{"id":163,"date":"2022-09-01T15:04:47","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T15:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/religionsofmiddleeast1\/?post_type=chapter&p=163"},"modified":"2025-11-04T11:53:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T11:53:25","slug":"twentieth-century-middle-east-to-1945","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/religionsofmiddleeast1\/chapter\/twentieth-century-middle-east-to-1945\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 3. Twentieth Century Middle East to 1945"},"content":{"raw":"By the first decade of the twentieth century, almost every Muslim country was under Western dominance, either as formal colonies such as India or Indonesia, as informal colonies such as Egypt, or as weak states unable to operate without gaining Western support and approval such as Iran and the Ottoman Empire.\u00a0 In fact, it would take a major world war to change this situation.\u00a0 The coming of World War I would have profound consequences for the Middle East.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe Middle East in World War I\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>\r\n\r\nArab nationalism is the concept that the peoples of the Arab nations (those nations where the predominant spoken language is Arabic) ought to form one large national homeland.\u00a0 This form of nationalism came about relatively late in comparison with Egyptian or Turkish nationalism.\u00a0 The main reason for this is the fact that the majority of Arab lands were under Ottoman rule during the nineteenth century, and most Arabs believed that the\u00a0Ottomans were legitimate Muslim rulers over their lands.\r\n\r\nThe conception of Arab nationalism appears to have first arisen in the region of Syria during the 1880s, among a small group of well educated young Syrians who began to push for Arab autonomy under Ottoman rule.\u00a0 Their movement had a very limited following and was mostly conducted underground prior to World War I.\u00a0 Very few of these \u201cnationalists\u201d envisioned complete independence from Ottoman rule, but rather they wanted to be recognized as a separate group with autonomy under the Ottoman state, much as the Lebanese Christians and Egyptian Muslims had already obtained some autonomy during the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Their definition of what qualified as \u201cArab\u201d lands seems to have included the areas encompassing the modern nations of Syria, Iraq, Israel\/Palestine, Jordan and the Arabian peninsula.\u00a0 Not all Arab nationalists had the same idea in mind. Christian Arabs, for instance, looked for a non-sectarian state in which the Arab identity would predominate.\u00a0 This made sense for a religious minority that sought to break free from centuries of second class status under Muslim rule.\u00a0 However, Muslim Arabs seemed to prefer more of a religious state or even a pan-Islamic identity, with the latter sentiment growing stronger as outside challenges to the Ottoman Empire increased in strength.\r\n\r\nBy 1914, events were beginning to move faster than the Arab nationalist movement could keep up with.\u00a0 With the outbreak of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was forced to choose sides between the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary and the Allied Powers of Britain, France and Russia.\u00a0 Given that the Russians had always been enemies, and that the Ottomans\u2019 former British allies seemed to be abandoning them to their fate following Britain\u2019s treaty with Russia in 1907, it should not have been a surprise that the Ottomans chose to align themselves with the Central Powers.\u00a0 This decision was aided by the fact that Germany had been reaching out to the Ottomans over the course of the preceding twenty years and had even provided some financial assistance towards Ottoman development.\u00a0 Thus the empire was soon set on a course that would ultimately lead to its dissolution.\u00a0 Still, in 1915 that result was far from assured.\u00a0 The Ottomans even won an important military conflict against the British in that year, turning back an Allied invasion at Gallipoli, a conflict that turned out to be one of the worst British defeats of the war.\r\n\r\nAs the British began to realize that the Ottomans represented a more formidable enemy than they had at first thought, they started to look into other ways to undermine the empire.\u00a0 As the war raged on in Europe, the British negotiated three agreements in an attempt to secure their influence over the Middle East when the conflict finally concluded.\u00a0 These agreements were focused on with the division of Ottoman territories between the Allied powers.\u00a0 In the Husayn-McMahon correspondence, the British high commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, sought to negotiate Arab support in the war through a series of letters exchanged between himself and the Arab ruler of Mecca, Sharif Husayn ibn Ali.\u00a0 Ultimately some Arabs, under the leadership of Sharif Husayn, launched a revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1916.\u00a0 This revolt was launched despite the fact that Sharif Husayn\u00a0and High Commissioner McMahon had not reached a formal agreement as to what lands the Arabs would be granted for their own state after the war.\r\n\r\nIn the Sykes-Picot accord, another secret agreement, the British negotiated with their allies, the French and the Russians, over how they would divide up Ottoman territories following the end of the war.\u00a0 This agreement would only become public knowledge in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, but its stipulations would continue to haunt the region for decades to come.\u00a0 Finally, in 1917, the British made a pledge to a group of Zionists (European Jews who wanted to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine) that they would support the establishment of this homeland, as long as \u201cit would not harm the civil or religious rights of Palestine\u2019s \u2018existing non-Jewish communities.\u2019\u201d (Arthur Goldschmidt Jr and Aomar Boum, A Concise History of the Middle East<\/em>, Eleventh Edition, 193).\u00a0 These various and conflicting promises would later come back to haunt the British during the long negotiations following the end of the war, beginning at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and continuing at San Remo in 1920.\r\n\r\nFor more on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, including a map of the affected regions, read the linked article in Encyclopedia Brittanica,\u00a0https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Sykes-Picot-Agreement<\/a>\r\n\r\n\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\nStates that Escaped Direct European Rule<\/strong><\/span>\r\n\r\nOn October 30, 1918, the Ottoman Empire signed the Mudros armistice, in which it recognized the complete defeat and subjugation of the empire to the Allied forces.\u00a0 Constantinople would be occupied, the Ottoman army demobilized, and the empire was to be partitioned among various European powers.\u00a0 However, less than five years later, the Turks would negotiate the much more favorable treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923) which led to the establishment of the new Turkish republic.\u00a0 In between these two dates, the remnants of the Ottoman army fought a war of independence under the leadership of General Mustafa Kemal, allowing them to retain the whole of the Anatolian peninsula, as well as a small section of southeastern Europe (the province of Thrace), for the new nation.\r\n\r\nSeen as the savior of his country, Mustafa Kemal was swept into office as the first president of the Turkish republic, and he was given extraordinary powers to lay the foundations for the new state.\u00a0 Over the next fifteen years, Kemal (better known as Ataturk) undertook a series of radical top-down reforms guided by several principles according to which he which he governed the country (the so-called \"six arrows\" of reformism, republicanism, secularism, nationalism, populism, and etatism). \u00a0Despite the authoritarian nature of his rule, Ataturk laid the foundations for democracy to arise within the country following his death.\u00a0 Ironically, the successor state to the defeated Ottoman Empire, located in its Anatolian heartlands, has proven to be arguably the most successful Middle Eastern state since the collapse of the empire.\r\n\r\nAnother contemporary reformer has often been compared with Ataturk because of his emphasis upon Westernizing modernization, his military roots, and his authoritarian approach to rule.\u00a0 Yet, Reza Shah, the new ruler of Iran, was different from the Turkish leader in several significant ways.\u00a0 He has been chided for his failure to introduce democratizing reforms within the country, for his establishment of a family dynasty in Iran, and for the fact that he enriched himself as well as many of his cronies throughout his reign, something that Ataturk never did in Turkey. No doubt Reza Shah had greater obstacles to overcome in establishing his state, although this would not have appeared to be the case in 1921 when he stepped into power in the country that was then known to the outside world as Persia.\u00a0 But there is no doubt that Shi'ite religious leadership (the ulama) in Iran were in a much more powerful position to resist Reza Shah's secularizing approach than were the Sunni religious leaders in Turkey.\u00a0 Furthermore, Iran's important strategic value to both the Western nations and the new Soviet Union, in addition to its large oil reserves, meant that outside powers would meddle in Iran's business much more actively than they would in Turkey, placing more limitations upon Reza Shah's ability to radically transform his country.\u00a0 Finally, the extensive Westernizing reforms undertaken by the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century had created a large class of Westernized elite that supported Ataturk's aims in Turkey, whereas the much more limited reforms of Qajar Persia meant that Reza Shah did not have the same infrastructure in place or support for his reforms in Iran.\r\n\r\nAs a result, the Iranian dictator tried to forcibly implement modernizing changes within the country and he also resorted to a strategy of buying off supporters by rewarding them with positions within the administration or with large estates of land, creating a huge disparity between haves and have-nots in Iran.\u00a0 Reza Shah maintained a particularly close relationship with the military, whose officers received numerous privileges.\u00a0 In fact, Reza Shah himself became the largest landowner in the country, amassing a huge fortune for his family along with his large estates scattered throughout Iran.\u00a0\u00a0 When the British and Soviets forced him out of power in 1941, the people of Iran applauded his abdication.\u00a0 In contrast, Ataturk remains a heroic figure in Turkey, immortalized in statues and portraits throughout the country until this day.\r\n\r\nThe third Middle Eastern country to escape direct European rule arose in the Arabian Peninsula, heartland of the Islamic faith.\u00a0 When the Saudi troops swept the weak sharifian state out of power in the Hijaz in 1924, the British did nothing to help their former ally Husayn, who had launched the Arab revolt against the Ottomans at their instigation back in 1916.\u00a0 Instead, they negotiated an agreement (the Treaty of Jiddah) with the Saudi leader, Abd al-Aziz ibn Sa`ud, in 1927 and they supported his establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.\u00a0 Because the British viewed Arabia as a large and unimportant desert country (nobody knew about the oil below the sand at that time), Ibn Sa`ud had more freedom to develop his state than any other Middle Eastern ruler apart from Ataturk.\r\n\r\nIronically, however, the Saudi state would go in a very different direction from that of the Republic of Turkey.\u00a0 Ibn Sa`ud's alliance with the ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect meant that he gave over religious authority to the Wahhabis while maintaining political authority within his very large family (he is said to have had 22 wives and at least 37 sons).\u00a0 In contrast, Ataturk made enemies of the Turkish ulama by his aggressive secularization program.\u00a0 Whereas the Turkish leader substantially modernized his country, Ibn Sa`ud ruled his new nation like a Bedouin chief.\u00a0 Were it not for the discovery of oil by Americans in 1938, Saudi Arabia would likely have remained a peripheral state in Middle Eastern politics, important only for its possession of the holiest sites in Islam.\u00a0 The establishment of the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) not only transformed the country into one of the most important in the region, but it also established a close alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which has remained in place to this day, despite various strains upon their relationship over the years.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nMandates and Other States Overseen by Great Britain and France<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nHowever, the majority of the new states in the Middle East were not as fortunate as Turkey and Saudi Arabia in their ability to determine their own futures.\u202f Instead, the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire came under direct rule from the European powers, through an odd program known as the Mandate System.\u202f \u00a0Because the Mandate states were said to be \u201cinhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world,\u201d they were placed \u201cunder the tutelage of the \u2018advanced nations,\u2019 which would assist them \u2018until such time as they are able to stand alone\u2019\u201d (Cleveland and Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East <\/em>Sixth Edition, 162).\r\n\r\nDespite this lofty rhetoric, however, most historians view the Mandate system as colonialism by another name.\u202f The fact is that the Arab peoples placed under this system vehemently objected to this action, as can be seen not only in the passionate pleas made by their leaders to the Allies in 1919 and 1920 but also by the fact that widespread revolts broke out in most of the Mandate territories shortly after the system was announced.\u202f In fact, the French had to bomb the city of Damascus into submission in 1925 before they could establish their administration over the Mandate of Syria.\u202f Arab resentment over this system, along with the seemingly arbitrary boundaries drawn by the colonial powers for the countries of Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, has continued to this day.\u202f There is a widespread and seemingly justified belief that the British reneged on the promise that they had made to Sharif Husayn in 1916, and that they betrayed their Arab allies by parceling Arab lands up into a number of small states even as Turkey (the enemy of the British in WWI) was allowed to establish its own unified state.\r\n\r\nThe British, however, saw themselves as simply pursuing their own national interests. The fact remains that the Arab regions were much more strategically valuable to Great Britain than was Turkey.\u202f It is for this reason that the British were extremely slow in giving up their foothold in Egypt, even though that country was not formally part of the Mandate system.\u202f After all, they viewed the Suez Canal as a critical lifeline connecting the Mediterranean with British interests in East Africa and India.\u202f In addition, the British presence in Egypt had proven to be extremely valuable in fighting the First World War in the Middle East, and it would again be valuable during the Second World War. \u00a0After informally dominating the country for decades, Great Britain formally established a protectorate over Egypt upon the outbreak of war in 1914. \u00a0Even with the end of the war, the British showed no inclination to change Egypt\u2019s status and even denied a petition by Egyptian leaders to take their case for independence to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. \u00a0The resulting Egyptian revolution, however, convinced the British that some changes would need to be made. \u00a0After negotiations with Egyptian leaders failed in 1922, the British unilaterally declared Egypt to be independent in 1922, but with \u201cfour reserved points\u201d that maintained British control over Egyptian foreign relations, the treatment of foreigners within Egypt, the Sudan and the Suez Canal.\r\n\r\nThough treated like a colony, Egypt was not formally part of the Mandate system.\u00a0 Instead, Great Britain received mandates for Iraq and Palestine in 1920. \u00a0The Palestine Mandate was troubled from the beginning and was made particularly complicated by the fact that the British had promised their support to the Zionists (a group of European Jews who sought a homeland for the Jews in Palestine) in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. \u00a0In 1921, the British split the Palestine Mandate in two, along the Jordan river. \u00a0The eastern portion was transformed into the Mandate of Transjordan, and leadership was given to the son of sharif Husayn, Abdallah. \u00a0The borders of this new country were so arbitrary that the story goes that Winston Churchill thought it up over lunch. \u00a0The main purpose of Transjordan was to maintain control over the Bedouins in order to keep them from stirring up trouble along the long border with the French mandate of Syria. \u00a0The Jordanian military was small but very efficient and was led by a British commander, Sir John Glubb. \u00a0The remainder of the Palestine Mandate is discussed later in Chapter Two, in the section entitled \u201cIsraeli-Palestinian Conflict.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe other British mandate was located in the new nation of Iraq. \u00a0Like Jordan, Iraq was a completely new creation by the British. \u00a0Assembled from three former Ottoman provinces, Iraq faced internal divisions between religious sects (Sunnis and Shi`a) and ethnic groups (Arabs and Kurds). \u00a0In fact the Kurdish province of Mosul was only connected to Iraq in 1919 because Great Britain wanted to control the oil that had been discovered in Mosul; the province had originally been promised to France in the Sykes-Picot agreement. \u00a0The Kurds were unwillingly grafted onto Iraq, having been promised their own separate state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. \u00a0This promise was not delivered upon due to the success of the Turkish War of Independence. \u00a0To make matters even more difficult for Iraq, \u201cthe British officials who delineated the Iraqi frontiers disadvantaged the new state by restricting its access to the Persian Gulf.\u201d (Cleveland and Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East <\/em>Sixth Edition, 195)\u00a0 The majority of the Iraqi coast, including the best harbor, was given to the new state of Kuwait, which the British created to serve their allies, the Al Sabah family, who were established as the rulers of this tiny country. \u00a0Leadership over Iraq was given to the British ally, Faysal, son of Sharif Husayn, who had no connections to the country prior to being installed as king in 1921. \u00a0Ironically, despite all these disadvantages, Iraq was the first mandate to be granted formal independence in 1932. \u00a0However, the death of Faysal in 1933 substantially weakened the monarchy and Iraq would experience many different governments, as well as substantial violence, during the interwar years.\r\n\r\nThe British approach towards running their mandates was to work indirectly through allies such as Faysal or Abdallah, who were expected to enforce policies within their countries that favored British interests. \u00a0The French took a more heavy-handed approach towards their mandates, however, maintaining direct rule in Syria through the outbreak of World War II. \u00a0Perhaps the frequent objections raised by Syrian leaders against French rule, along with the devastating rebellion that took place upon the onset of the mandate, convinced French authorities that they would need to maintain tight control over the country. \u00a0Whatever the reason, French administrators took a \u201cdivide and rule\u201d approach towards running the Syrian mandate.\u00a0 One of the first things that they did was to separate the western portion of the mandate to form a new country called Lebanon. \u00a0The Maronites and Druze within Mt. Lebanon had long functioned independently of the Sunni majority in the rest of Syria. \u00a0However, the French took traditional Syrian territory, including the fertile Biqa Valley, to add onto Lebanon, creating a \u201cGreater Lebanon.\u201d \u00a0This action not only expanded Lebanese territory but it also created a much more diverse population within Lebanon itself, adding large populations of Shi`ite and Sunni Muslims to the Christian\/Druze mix that already existed within the country.\u00a0 Because of their close alliance with the Maronite Christians, the French allotted a leadership role to the Christians of Lebanon, and granted greater freedom to its government during the interwar period.\u00a0 In contrast, however, Syria was run like an armed camp, with very few Syrians granted access to real political authority during the period of French administration. \u00a0The only Syrian institution that was allowed some autonomy was the military, which tended to attract religious minorities into its military academy, since it offered them their one chance to rise into positions of influence. \u00a0As a result, the Syrian military was largely dominated by the Shi`ite `Alawi sect when Syria finally obtained independence in the 1940s.\r\n\r\nPrimary Source Documents<\/strong><\/span>\r\n\r\nThe documents linked below concern British negotiations during World War I.\u00a0 The first is the text of the series of letters exchanged between the British High Commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Sharif Husayn ibn `Ali, steward of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.\u00a0 The second document is the text of the secret Sykes-Picot Accords between Britain, France and Russia.\u00a0 The third is the text of the Balfour Declaration, released by Great Britain in 1917.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/the-hussein-mcmahon-correspondence-july-1915-august-1916<\/a>\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/the-sykes-picot-agreement-1916<\/a>\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/text-of-the-balfour-declaration<\/a>\r\n\r\nThe next set of documents relate to the Mandate system in the Middle East during the inter-war period.\r\n\r\n ","rendered":"

By the first decade of the twentieth century, almost every Muslim country was under Western dominance, either as formal colonies such as India or Indonesia, as informal colonies such as Egypt, or as weak states unable to operate without gaining Western support and approval such as Iran and the Ottoman Empire.\u00a0 In fact, it would take a major world war to change this situation.\u00a0 The coming of World War I would have profound consequences for the Middle East.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Middle East in World War I\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Arab nationalism is the concept that the peoples of the Arab nations (those nations where the predominant spoken language is Arabic) ought to form one large national homeland.\u00a0 This form of nationalism came about relatively late in comparison with Egyptian or Turkish nationalism.\u00a0 The main reason for this is the fact that the majority of Arab lands were under Ottoman rule during the nineteenth century, and most Arabs believed that the\u00a0Ottomans were legitimate Muslim rulers over their lands.<\/p>\n

The conception of Arab nationalism appears to have first arisen in the region of Syria during the 1880s, among a small group of well educated young Syrians who began to push for Arab autonomy under Ottoman rule.\u00a0 Their movement had a very limited following and was mostly conducted underground prior to World War I.\u00a0 Very few of these \u201cnationalists\u201d envisioned complete independence from Ottoman rule, but rather they wanted to be recognized as a separate group with autonomy under the Ottoman state, much as the Lebanese Christians and Egyptian Muslims had already obtained some autonomy during the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Their definition of what qualified as \u201cArab\u201d lands seems to have included the areas encompassing the modern nations of Syria, Iraq, Israel\/Palestine, Jordan and the Arabian peninsula.\u00a0 Not all Arab nationalists had the same idea in mind. Christian Arabs, for instance, looked for a non-sectarian state in which the Arab identity would predominate.\u00a0 This made sense for a religious minority that sought to break free from centuries of second class status under Muslim rule.\u00a0 However, Muslim Arabs seemed to prefer more of a religious state or even a pan-Islamic identity, with the latter sentiment growing stronger as outside challenges to the Ottoman Empire increased in strength.<\/p>\n

By 1914, events were beginning to move faster than the Arab nationalist movement could keep up with.\u00a0 With the outbreak of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was forced to choose sides between the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary and the Allied Powers of Britain, France and Russia.\u00a0 Given that the Russians had always been enemies, and that the Ottomans\u2019 former British allies seemed to be abandoning them to their fate following Britain\u2019s treaty with Russia in 1907, it should not have been a surprise that the Ottomans chose to align themselves with the Central Powers.\u00a0 This decision was aided by the fact that Germany had been reaching out to the Ottomans over the course of the preceding twenty years and had even provided some financial assistance towards Ottoman development.\u00a0 Thus the empire was soon set on a course that would ultimately lead to its dissolution.\u00a0 Still, in 1915 that result was far from assured.\u00a0 The Ottomans even won an important military conflict against the British in that year, turning back an Allied invasion at Gallipoli, a conflict that turned out to be one of the worst British defeats of the war.<\/p>\n

As the British began to realize that the Ottomans represented a more formidable enemy than they had at first thought, they started to look into other ways to undermine the empire.\u00a0 As the war raged on in Europe, the British negotiated three agreements in an attempt to secure their influence over the Middle East when the conflict finally concluded.\u00a0 These agreements were focused on with the division of Ottoman territories between the Allied powers.\u00a0 In the Husayn-McMahon correspondence, the British high commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, sought to negotiate Arab support in the war through a series of letters exchanged between himself and the Arab ruler of Mecca, Sharif Husayn ibn Ali.\u00a0 Ultimately some Arabs, under the leadership of Sharif Husayn, launched a revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1916.\u00a0 This revolt was launched despite the fact that Sharif Husayn\u00a0and High Commissioner McMahon had not reached a formal agreement as to what lands the Arabs would be granted for their own state after the war.<\/p>\n

In the Sykes-Picot accord, another secret agreement, the British negotiated with their allies, the French and the Russians, over how they would divide up Ottoman territories following the end of the war.\u00a0 This agreement would only become public knowledge in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, but its stipulations would continue to haunt the region for decades to come.\u00a0 Finally, in 1917, the British made a pledge to a group of Zionists (European Jews who wanted to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine) that they would support the establishment of this homeland, as long as \u201cit would not harm the civil or religious rights of Palestine\u2019s \u2018existing non-Jewish communities.\u2019\u201d (Arthur Goldschmidt Jr and Aomar Boum, A Concise History of the Middle East<\/em>, Eleventh Edition, 193).\u00a0 These various and conflicting promises would later come back to haunt the British during the long negotiations following the end of the war, beginning at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and continuing at San Remo in 1920.<\/p>\n

For more on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, including a map of the affected regions, read the linked article in Encyclopedia Brittanica,\u00a0https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Sykes-Picot-Agreement<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

States that Escaped Direct European Rule<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

On October 30, 1918, the Ottoman Empire signed the Mudros armistice, in which it recognized the complete defeat and subjugation of the empire to the Allied forces.\u00a0 Constantinople would be occupied, the Ottoman army demobilized, and the empire was to be partitioned among various European powers.\u00a0 However, less than five years later, the Turks would negotiate the much more favorable treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923) which led to the establishment of the new Turkish republic.\u00a0 In between these two dates, the remnants of the Ottoman army fought a war of independence under the leadership of General Mustafa Kemal, allowing them to retain the whole of the Anatolian peninsula, as well as a small section of southeastern Europe (the province of Thrace), for the new nation.<\/p>\n

Seen as the savior of his country, Mustafa Kemal was swept into office as the first president of the Turkish republic, and he was given extraordinary powers to lay the foundations for the new state.\u00a0 Over the next fifteen years, Kemal (better known as Ataturk) undertook a series of radical top-down reforms guided by several principles according to which he which he governed the country (the so-called “six arrows” of reformism, republicanism, secularism, nationalism, populism, and etatism). \u00a0Despite the authoritarian nature of his rule, Ataturk laid the foundations for democracy to arise within the country following his death.\u00a0 Ironically, the successor state to the defeated Ottoman Empire, located in its Anatolian heartlands, has proven to be arguably the most successful Middle Eastern state since the collapse of the empire.<\/p>\n

Another contemporary reformer has often been compared with Ataturk because of his emphasis upon Westernizing modernization, his military roots, and his authoritarian approach to rule.\u00a0 Yet, Reza Shah, the new ruler of Iran, was different from the Turkish leader in several significant ways.\u00a0 He has been chided for his failure to introduce democratizing reforms within the country, for his establishment of a family dynasty in Iran, and for the fact that he enriched himself as well as many of his cronies throughout his reign, something that Ataturk never did in Turkey. No doubt Reza Shah had greater obstacles to overcome in establishing his state, although this would not have appeared to be the case in 1921 when he stepped into power in the country that was then known to the outside world as Persia.\u00a0 But there is no doubt that Shi’ite religious leadership (the ulama) in Iran were in a much more powerful position to resist Reza Shah’s secularizing approach than were the Sunni religious leaders in Turkey.\u00a0 Furthermore, Iran’s important strategic value to both the Western nations and the new Soviet Union, in addition to its large oil reserves, meant that outside powers would meddle in Iran’s business much more actively than they would in Turkey, placing more limitations upon Reza Shah’s ability to radically transform his country.\u00a0 Finally, the extensive Westernizing reforms undertaken by the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century had created a large class of Westernized elite that supported Ataturk’s aims in Turkey, whereas the much more limited reforms of Qajar Persia meant that Reza Shah did not have the same infrastructure in place or support for his reforms in Iran.<\/p>\n

As a result, the Iranian dictator tried to forcibly implement modernizing changes within the country and he also resorted to a strategy of buying off supporters by rewarding them with positions within the administration or with large estates of land, creating a huge disparity between haves and have-nots in Iran.\u00a0 Reza Shah maintained a particularly close relationship with the military, whose officers received numerous privileges.\u00a0 In fact, Reza Shah himself became the largest landowner in the country, amassing a huge fortune for his family along with his large estates scattered throughout Iran.\u00a0\u00a0 When the British and Soviets forced him out of power in 1941, the people of Iran applauded his abdication.\u00a0 In contrast, Ataturk remains a heroic figure in Turkey, immortalized in statues and portraits throughout the country until this day.<\/p>\n

The third Middle Eastern country to escape direct European rule arose in the Arabian Peninsula, heartland of the Islamic faith.\u00a0 When the Saudi troops swept the weak sharifian state out of power in the Hijaz in 1924, the British did nothing to help their former ally Husayn, who had launched the Arab revolt against the Ottomans at their instigation back in 1916.\u00a0 Instead, they negotiated an agreement (the Treaty of Jiddah) with the Saudi leader, Abd al-Aziz ibn Sa`ud, in 1927 and they supported his establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.\u00a0 Because the British viewed Arabia as a large and unimportant desert country (nobody knew about the oil below the sand at that time), Ibn Sa`ud had more freedom to develop his state than any other Middle Eastern ruler apart from Ataturk.<\/p>\n

Ironically, however, the Saudi state would go in a very different direction from that of the Republic of Turkey.\u00a0 Ibn Sa`ud’s alliance with the ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect meant that he gave over religious authority to the Wahhabis while maintaining political authority within his very large family (he is said to have had 22 wives and at least 37 sons).\u00a0 In contrast, Ataturk made enemies of the Turkish ulama by his aggressive secularization program.\u00a0 Whereas the Turkish leader substantially modernized his country, Ibn Sa`ud ruled his new nation like a Bedouin chief.\u00a0 Were it not for the discovery of oil by Americans in 1938, Saudi Arabia would likely have remained a peripheral state in Middle Eastern politics, important only for its possession of the holiest sites in Islam.\u00a0 The establishment of the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) not only transformed the country into one of the most important in the region, but it also established a close alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which has remained in place to this day, despite various strains upon their relationship over the years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mandates and Other States Overseen by Great Britain and France<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the majority of the new states in the Middle East were not as fortunate as Turkey and Saudi Arabia in their ability to determine their own futures.\u202f Instead, the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire came under direct rule from the European powers, through an odd program known as the Mandate System.\u202f \u00a0Because the Mandate states were said to be \u201cinhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world,\u201d they were placed \u201cunder the tutelage of the \u2018advanced nations,\u2019 which would assist them \u2018until such time as they are able to stand alone\u2019\u201d (Cleveland and Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East <\/em>Sixth Edition, 162).<\/p>\n

Despite this lofty rhetoric, however, most historians view the Mandate system as colonialism by another name.\u202f The fact is that the Arab peoples placed under this system vehemently objected to this action, as can be seen not only in the passionate pleas made by their leaders to the Allies in 1919 and 1920 but also by the fact that widespread revolts broke out in most of the Mandate territories shortly after the system was announced.\u202f In fact, the French had to bomb the city of Damascus into submission in 1925 before they could establish their administration over the Mandate of Syria.\u202f Arab resentment over this system, along with the seemingly arbitrary boundaries drawn by the colonial powers for the countries of Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, has continued to this day.\u202f There is a widespread and seemingly justified belief that the British reneged on the promise that they had made to Sharif Husayn in 1916, and that they betrayed their Arab allies by parceling Arab lands up into a number of small states even as Turkey (the enemy of the British in WWI) was allowed to establish its own unified state.<\/p>\n

The British, however, saw themselves as simply pursuing their own national interests. The fact remains that the Arab regions were much more strategically valuable to Great Britain than was Turkey.\u202f It is for this reason that the British were extremely slow in giving up their foothold in Egypt, even though that country was not formally part of the Mandate system.\u202f After all, they viewed the Suez Canal as a critical lifeline connecting the Mediterranean with British interests in East Africa and India.\u202f In addition, the British presence in Egypt had proven to be extremely valuable in fighting the First World War in the Middle East, and it would again be valuable during the Second World War. \u00a0After informally dominating the country for decades, Great Britain formally established a protectorate over Egypt upon the outbreak of war in 1914. \u00a0Even with the end of the war, the British showed no inclination to change Egypt\u2019s status and even denied a petition by Egyptian leaders to take their case for independence to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. \u00a0The resulting Egyptian revolution, however, convinced the British that some changes would need to be made. \u00a0After negotiations with Egyptian leaders failed in 1922, the British unilaterally declared Egypt to be independent in 1922, but with \u201cfour reserved points\u201d that maintained British control over Egyptian foreign relations, the treatment of foreigners within Egypt, the Sudan and the Suez Canal.<\/p>\n

Though treated like a colony, Egypt was not formally part of the Mandate system.\u00a0 Instead, Great Britain received mandates for Iraq and Palestine in 1920. \u00a0The Palestine Mandate was troubled from the beginning and was made particularly complicated by the fact that the British had promised their support to the Zionists (a group of European Jews who sought a homeland for the Jews in Palestine) in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. \u00a0In 1921, the British split the Palestine Mandate in two, along the Jordan river. \u00a0The eastern portion was transformed into the Mandate of Transjordan, and leadership was given to the son of sharif Husayn, Abdallah. \u00a0The borders of this new country were so arbitrary that the story goes that Winston Churchill thought it up over lunch. \u00a0The main purpose of Transjordan was to maintain control over the Bedouins in order to keep them from stirring up trouble along the long border with the French mandate of Syria. \u00a0The Jordanian military was small but very efficient and was led by a British commander, Sir John Glubb. \u00a0The remainder of the Palestine Mandate is discussed later in Chapter Two, in the section entitled \u201cIsraeli-Palestinian Conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other British mandate was located in the new nation of Iraq. \u00a0Like Jordan, Iraq was a completely new creation by the British. \u00a0Assembled from three former Ottoman provinces, Iraq faced internal divisions between religious sects (Sunnis and Shi`a) and ethnic groups (Arabs and Kurds). \u00a0In fact the Kurdish province of Mosul was only connected to Iraq in 1919 because Great Britain wanted to control the oil that had been discovered in Mosul; the province had originally been promised to France in the Sykes-Picot agreement. \u00a0The Kurds were unwillingly grafted onto Iraq, having been promised their own separate state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. \u00a0This promise was not delivered upon due to the success of the Turkish War of Independence. \u00a0To make matters even more difficult for Iraq, \u201cthe British officials who delineated the Iraqi frontiers disadvantaged the new state by restricting its access to the Persian Gulf.\u201d (Cleveland and Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East <\/em>Sixth Edition, 195)\u00a0 The majority of the Iraqi coast, including the best harbor, was given to the new state of Kuwait, which the British created to serve their allies, the Al Sabah family, who were established as the rulers of this tiny country. \u00a0Leadership over Iraq was given to the British ally, Faysal, son of Sharif Husayn, who had no connections to the country prior to being installed as king in 1921. \u00a0Ironically, despite all these disadvantages, Iraq was the first mandate to be granted formal independence in 1932. \u00a0However, the death of Faysal in 1933 substantially weakened the monarchy and Iraq would experience many different governments, as well as substantial violence, during the interwar years.<\/p>\n

The British approach towards running their mandates was to work indirectly through allies such as Faysal or Abdallah, who were expected to enforce policies within their countries that favored British interests. \u00a0The French took a more heavy-handed approach towards their mandates, however, maintaining direct rule in Syria through the outbreak of World War II. \u00a0Perhaps the frequent objections raised by Syrian leaders against French rule, along with the devastating rebellion that took place upon the onset of the mandate, convinced French authorities that they would need to maintain tight control over the country. \u00a0Whatever the reason, French administrators took a \u201cdivide and rule\u201d approach towards running the Syrian mandate.\u00a0 One of the first things that they did was to separate the western portion of the mandate to form a new country called Lebanon. \u00a0The Maronites and Druze within Mt. Lebanon had long functioned independently of the Sunni majority in the rest of Syria. \u00a0However, the French took traditional Syrian territory, including the fertile Biqa Valley, to add onto Lebanon, creating a \u201cGreater Lebanon.\u201d \u00a0This action not only expanded Lebanese territory but it also created a much more diverse population within Lebanon itself, adding large populations of Shi`ite and Sunni Muslims to the Christian\/Druze mix that already existed within the country.\u00a0 Because of their close alliance with the Maronite Christians, the French allotted a leadership role to the Christians of Lebanon, and granted greater freedom to its government during the interwar period.\u00a0 In contrast, however, Syria was run like an armed camp, with very few Syrians granted access to real political authority during the period of French administration. \u00a0The only Syrian institution that was allowed some autonomy was the military, which tended to attract religious minorities into its military academy, since it offered them their one chance to rise into positions of influence. \u00a0As a result, the Syrian military was largely dominated by the Shi`ite `Alawi sect when Syria finally obtained independence in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

Primary Source Documents<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The documents linked below concern British negotiations during World War I.\u00a0 The first is the text of the series of letters exchanged between the British High Commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Sharif Husayn ibn `Ali, steward of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.\u00a0 The second document is the text of the secret Sykes-Picot Accords between Britain, France and Russia.\u00a0 The third is the text of the Balfour Declaration, released by Great Britain in 1917.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/the-hussein-mcmahon-correspondence-july-1915-august-1916<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/the-sykes-picot-agreement-1916<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/text-of-the-balfour-declaration<\/a><\/p>\n

The next set of documents relate to the Mandate system in the Middle East during the inter-war period.<\/p>\n

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