Would the Middle East be a better place today without the Sykes-Picot treaty?
The Middle East would be better if it was still a pluralist single state
I found this speech yesterday when researching something else, it's from a 1920 House of Commons speech by Sir J.D. Rees.
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1920/jun/23/mesopotamia-1#S5CV0130P0_19200623_HOC_354
>My right hon. Friend (Major-General Seely) in his speech has overlooked the fact that there is really no such person as a Mesopotamian. He spoke of Mesopotamians as if they were a nationality and were united. I venture to submit that they are, in point of fact, composed of the inhabitants of three cities which have very little affinity, and certain loosely connected tribes. Those tribes are said to be very friendly to us, partly owing to the services, which I am sure I do not under-estimate, of Colonel Lawrence, but I can remember that they were extremely friendly towards another colonel on a former occasion until they took his life.
>It is true that my right hon. Friend and others have counted to a considerable extent on the friendship of the Arabs because of their hostility to the Turks. Their hostility to the Turks simply comes from the fact that the Turks were their governors. The Turks governed them easily, loosely, spasmodically. It was the easiest yoke in the world, but the Arabs hated them, because they hate any yoke...They are in no sense Mesopotamians, and we cannot count at all upon their friendship in the manner which has been suggested in this Debate.
>Just in proportion as government is good government, so far will it be hateful to the Arabs. What we consider good government is exactly what they abhor, and they will hate us if we impose upon them anything like civilised Western administration far more than they hated the Turk. In point of fact, their hatred of the Turk was purely of a professional character, in the same way as an Irishman will write himself down against the Government, wherever he is, and whatever the government.
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>>886683
>The same is the case with the Arab nomads, and they are, I think, the majority of the population of this region which we roughly call Mesopotamia. They will the more dislike us the more of our money we spend in imposing upon them a civilised administration.We threw every kind of modern learning at the Hindus, and created in them a love of advanced democratic administration; but there is nothing of the sort amongst the Arabs, and I hope we shall not add to our embarrassments by wasting our money in the vague, foolish, and, as I think, odious effort to impose our own views of what is good administration on nomad tribes and on the inhabitants of these three cities in Mesopotamia. Let us give them material advantages, but let us not endeavour to interfere with the psychology of the Arab people
>My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford said we should train the Mesopotamians in order to be able to withdraw the Indian troops, but again I do not understand what he meant by Mesopotamians. Who are the Mesopotamians that he suggests should be regulated and made into disciplined soldiers? Is it the desert tribes, who hate one another and unite in nothing else but in disliking one another until somebody else tries to govern them all, when they hate him more than they hate one another?
>I want to protest that no sooner shall we be installed as governors of the Arabs than, unless we draw government very mild, we shall be far more unpopular with them than ever the Turks were, whose yoke was light, although occasionally they came out with guns and swords to collect their taxes. I hope what I have said about the extreme advisability and absolute necessity of avoiding anything like what we call good government, and letting these people go on managing their own affairs, will be acted upon by the Government.
>>886683
>an Irishman will write himself down against the Government, wherever he is, and whatever the government.
Opinion discarded. Why does anyone take this bigoted fool seriously?
>>886724
Yeah, I just posted it because I thought it was interesting. It expresses some things to consider: that Turkish rule wasn't all that bad, that the borders of Iraq were somewhat arbitrary, that the Arabs weren't quite a unified nation.
>>886702
>bigot
Yeah that's not what that means.
>>886338
First off it is important to note that Sykes-Picot is just one part of a much wider series of negotiations; when people say "Sykes-Picot ruined the Middle-East" what they are talking about is really a mess of dozens of commissions and agreements.
"Would the Middle East be better?" is a meaningless question, but it would certainly be different if these developments did not take place. The idea of western imperialists inventing borders and shattering the 'ancient unity of the Arab/Muslim peoples is untrue. All of the states; Iraq, Egypt, Palestine etc had long histories of roughly defined territories, and more importantly of strong identities linked to provincial cities like Baghdad, or otherwise territorial like the Nile Valley in Egypt. Of all of them, Syria was perhaps the only word which carried with it no meaningful territorial character or identity.
However, it is true that the transition of the Middle East from being part of an Imperial Ottoman world to being a collection of 'independent' states, with suddenly much clearer rivalries and disunity, brought major challenges.
The existence of Israel is the most obvious fault-line created by the West in the Middle East, and for various reasons this produces permanent conflict. These new states also had to begin a rapid process of state-building, and developing national identities (which were the primary stated goals of the whole mandate system.) In some places this led to revolutionary secular nationalism (as in Egypt, Iraq) and elsewhere theocracy and political Islam (Yemen, Saudi Arabia.) These ideologies clashed with grave consequences in Yemen and Iran and in other places.
A look at the 1948 Arab-Israeli Conflict helps show how fractured the Arab world had become. A war in which all Arab states retained most of their military forces at home to guard against internal instability and Arab rival meddling, no military coordination, individual truces with Israel regardless of neighbor's wishes.
>>890769
Here are some of the important relevant documents besides Sykes-Picot;
The de Bunsen Committee Report
Husayn-Mcmahon Correspondance
Saint-Jean de Maurienne Agreement
The Balfour Declaration
The King-Crane Commission
The Termination of the British Protectorate in Egypt
The Treaty of Preferential Alliance with Egypt
Peel Commission
British Policy on Palestine 1939
The Future of the British Mandate 1945
The Case Against the Proposed Partition of Palestine 1945
The Treaty of Preferential Alliance with Iraq
Draft Treaty of Preferential Alliance and Accompanying Military Convention: France and Lebanon
de Gaulle-Lyttleton Agreement
Free French (Catroux) Proclamations
