THE SYKES-PICOT AGREEMENT: 19th May 1916
THE CONSTANTINOPLE AGREEMENT: March 1915
THE AGREEMENT OF SAINT-JEAN-DE-MAURIENNE: April 1917
THE HUSSEIN-McMAHON CORRESPONDENCE: 1915-1916
THE CONFERENCE OF SAN REMO: April 1920
Acknowledgements
Decline and Fall: goodreads.com bookcover Cartoon (detail): twitterl.com Map (left): economist.com Map (right): 2012 Encyclopedia Britannica Inc Hussein-McMahon Correspondence: studylib.net Flag: deviantart.com Picot: thestrategybridge.org Sykes: thestrategybridge.org
From the beginning of the war in the summer of 1914, the Allies – Britain, France and Russia – had been in discussion concerning the ailing Ottoman Empire, the so-called “sick man of Europe”. This empire, which at one time had ruled over huge tracts of the world, still had nominal control of a vast expanse of territory in the Middle East, including Arabia to the south, and southern-central Europe to the north. The Empire having allied itself to the Central Powers, as we have seen, from October 1914, the Allies now turned their thoughts to the future of these Ottoman lands, many potentially valuable for their reserves of oil (the new source of power) or simply because of their valuable strategic position within the region. Given the defeat of the Central Powers, and the inevitable collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies needed to agree on the division of the spoils. Asxearly as March 1915 the Triple Entente had signed a secret understanding with Russia, the Constantinople Agreement. By its generous terms it was agreed that Russia would annex Constantinople and gain control of the Dardanelles, thereby ensuring access to the Mediterranean. In addition, territorial gains would include the Gallipoli peninsula; part of southern Thrace; and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos in the Sea of Marmara. In return, Russia would agree to British and French claims on other areas of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, including the rich oil region of Mesopotamia, stretching north from the Persian Gulf, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
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Then inxMay 1916, with Russia (the third member of the Triple Entente), kept in the know, Great Britain and France secretly agreed to the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Named after the surnames of the chief negotiators, Sir Mark Sykes for Britain, and François Georges Picot for France, it finalized negotiations begun in November 1915. By this pact – also known as the Asia Minor Agreement – most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided into British and French spheres of influence at the conclusion of the war. France was to be the dominant power in Syria and much of today’s Lebanon (where she already had investments), and the British, anxious to secure a safe access to India via the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf, was to be the dominant power in Transjordan and Iraq. This included direct control over central and southern Mesopotamia, incorporating thereby the areas around Baghdad and Basra. Northern Palestine was also to be administered by Britain but, because it contained holy places for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, the remainder of the country was to be under some sort of international control. Some of the areas administered by the French and British were governed by local Arab chiefs, but they were under strict supervision. Then in Aprilx1917, after Italy had joined the Triple Entente, the Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne was signed, promising the Italians the southern and south-western areas of Anatolia, then part of the Turkish mainland (see maps below).
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But the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement did not remain secret for long. In November 1917, the new Bolshevik government of Russia published its terms, letting the world know of what the revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin described as “an agreement of colonial thieves”. For Britain and France it was a serious political scandal, the impact of which, though clearly declining over the years, has never really gone away, especially in the Arab World. It mustxbe said that the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence on this matter – a series of letters (1915-1916) between Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, and Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt – in no way included a formal treaty, and disagreements over certain rights for the French and British, plus the future of Palestine, were left unresolved. However, certain passages (such as the one cited in the pic), would certainly suggest that Hussein initiated the revolt against the Turks, taken in June 1916, on the clear understanding that, come the end of the war, the Arabs would be granted their own, independent state. Indeed, with the coming of peace in November 1918, an Anglo-French declaration to the Arab peoples promised “the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations that shall derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations”.
But, as we shall see, at the Conference of San Remo in April 1920, the Allied powers agreed to govern this region by splitting up Arab lands into mandates, a policy accepted simply to meet the interests and ambitions of two colonial powers. (This ultimately led to the modern borders of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria). These mandates did ensure that each “country” was somewhere on the road to nationhood, but this fuelled resentment. The Pan-Arabists felt betrayed. They were bitterly opposed to the splitting up the Arab lands into separate countries. By so doing, certain populations, particularly the Kurds and the Druze, were left as minority populations and deprived of self-determination. In addition, borders were generally drawn up with little or no regard for ethnic, religious, tribal, or even linguistic considerations. Such countries or “imperialist impositions” were weak in their make-up and often required a dictatorship or powerful central government to keep them intact, adding to the instability of the area. It was a “clandestine colonial carve-up”, just a “line in the sand”. There was little or no space for the genuine growth of Arab nationalism, the patriotic sentiment which had been used so successfully against the Turks. This said, had the Pan-Arabists got their way, the viability of their proposals must remain a matter of conjecture, considering the problems posed by so diverse a region.
SirxMark Sykes (1879-1919) (left) was an English diplomat who had travelled widely in the Ottoman Empire and written about the region’s political g
eography. In 1915 he was instrumental in establishing the Arab Bureau, tasked with controlling and advising on political activities in the Near East. He never lived to see how his maps changed the face of the Middle East for decades to come. He died of Spanish flu in 1919 while attending a peace conference in Paris.
FrançoisxGeorges Picot (1870-1951) (right) was a French diplomat. He had worked at the Court of Appeal in Paris for two years before joining the diplomatic service. He was appointed Consul-General in Beirut shortly before the outbreak of war, and served for a while at Cairo before becoming high commissioner in Palestine and Syria from 1917 to 1919.
The question as to who should take charge of Palestine remained unresolved by the Sykes-Picot agreement. In general, some form of international control was favoured, given the importance of the Holy Places in Jerusalem. The matter was resolved following the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, a British initiative proposing the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. With this in mind, as we shall see, the League of Nations made Palestine a British mandate, a decision that gave Britain administrative control over the country, and included the provisions required for establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. And, in addition, this mandate happened to give Britain a valuable foothold on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean!
