Jack Malvern: T.E. Lawrence Drew Up Plans For Arabs
Lawrence of Arabia's vision for the Middle East has been revealed in a map he created after World War I.
T.E.Lawrence, the British colonel whose wartime collaboration with the Arabs against the Turks was immortalised in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, attempted to reward Britain's Arab allies by dividing territory between them.
His sympathy for the cause of Arab self-determination is well known, but the details contained in the map eluded historians because it was filed at Britain's archives under the wrong date.
The map shows his proposals for a state in northern Iraq similar to the one now being demanded by Kurdish separatists, and a large territory uniting what is now Syria, Jordan and parts of Saudi Arabia.
Lawrence, who encouraged the Arabs to rise up against their Turkish rulers, wanted to award territories to the sons of his ally, Sherif Hussein of Mecca. He was thwarted by a secret Anglo-French plan to carve up the Middle East. That plan awarded Syria and Lebanon to France, and Palestine, including modern-day Jordan, to Britain. The borders created by the imperial plan survive today largely intact.
It was a betrayal for Lawrence, who learned of the plan in 1916 but had to insist to his Arab allies that Britain would guarantee them self-determination.
Lawrence's biographer, Jeremy Wilson, said the British would not have been able to overturn the Anglo-French treaty even if they had wanted to.
"The French put their foot down," he said. "It was a signed agreement, so what could they do? The only people who could have done something was the United States ... but America didn't want to get involved."
Had Lawrence's plan been accepted, much of the anti-Western bitterness of Arab nationalism might have been avoided. There would have been no quasi-colonial rule over Syria and Jordan; a state between Iraq and Turkey might have become a homeland for the Kurds; and the Armenians might have found refuge in a state north of Syria.
T.E.Lawrence, the British colonel whose wartime collaboration with the Arabs against the Turks was immortalised in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, attempted to reward Britain's Arab allies by dividing territory between them.
His sympathy for the cause of Arab self-determination is well known, but the details contained in the map eluded historians because it was filed at Britain's archives under the wrong date.
The map shows his proposals for a state in northern Iraq similar to the one now being demanded by Kurdish separatists, and a large territory uniting what is now Syria, Jordan and parts of Saudi Arabia.
Lawrence, who encouraged the Arabs to rise up against their Turkish rulers, wanted to award territories to the sons of his ally, Sherif Hussein of Mecca. He was thwarted by a secret Anglo-French plan to carve up the Middle East. That plan awarded Syria and Lebanon to France, and Palestine, including modern-day Jordan, to Britain. The borders created by the imperial plan survive today largely intact.
It was a betrayal for Lawrence, who learned of the plan in 1916 but had to insist to his Arab allies that Britain would guarantee them self-determination.
Lawrence's biographer, Jeremy Wilson, said the British would not have been able to overturn the Anglo-French treaty even if they had wanted to.
"The French put their foot down," he said. "It was a signed agreement, so what could they do? The only people who could have done something was the United States ... but America didn't want to get involved."
Had Lawrence's plan been accepted, much of the anti-Western bitterness of Arab nationalism might have been avoided. There would have been no quasi-colonial rule over Syria and Jordan; a state between Iraq and Turkey might have become a homeland for the Kurds; and the Armenians might have found refuge in a state north of Syria.