The decisions of the Paris and San Remo conferences have jump-started a season of unrest and it begins in Cairo
Nationalist leaders approached the British High Commissioner of Egypt asking them to end the Protectorate over their country...
and allow them to attend the Paris Conference.
The High Commissioner responds by deporting their leader.
Triggering mass demonstrations, strikes, and attacks on British offices. Troops move in, killing 800 Egyptians during the suppression.
In Arabia, King Hussein's army is fighting the emergent Kingdom to the west: The forces of Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud.
Both are British allies.
With the French taking Damascus, Hussein's son Abdullah leaves his army to occupy the newly created and unoccupied country of Transjordan...
setting himself up as the de facto government.
Anti-jewish riots in Jerusalem,
Turkey slips towards civil war,
and British mandatory Iraq falls into open revolt.
"There must," thinks colonial secretary Winston Churchill, "be some kind of solution."
[Intro Music]
Last week we talked about how the British and French redrew the Middle East at conferences in Paris and San Remo,
creating nations and governments with the stroke of a pen.
But you know,
the thing is, drawing maps doesn't mean anything if you can't implement those decisions on the ground...
and by 1920 the people living in the Middle East we're about to have their say on these new borders.
Arab nationalism had extended long before the Arab revolt, but Britain's
Sponsorship of Hussein and other nationalist leaders had given those ideas a platform greater than any they'd had before.
The removal of the Ottoman yoke changed things as well.
Hussein's Arab revolt only attracted about 50,000 participants,
with the majority of Arabs staying loyal to the Ottoman Empire.
See, [although] Arabs and Turks had a lot of cultural differences, they did share a religion.
But those less radical segments of society, who were fine with living under Ottoman rule,
were far less friendly to the idea of British or French governments.
Of particular concern was Abdullah bin Hussein in Transjordan
And though the Sharifian faction, called so because of Hussein's title as Sharif of Mecca, didn't have universal support,
Abdullah's followers were threatening to strike north and invade the French mandate of Syria to recapture Damascus, and that was a problem.
Because if a British Ally invaded France the French would turn around and invade Transjordan.
Meanwhile Faisal who would have been happy to rule Syria as a British or French protectorate,
but whose plans for that were shot down by the more radical members of his Syrian National Conference was in exile in London and
their father Hussein had his own worries.
Because you see during the war the British hadn't just backed him,
but also one of the most powerful leaders to his East Abdul Aziz Al -Saud
But Al-Saud had not joined the Arab revolt,
instead, attacking the lands of the Ottoman allied Arab faction to his north.
A rival house he was now on the verge of conquering making him the master of central Arabia.
And his forces were already pushing on Hussein's borders
Interested in usurping the Sharifian faction's control over Mecca, and the religious authority had brought, Al-Saud and his faction the Saudis
Yeah that name sounded familiar for a reason
were closely aligned with the reformist movement called Wahhabism.
Founded in the 18th century, to remove what it considered adulterous elements from Islam, such as the veneration of saints and shrine pilgrimages,
the British considered Wahhabism austere and ultra conservative.
In fact, although both parties had received support,
It was why the British favoured Hussein's comparatively moderate Sharifian faction over Al-Saud
But his Saudi territory expanded a few colonial officers began to whisper that London had backed the wrong dynasty.
But the most intractable problem for the British was Iraq.
Ever since Iraq was drawn on a map,
colonial officials like Gertrude Bell had worried about how to create a sense of common nationhood.
But it turned out it was easy.
All they had to do was declare British rule and then everyone in the country united.
Finally a win, right?
Well, no
they had all united against the British Mandate system.
Diverse religious groups and ethnicities found common cause,
bridging the gaps between fractious urban and tribal populations all calling for independence.
It began with nonviolent demonstrations and strikes, with meetings and petitions.
But when mandate officials refused to entertain independence, tribal leaders began sabotaging railroad tracks and cutting telephone lines.
British troops, thin on the ground due to the huge area of the country, began falling to assassin's bullets or were kidnapped for ransom.
For three months Iraq was ungovernable until the mandate brought in reinforcements from India and took back the city in street battles
Even then only air power and an indiscriminate bombing campaign allowed the British to restore some measure of control.
In the end, 10,000 Iraqis would die in the revolt,
and amidst this Winston Churchill took over as the new colonial secretary.
Churchill was not a fan of current Middle East policy.
In fact, he'd advised against dividing the Ottoman Empire.
in his estimation the current policy was a failure as it had turned everyone in the region against them from the Turks to the Arabs to the Russians,
who were starting to play more of a role in the region.
He believed that the smartest play would be to use the Arabs and the new nation of Turkey to serve as a check on
Bolshevik Russia, but surprise surprise there was yet another complication which was cost.
At the end of the war Britain wanted to grab every piece of the Middle East it could and rule it directly
But with the country demobilizing and wallowing in financial crisis
It was clear that garrisoning all that territory would quickly bankrupt the UK.
Especially, if it involved fighting small wars.
And then at home, the press was already calling for the end of the mandate system and the recall of all British troops.
Churchill's idea was to drastically reduce colonial spending by setting up local Protectorate governments.
Ones that would be overseen by the British but run by locals.
He began preparing for another conference in Cairo slated for March of 1921.
The idea this time was to get all of the mandate officials and several advisors together,
And hash out what to do with all of these new Middle Eastern territories.
He recruited archaeologist and colonial official Gertrude Bell as part of the effort.
The woman who had championed self-rule protectorates from the beginning,
you know, back when no one wanted to hear that.
And he looped in TE Lawrence,
now internationally famous as Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence's star had risen when a traveling sideshow called The Last Crusade shot on-location during the war,
sold the public a highly fictionalized version of the Arab revolt.
in reality the revolt had been indecisive and Lawrence played only a small part.
But the show portrayed him as leading the Arabs to a major victory.
So to a public weary of the trenches Lawrence's war expertise seemed like an exotic romantic adventure
Lawrence quickly adopted this fictionalized version as the truth.
On March 12th, 1921 the group that Churchill referred to as his forty thieves gathered at a hotel in Cairo.
Though It's important to note,
only two of them were Arabs, both officers in the Iraqi Mandate government.
For the next 18 days, the group discussed and argued,
dissecting each country in turn.
Diagnosing the problems and crafting what they believed to be solutions.
In Palestine they decided the British Mandate would continue, and opted to keep supporting a Jewish homeland.
Though, as a state.
Transjordan, which some Zionists considered part of a Jewish homeland would continue to be separate from Palestine.
Syria and Lebanon would remain French.
The increasing religious friction there would be a Paris problem.
And provided that he ratified the Treaty of Versailles,
which he refused to do, Hussein would be recognized as the king of his territory in Hejaz,
ruling over Mecca Medina and the western coast of the peninsula
Meanwhile, Abdul aziz ibn saud would be recognized as controlling central Arabia.
Iraq would have a government run by locals, and the right to maintain an army separate from British forces in order to keep domestic security.
British military control would be transferred from the army to the Royal Air Force
Who would destroy resistance from the safety of their air bases.
Both there and in Transjordan Britain would have advisors and to a certain extent
Control the economic and foreign policy.
And then the biggest move: the Sharifian solution the nation-building masterstroke
advocated by Lawrence and Bell.
Britain would install Hussein's sons as kings ruling their Protectorates semi independently while also kept dependent on British money and aid.
Abdullah would be the king of Transjordan where he'd already established himself.
Faisal would be the head of state in the newly created kingdom of Iraq,
and Ali could be Hussein's heir to the Hejaz.
While the conference didn't deal with the question of Egypt, it too would become a protectorate Kingdom the next year.
Lawrence would later write that Churchill had, "made straight all the tangle"
and that "the arrangement fulfilled British promises in letter and spirit
It would also lead to bloodshed the likes of which Arabia had not seen in a century of Ottoman rule.
For five months later...
Faisal sat in a throne in Basra crowned king of a new nation while surrounded by British officers;
and as Iraq had no national anthem,
The band played god save the king and of these three kingly brothers. Only one would keep his throne
Legendary thanks to Ahmed Ziad Turk, Alicia Bramble ,Casey Muscha, Dominic Valenciana, Gunnar Clovis,
Kyle Murgatroyd, Moulay Cherkaoui, and Orels1.