the region, the Arab Bureau, a collection of presumed experts, proved signally effective (despite good intentions) in inciting the very divisiveness and departmental rivalry it had been created to suppress. Even so, the bureau was uniquely placed not only to influence the conduct of operations and policy, but also to observe the shifting sands of British policy implementation from the perspective of the intermediary in matters of both military and political importance to the success of the Arab Revolt.