Imperialists All: the Arab Bureau and the Evolution of British Policy in the Middle East, 1916-1920.

Abstract

Few historical subjects are more emotive than that concerning the emergence of Middle-Eastern l and s from under Ottoman domination during the First World War. An almost mystical nimbus still hovers over the memory of Lawrence and the Arab Revolt with which he has become so indelibly associated. The Arab Bureau was a small collection of officers, varyingly conversant with this region, gathered by the British Foreign Office, early in 1916, to undo damage wrought by a superannuated network of military and imperial bureaucracies unprepared for the business of World War. British policy-makers were beset with myriad centers of military and political power which operated along different ( and often divergent) lines respecting Arab policy. There was no expert, impartial agency to advise British leaders on complex questions. It was this void which the Arab Bureau was created to fill. But deprived of requisite executive authority, the Bureau was itself absorbed by one of those centers of bureaucratic power--Khartoum. Consequently, the role of this talented group was transformed from one of advice to advocacy. This, in turn, resulted in alienation from influential authorities in Mesopotamia and India who balked at any encouragement of Arab insurrection. The Bureau's differences with authorities in London and Delhi regarding Arab policy were rooted in strategic concerns. They hoped to forge an ersatz confederation of Arab states under a suitably pliant pensioner. Accordingly, they were determined to preempt coalescence of any collectively nationalistic sentiment among the Arabs themselves. Thusly, the routes to India would be protected, Arab nationalism mollified, and burdensome occupation obviated. This design, however, ran afoul of transcendant British commitments to the French in Syria and the Zionists in Palestine. The Bureau's success in shepherding the Arab Revolt has spawned illusions regarding the agency's devotion to Arab nationalism. This study constitutes the first attempt to analyze the Bureau's history and its life as a separate political entity, so as to assess those impressions which persist and thereby determine the manner and the extent to which the Arab Bureau influenced the conduct of British policy in the Middle East.