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Y321: The Middle East 1908–2011: Ottomans to Arab Spring

Depth study: British Policy and the Middle East 1908–1948 — aims before 1914 and the wartime agreements

  • 2 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on British aims before 1914 and their coherence, the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration, and how historians judge each.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Why do historians disagree about how coherent British policy was?

Key term

Why is the McMahon-Hussein correspondence disputed?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What did Britain want from the Middle East before 1914?

    Model answer

    Security for the route to India through Suez and the Gulf, the exclusion of rival powers, and from 1908 access to Persian oil for the navy, all pursued through influence and treaty relations rather than outright annexation.

  2. 2

    Why do historians disagree about how coherent British policy was?

    Model answer

    One reading sees a deliberate imperial design to control the region's routes and resources; another, argued by David Fromkin among others, sees wartime improvisation by rival departments in London, Cairo and Delhi producing commitments that contradicted one another.

  3. 3

    State what Britain promised in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence.

    Model answer

    In return for an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, Britain undertook to support Arab independence across a broad area of the Levant and Arabia, but with territorial reservations whose extent, particularly regarding Palestine, was left ambiguous.

  4. 4

    Why is the McMahon-Hussein correspondence disputed?

    Model answer

    Arab nationalist accounts, following George Antonius, treat it as a clear pledge that Britain betrayed, while critics such as Elie Kedourie argued that Palestine was excluded and that the charge of betrayal rests on a misreading; the ambiguity may well have been deliberate.

  5. 5

    Outline what the Sykes-Picot Agreement set out.

    Model answer

    It was a secret Anglo-French plan of 1916, with Russian assent, to divide the Ottoman Arab provinces into zones of direct rule and influence, giving France Syria and Lebanon, Britain southern Mesopotamia together with the Mediterranean ports of Haifa and Acre, and placing Palestine under international administration.

  6. 6

    Why was Sykes-Picot so damaging to Britain's reputation?

    Model answer

    It cut across the promises made to Hussein and later to the Zionists, and when the Bolsheviks published it in 1917 it exposed Allied talk of self-determination as cover for a partition arranged in advance.

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