British and French Imperial Policies in the Middle East

Scott Nicholas Stirling Curtin ID: 17559175
Scott Nicholas Stirling [Student No. 1755175]
Masters Dissertation
M a s t e r s D i s s e r t a t i o n
Compare and contrast the effect British imperial policies in Iraq and French imperial
policies in Syria have played in the instability of the Middle East region. Examine the
period 1900 to 1948 in order to investigate the influence of British and French imperial
energy policies and their consequences on peace and stability in the region.
Dissertation Title
A Mandate for the Profit: Imperial Policies in Mesopotamia and the Levant
Name: Scott Nicholas Stirling
School: School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts
Word Count: 16,424
Curtin University of Technology
I, Scott Stirling, declare that this dissertation is an account based on my own research, that all references consulted have
been cited correctly, and that it contains no work previously submitted for a degree at any tertiary educational institution. A
dissertation submitted in part fulfilment of the degree of Masters in International Relations & National Security on the 20th
May 2015
___________________________
I, Gavin Briggs, declare that this work is now ready for assessment on the 20th
May 2015
___________________________
Abstract
This thesis contends that the imperial policies of Britain in Iraq and France in Syria - including their exploitation of the
natural resources of the region and their division of Mesopotamia and the Levant into controllable and Western-styled
nation states - are very much to blame for much of the conflicts and instability in the Middle East. This thesis is a
postcolonial critique of imperial policies in the Middle East, and draws on a consequentialist platform for its moral
reasoning. It is therefore a critical theory and revisionist examination, drawing on the key critical theory concept of the
‘subaltern’ or oppressed.

Masters of International Relations and National Security Page | 2
Table of Contents
Masters Dissertation......................................................................................................................................1
Table of Contents................................................................................................................................2
A Mandate for the Profit ...........................................................................................................................3
Introduction..........................................................................................................................................3
1. British Mandate in Iraq: A Regional End Game ............................................................................11
1900-1920: The Sykes-Picot Arrangement and the San Remo Conference..........................12
1920-1922: The Great Iraqi Revolution and Air Policing ........................................................18
1922-1939: The Iraqi Petroleum Company and Quasi-Independence...................................25
1939-1948: The Needs of Great Wars and the Little Wars That Fund Them.........................31
2. French Mandate in Syria: Not to Be Left Out................................................................................35
1900-1919: The Old Imperial Prerogatives and the 1919 Revolts .........................................37
1920-1927: The Franco-Syrian Wars and the Warriors of the Druze.....................................41
1927-1938: The Partition to Divide and Control and the Broader Context .............................45
1938-1948: The Fall of France and the War Comes to Syria.................................................49
3. Geopolitical Ramifications: Comparisons and Results .................................................................52
‘Chomping at the Bit’: Subalterns Unify Against The Oppressor............................................52
Ramifications of Partitioning: Divide-and-Conquer Shows Motivations..................................54
Common Fall: Imperial Rule Collapses From Exhaustion, Not Ethics ...................................57
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................................60
Bibliography.................................................................................................................................................64
Author Surname: A - E............................................................................................................64
Author Surname: F - J.............................................................................................................71
Author Surname: K - O ...........................................................................................................76
Author Surname: P - T............................................................................................................83
Author Surname: U - Z............................................................................................................92

A MANDATE FOR THE PROFIT
IMPERIAL POLICIES IN MESOPOTAMIA AND THE LEVANT
“By the fall of 1918, it was clear that a nation's prosperity, even its very survival,
depended on securing a safe, abundant supply of cheap oil.” - Albert Marrin, Black
Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives1
“Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free.
Oil is a resource that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts. People from
poor countries go around thinking: God, if only we had oil!” - Ryszard Kapuściński,
Shah of Shahs2
Introduction
The Islamist group known as Islamic State (referred to hereafter as ‘IS’) - formerly
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Greater Syria), Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant, originally Al-Qaeda in Iraq and more recently referred to by its Arabic
acronym ‘Daesh’ - have within a period of two to three years occupied a vast
territory across Syria and Iraq, playing a dominant role in the current civil war in
Syria and a destabilising role in Iraq. Their statements of intent, achievements over
such a short period of time, and ability to move across national borders with ease
making those same borders all but irrelevant, have caused many writers to revise
and revisit the long history of Western foreign policy in the Middle East and the
events that shaped the region’s current cartography. Specifically, IS seems to have
set its sights on one particular event, that of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and
preceding Mandate era, as its main source of purpose. This scenario begs the
question which this thesis will attempt to answer; to what extent have British and
1
Marrin, A. (2012). Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives. New York, New York: Random House, Inc.
2
Kapuściński, R. (1982). Shah of Shahs. London, England: Quartet Books Limited.

French imperial legacies played a destabilising, divisive role in the geopolitical
structure of modern-day Middle East nation-states? In addition, can British and
French energy and economic security policies be clearly shown as their dominating
motivations for such interventions? To answer these questions, this thesis will
investigate first British energy and economic security and foreign policy in Iraq and
second French energy and economic security and foreign policy in Syria. The
period being investigated will begin in 1900 when the allied powers first began
discussing the future of the Middle East post-Ottoman rule, and end in 1948 with
the establishment of the State of Israel and end of the British Empire. The period is
referred to broadly as the Mandate period, the League of Nations-sanctioned ‘right’
given to Britain and France to manage areas previously controlled by the Ottoman
Empire before their fall in 1918, and ‘differed only in name from other colonial
possessions.’3
Here it is important to clarify some details about terminology used, dates
investigated and the broader ‘scope’ of this thesis. Officially the British Mandate in
Iraq ended in 19324
, and the French Mandate in Syria officially began in 1923 and
had a phased end between 1943 and 1946.5
The period to be investigated extends
back to 1900 and continues through to 1948 for several reasons. Firstly, two of the
most fundamental and formative events, the Sykes-Picot arrangement and the
McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, occur before 1918. Both are central to the
argument of this thesis that energy and economic security concerns of the British
and French empires were put ahead of the right to self-determination. Additionally,
despite 1945 marking the end of the Second World War, 1948 marked the creation
of the State of Israel and the end of the British Empire, two essential components
in the influence of Western powers over the structure of the Middle East and
defining geopolitical events that signified a new chapter in Middle East history. As
3
Callahan, M.D. (2004). A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations and Africa, 1929-1946. Portland, Oregon: Sussex Academic
Press. Pg 2.
4
Rassam, S. (2005). Christianity in Iraq: Its Origins and Development to the Present Day. Herefordshire, England:
Gracewing. Pg 133-4; McBeth, B.S. (2013). British Oil Policy 1919-1939. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 84.
5
Moubayed, S.M. (2006). Steel & Silk: Men and Women who Shaped Syria 1900-2000. Seattle, Washington: Cune Press.
Pg 417.

such, the period 1900 to 1948 gives the most appropriate date range suiting the
intended scope for this thesis.
It is important to note that despite the official British Mandate in Iraq ending more
than 15 years before the research period ends, post-1932 Iraq was independent in
name only, with unofficial British control extending well beyond this date.6
It is also
important to clarify that when referring to ‘Iraq’ and ‘Syria’ it is clear that during this
period whilst the British Mandate of Iraq lines up closely with what we would know
as modern day Iraq, ‘Syria’ during this period quite often referred to by scholars as
including Lebanon as well. Lebanon did not achieve independence from Syria
proper until 1936, and did not become independent from the French Mandate until
1946, after numerous constitutional suspensions.7
Additionally, much of the French
policy in Syria centred on carving the land into controllable parts, with Lebanon
being an important part of their puzzle. Thus ‘Syria’ will hereafter refer to modern
day Syria and Lebanon.
This thesis will argue that the imperial policies of Britain in Iraq and France in Syria
- including their exploitation of the natural resources of the region and their division
of ‘Greater Syria’ into controllable, Western-styled nation-states – are key
contributors to regional instability in that era of Middle East history. By comparing
and contrasting the differing policies, interests and motivations of the two imperial
powers, it will be argued that the Great War delivered to the ‘Allies’ a clear
understanding that oil was the future of economic growth and expansion. More
importantly was the knowledge, beginning as early as 1908, that oil’s greatest
source was to be found in the ‘fertile crescent’ of the Middle East, known then as
either Greater Syria or the Levant (modern day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine
and Jordan), and Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq and Southern Turkey). In order to
6
Haj, S. (1997). The Making of Iraq, 1900-1963: Capital, Power, and Ideology. Albany, New York: State University of New
York Press. Pg 82; Salamey, I. (2014). The Government and Politics of Lebanon. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 36.
7
Arfi, B. (2005). International Change and the Stability of Multiethnic States: Yugoslavia, Lebanon, and Crises of
Governance. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Pg 189; Brown, N.J. (2002). Constitutions in a
Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountability. Albany, New York: State University of New
York Press. Pg 71; El-Husseini, R. (2012). Pax Syriana: Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse
University Press. Pg 7-8.

focus attention on the specific policies of these two ‘great powers’ in these two
specific regions, certain pieces of the puzzle fall outside the scope of this
dissertation. Whilst an important source of oil and most certainly part of British and
French imperial concerns, the Arabian Peninsula and its politics will not be directly
addressed. In the same manner and for the same reason, the foreign policies
conducted by the United States of America and Soviet Union, whilst playing an
important role in destabilising in the region, will also fall outside of both the content
and timeline of this project. The (1) role of the Cold War superpowers and the
geopolitical impact of the Middle East becoming a pawn in their proxy war, (2) the
defence and financial assistance provided and (3) the effect of that on the stability
of the region will be topics for future research.
In investigating the legacy of imperial energy and economic security policies in Iraq
and Syria, and in attributing much of the blame for regional instability to these
interventions, this thesis is a postcolonial critique of British and French foreign
policy. As such it joins a broader postmodern and critical theory examination of
‘Western influence’ in the Middle East, and will thus take a revisionist view of the
period’s history. To this end, the key concept of ‘subaltern’ communities and
societies, a term derived straight from critical theory, will feature prominently. The
term describes a person or group of people deprived of their ‘agency’ within
society8
, and will be used to explain the bitterness, betrayal and control felt by
Arabs during the Mandate period.9
After 400 years of Ottoman rule, it will be
argued that whilst overtures in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence promised
self-determination and independence, the energy and economic interests of Britain
and France were put above the Arabs. It will be argued that imperial rule and
influence - despite wearing several different systems to mask said influence -
8
Reinelt, J.G. & Roach, J.R. (2007). Critical Theory and Performance. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Pg 68; Mignolo, W.D. (2000}. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Pg 196; Barker, F., Hulme, P. & Iverson, M. (1994). Colonial Discourse/
Postcolonial Theory. New York, New York: Manchester University Press. Pg 138.
9
Worley, R. (2012). Orchestrating the Instruments of Power. Raleigh, South Carolina: Lulu Press Inc. Pg 139; Page, M.E. &
Sonnenburg, P.M. (2003). Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia. A-M. Vol. 1. Santa
Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc. Pg 905; Friedman, I. (2010). British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915-1922. New Brunswick, New
Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Pg 31.

created a region of subalterns. This rejection of Arab independence and betrayal
stemmed from the conflict between two plans for the Middle East. The first is found
in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondences, with promises which convinced the
Arabs to go to war and die in battle against the Ottoman Empire. The second was
a deal made in secret for oil and influence, called the Sykes-Picot arrangement,
whereby the British government, in consultation with the French and Russians,
carved up land that did not belong to them for the benefit of the royal tables of
Europe. Much evidence will be brought to bear to outline how this decision to
renege on the agreement - found mainly in the McMahon–Hussein
Correspondence which Hussein believed to be binding10
- and to ‘plunder’ the
Middle East, fuelled regional instability.
The link between the opening remarks about IS and the British and French imperial
policies during the period researched may seem stretched, but the relationship is
clearly demonstrated in a sermon delivered by the head of IS, Abu Bakr al
Baghdadi, at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul;
This blessed advance will not stop until we hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes-
Picot conspiracy.
11
To understand this connection it is crucially important to turn to the work of J.A.
Turner, who explains modern day Middle East history as four overlapping but still
distinct ‘eras’; the Ottoman, Colonial, Cold War and US periods, with the Colonial
era being the focus of this thesis.12
Of note also is the work of Hobson, who in
Imperialism: A Study, attempts to define the difference between the terms
10
Abu-Lebdeh, H.S. (1997). Conflict and Peace in the Middle East: National Perceptions and United States-Jordan
Relations. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. Pg 44; Kantowicz, E.R. (1999). The Rage of Nations. Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Pg 202; Quandt, W.B., Jabber, P. & Lesch, A.M. (1973). The Politics of
Palestinian Nationalism. Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. Pg 8-9.
11
Shankar, V. (10 November 2014). Of Lawrence, Sykes-Picot and al-Baghdadi. Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.
Retrieved February 2015, available from http://goo.gl/Jb1vXS; Tharoor, I. (30 June 2014). The new Islamic caliphate and its
war against history. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 2015, available from http://goo.gl/C9dK0L; Jones, S.G.
(2014). A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of Al Qa'ida and Other Salafi Jihadists. Santa Monica, California: RAND
Corporation. Pg 16; Ruthven, M. (25 June 2014). The Map ISIS Hates. The New York Review. Retrieved February 2015,
available from http://goo.gl/x2FYvJ; Russell , M. (2014). The Middle East and South Asia 2014: The World Today Series.
Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 88; Grossman, M. & Henderson, S. (22 October 2014).
Lessons From Versailles for Today’s Middle East. YaleGlobal Online, Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International
and Area Studies, Yale University. Retrieved February 2015, available from http://goo.gl/drISxd
12
Turner, J.A. (2014). Religious Ideology and the Roots of the Global Jihad: Salafi Jihadism and International Order. New
York, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, St Martin’s Press, LLC. Pg 146.

‘colonialism’ and ‘imperialism’. Hobson sees colonialism as a ‘natural overflow of
nationality’13
, such as the Australian example, which has been a colony of British
people in another land for hundreds of years. Hobson defines imperialism as
dominance of one powerful nation over another for the benefit of the more
powerful.14
Others define ‘land-grabbing’ imperial policies as stemming from
‘extractive’15
or ‘mercantile’16
imperialism. This thesis will use Hobson’s term
‘imperial’ whenever possible - without changing pre-existing terms or quotes from
authors who use the word ‘colonial’ - as it most accurately addresses the type of
relationship both Britain and France had with Iraq and Syria respectively, and
Turner’s Colonial era.
Views such as the Marxist/Leninist school of thought that imperialism ‘dominance
of finance capital’, the final ‘parasitic’ evolutionary stage of capitalism, is
understood as an opposing view to the above definitions, but will not form part of
the argument in this thesis.17
The below extract outlines an additional legitimate
type of imperialism, as in Cain and Harrison;
The word ‘imperialism’ dates from the end of the nineteenth century and minimally
connotes the use of state power to secure (or, at least, to attempt to secure) economic
monopolies for national companies... it is apparent that later use of the term has not
been too respectful of Marxist technicalities.
18
One might call the above a ‘commercial’ of ‘monopolistic’ imperialism, and this
interpretation of the Marxist treatise on imperialism is very relevant to the research
question. Thus all of the four above understandings of imperialism - extractive,
exploitative, mercantile or commercial - fall within the scope and argument of this
thesis, and will be used later to help contrast motivations between the two imperial
powers. The idea that both Britain and France were extending their influence into
13
Hobson, J.A. (2005). Imperialism: A Study. New York, New York: Cosimo. Pg 7-8.
14
Miéville, C. (2005). Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke
Brill NV. Pg 226.
15
Petras, J. & Veltmeyer, H. (2014). Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism's New Frontier. Leiden, The
Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 130.
16
Screpanti, E. (2014). Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis: The Uncertain Future of Capitalism. New York, New York:
Monthly Review Press. Pg 42.
17
Lenin, V.I. (1966). Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings. [Editor : Christman, H.M.]. New
York, New York: Bantam Books, Inc. Pg 177.
18
Cain, P.J. & Harrison, M. (2001). Imperialism: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, Volume 3. New York, New York:
Routledge. Pg 352.

the Middle East motivated by their imperial interests is one of the core arguments
put forward by this thesis, and it will be argued that the Mandate system was
merely political cover for extractive, exploitative, mercantile and commercial
interests. British and French attempts to gain political control over foreign nations
in order to secure a monopoly over contracts for the extraction of oil and
dominance in the international silk, cotton and tobacco markets, represented an
existential threat to early 20th
century Arab freedom in the Middle East, and played
a destabilising role in the region’s history.
This thesis will use Turner’s understanding of the eras of history in the Middle East,
and outline how the foreign energy and economic security policies of the British
and French have played their role in destabilising the region through the ‘Colonial’
era. It is true that the Ottoman rule oppressed Arab freedom through 400 years of
empire. It is equally as it is true that the Cold War period split the region in two
geopolitical spheres, and that US foreign policy interventions of the last 20 years
have contributed to a now global jihadist movement. And whilst these times and
factors fall outside the scope of this thesis, this thesis contents, as Turner does,
that all periods share varying responsibility for regional instability. This thesis will,
however, only address the effect of the colonial or Mandate period as a
postcolonial critique, and compare British actions and intentions in Iraq with French
actions and intentions in Syria.
The energy and economic interests of Britain and France in Middle Eastern stores
of resources will be proven the one of the main motivations for the British and
French imperial policy of control and intervention through Mandate. This will be
explained in depth largely by the changing energy and economic security context
of the years 1908-1920; a period in which the politics of the Middle East ceased to
be a region characterised by large investments, and became a hotbed of
competition for the new, ‘black-gold standard’ of geopolitical and strategic
dominance. This energy and economic interests of the two Empires led to the
political betrayal of the Arabs through the Sykes-Picot arrangement. The social

upheaval of the partitioning that would occur throughout the Mandate period
poured fuel on the fire, contributing to regional instability. This thesis will argue that
through the Imperial Policies in Mesopotamia and the Levant, Britain and France
operate a Mandate for the Profit.

1. British Mandate in Iraq: A Regional End Game
“The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.” - Barack H.
Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance19
The influence of the British Empire in Iraq between 1900 and 1948 demonstrably
contributed to regional instability. Whilst the promise espoused in the McMahon-
Hussein Correspondence allowed Arab nationalists to set up a completely
independent and sovereign government, ultimately these higher ideals were
subject to the realpolitik of energy and economic security, and to the requirements
of great war. The needs of the British Empire to (1) secure Mesopotamian oil fields,
(2) safe transportation routes through the region, (3) port access at Haifa, Palestine
to the Mediterranean and through Basra, Iraq to the Persian Gulf, and (4) the
geopolitical security of the eastern plains to India, far outweighed the needs or
ambitions of the local population. As a pawn in a much larger game, Iraq’s
significance and value would increase across the research period as oil became
more and more important to British national security. Under the League of Nations
Mandate system, the British Empire exerted both hard and soft power20
influence
across the research period 1900-194821
, relinquishing direct control in 1932 and
opting for using a combination of violence and manipulation to achieve their ends.22
As a direct result of British troops on the ground in Iraq, instability erupted into a full
blown insurgency, known now as the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920, which was
19
Obama, B.H. (1995). Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York, New York: Crown Publishing
Group, Random House, Inc.
20
Nye, J.S. (2004). Soft Power: The Means To Success in World Politics. PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group.
21
Collier, P.H. (2010). World War II: The Mediterranean 1940-1945. New York, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.
Pg 14; Tucker, S.C. (2010). The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars: The United States in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and
Iraq Conflicts. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 768.
22
Etheredge, L. (2011). Middle East Region in Transition: Iraq. New York, New York: Britannica Educational Publishing. Pg
124-5; Russell, M. (2014). The Middle East and South Asia: The World Today Series. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishing. Pg 77; Lowi, M.R. (2009). Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics: Algeria Compared. New York, New
York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 149.

fuelled by the issuing of a fatwa against support for the British occupation.23
The
British-controlled Turkish Petroleum Company, later the Iraqi Petroleum Company,
secured 75 year oil concession contracts24
through the British government-installed
puppet leaders taken mainly from the Sunnis of Baghdad and Mosul, a policy that
combined with the ‘scapegoating’ of the Shi’a, increased sectarian divisions.25
After
six military coups a seventh Axis-supported coup in 1941 led to the re-invasion of
Iraq by British forces in 1941.26
What became increasingly clear during the
research period was that the British were willing to take the pain internal instability
and sectarian violence brought, knowing that there was much to gain, literally just
below the surface.
1900-1920: The Sykes-Picot Arrangement and the San Remo Conference
Central to the argument of this thesis is that there were two competing plans for the
future of the Middle East. The first was that found in the McMahon-Hussein
Correspondence, where the British Government promised an independent Arabia
under the control of the Sharif of Mecca and his sons.27
Even putting aside the
McMahon-Hussein correspondences between 1915 and 1916, Quandt, Jabber and
Lesch make it clear that there were several different indications of support from the
British for an independent Arabia;
Concrete promises to let the Arabs decide their own political destiny were contained in
the British declaration to Syrian Arab spokesman in 1918, the British army’s recruiting
campaign in Palestine that year, the Anglo-French declaration to the peoples of Syria
23
Phillips, D.L. (2015. The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction
Publishers. Pg 15; Nance, M.W. (2015). The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-
2014. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 23; Ajami, F. (1986). The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr
and the Shia of Lebanon. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Pg 37-8.
24
Askari, H. (2013). Collaborative Colonialism: The Political Economy of Oil in the Persian Gulf. New York, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 34; Zedalis, R.J. (2009). The Legal Dimensions of Oil and Gas in Iraq: Current
Reality and Future Prospects. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 264.
25
Rajan, V.G.J. (2015). Al Qaeda’s Global Crisis: The Islamic State, Takfir and the Genocide of Muslims. New York, New
York: Routledge. Pg 58; Boon, K.E., Huq, A. & Lovelace, D.C. (2010). Assessing the GWOT: Terrorism Commentary on
Security Documents. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Pg 186.
26
Thomas, B. (1999). How Israel was Won: A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington
Books. Pg 150; Buttsworth, S. & Abbenhuis, M.M. (2010). Monsters in the Mirror: Representations of Nazism in Post-war
Popular Culture. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 158.
27
Grief, H. (2008). The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International Law: A Treatise on Jewish Sovereignty
Over the Land of Israel. Jerusalem, Israel: Mazo Publishers. Pg 330-6; Tucker, S.C. & Roberts, P. (2008). The Encyclopedia
of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History [4 volumes]: A Political, Social, and Military History. Santa
Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 671; Harmon, C.C. & Tucker, D. (1994). Statecraft and Power: Essays in Honor of
Harold W. Rood. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. Pg 96; Baxter, K. & Akbarzadeh, S. (2008). US
Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Roots of Anti-Americanism. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 13.

and Mesopotamia of November 1918, and the terms of reference of the Paris Peace
Conference’s special commission appointed in the spring of 1919.
28
The British government was in no uncertain terms promising an independent
Arabia, although there is much disagreement on what boundaries that independent
state would have; disagreement found no more violent than on the question of
Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, cited in Boehling & Larkey and others.29
Furthermore, Ulrishsen claims the very fact that the McMahon correspondence had
the effect of convincing the Sharif of Mecca and his sons Faisal and Abdullah to
join the British against the Ottomans should be evidence enough that the Sharif
was under the impression that a deal had been made.30
Craig argues that it is
important to remember the other side of the coin - the hatred the Arabs held for the
Ottomans - as a factor in their decision making.31
Ozoglu maintains that
dissatisfaction with centralised governance and a move away from Mecca as a
power base led Faisal to find the ideology of Arab nationalism, ‘instigated by the
British’ to be an effective way of ‘eliminating the threat to their traditional authority
over Arab society.’32
However, the presence of T.E. Lawrence, acting as military
liaison to the Arab Bedouins and nationalists under the protection of Hussein33
,
further shows the extent of the alliance for mutual benefit. DeFronzo, Yamani and
Wynbrandt outline that a combination of support from Hussein in the Levant and
Mesopotamia, and Arabian rival al-Saud in Persian Gulf, would assist the British in
cutting off the Ottomans supply lines and pressuring the Ottomans from the south
28
Quandt, W.B., Jabber, P. & Lesch, A.M. (1973). The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism. Berkeley, California: University of
California Press. Pg 9.
29
Boehling, R. & Larkey, U. (2011). Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust: A Jewish Family's Untold Story.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 290; Harmon, C.C. & Tucker, D. (1994). Statecraft and Power: Essays
in Honor of Harold W. Rood. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. Pg 96; Stockman-Shomron, I. (1984).
Israel, the Middle East, and the Great Powers. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Pg 177-8.
30
Ulrichsen, K.C. (2014). The First World War in the Middle East. London, England: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Pg 155;
Cavendish, M. (2006). World and Its Peoples: Middle East, Western Asia, and Northern Africa. Singapore: Marshall
Cavendish Corporation. Pg 824.
31
Craig, J.S. (2005). Peculiar Liaisons: In War, Espionage, and Terrorism in the Twentieth Century. New York, New York:
Algora Publishing. Pg 81.
32
Ozoglu, H. (2004). Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting
Boundaries. Albany, New York: State University of New York. Pg 12.
33
Del Testa, D.W. (2013). Government Leaders, Military Rulers and Political Activists. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg
106; Thackeray, F.W. & Findling, J.E. (2012). Events That Formed the Modern World. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO,
LLC. Pg 49.

as well as with a revolt from within.34
This is more than enough evidence to
convince this author that (1) a deal was made, and (2) that both sides would
benefit substantially.
The second plan for the Middle East was that espoused in the Sykes-Picot
arrangement, referenced in a July 2014 sermon by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr
al Baghdadi as the ‘Sykes-Picot conspiracy’ and the supposed end game of IS.
Karber frankly describes the agreement as two ‘Catholic aristocrats slicing up a
Muslim, Arab world for oil’. He argues that the Arabs were outraged at the
‘cartographic conniving’ that was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, giving ‘Britain the
mandates for Palestine and oil-rich Iraq, and France the mandate for Lebanon and
Syria.’35
Key to this thesis is the effect of the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the people
of the region. According to critical theory, the actions of the imperial powers
removed the agency of the Arabs, making them subalterns36
, with ‘the clash of
unequal cultures under colonialism and the dominance of colonial modernity.’37
The ‘Orientalism’38
of this perspective is the subject of key author Edward Said’s
critical study Orientalism, where he pioneers a controversial postcolonial critique of
European attitudes towards the Middle East, Asia and Africa as patronising and
false, a view supporting this thesis’ anti-Western argument.39
In an interesting side
note, Spivak outlines a ‘double colonisation’ suffered by women under both
imperial control and patriarchal ideology.40
More broadly, Baxter and Akbarzadeh
34
DeFronzo, J. (2010). The Iraq War: Origins and Consequences. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Westview Press, Perseus
Books Group. Pg 11; Yamani, M. (2006). Cradle of Islam: The Hijaz and the Quest for an Arabian Identity. New York, New
York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 7; Wynbrandt, J. (2004). A Brief History of Saudi
Arabia. New York, New York: Facts on File, InfoBase Publishing. Pg 177.
35
Karber, P. (2012). Fear and Faith in Paradise: Exploring Conflict and Religion in the Middle East. Lanham, Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Pg 152.
36
Hawley, J.C. (2001). Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood
Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 106.
37
Ludden, D. (2002). Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia.
London, England: Anthem Press, Wimbledon Publishing Company. Pg 19.
38
Said, E.W. (1980). Islam Through Western Eyes. The Nation. Pg 488-492; Said, E.W. (1979). Islam, Orientalism and the
West: An Attack on Learned Ignorance. Time Magazine. Pg 54.
39
Howe, S. (7 November 2008). Dangerous mind? Stephen Howe chases the storm of controversy surrounding the ideas of
Edward Said. The New Humanist. Retrieved May 2015, available from https://goo.gl/Nqb1o6; Ashcroft, B. & Griffiths, G.
(1995). “Orientalism” The Post-Colonial Reader. London, England: Routledge. Pg 87-91; Dutton, M. & Williams, P. (1993).
Translating Theories: Edward Said on Orientalism, Imperialism and Alterity. Southern Review: Literary and Interdisciplinary
Essays, Vol. 26(3). Pg 314-357.
40
Nelson, C. & Grossberg, L. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana,
Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Pg 271-281; Morton, S. (2007). The Subaltern: Genealogy of a Concept in Ethics,

describe removal of agency and creation of subalternity41
as the dominance of
foreign interests over the domestic, centred in 1916 agreement;
The agreement carved up the Middle East on the basis of the economic and geo-
strategic interests of France and the United Kingdom. The two colonial powers sought
to assure their maritime access to and political dominion of the areas of the Middle
East already under their influence. The Sykes-Picot Agreement is usually understood
by pro-Arab historians as a contradiction of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Husayn-
McMahon Correspondence, which at minimum provided a generalised endorsement of
Arab self-determination.
42
The key phrase there for this thesis and the scope it is addressing is in fact
‘generalised endorsement of Arab self-determination’. The sheer volume of
different interpretations of what particular areas were, and were not, included by
McMahon in his agreement with Sharif Hussein of Mecca are irrelevant to the most
fundamental and plain text reading of the agreement. The central promise was that
the Arab nationalists would be given post-war independence in exchange for
military support against the Ottoman Empire.43
Accordingly, between 1918 and
1921 after having defeated the Ottomans - with the assistance of the British
Foreign Office embedded Officer T.E. Lawrence operating on the above
understanding - an Arab government and administration began to form with the
Hashemite Faisal I as its King.44
Shapira describes these years as the ‘pivotal
years in shaping the nature of political relations with the British and the Arabs’,
years that saw ‘bitter disappointment’ turn into an ‘upsurge in national feeling and
its militant expression.’45
The aforementioned bitter disappointment was felt no
more than in 1920, when the new government in Damascus officially declared the
Subalternity and the Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Malden, Massachusetts: Polity. Pg 96-97; Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. &
Tiffin, H. (1995). The Post-colonial Studies Reader. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 234-5.
41
Merriam-Webster: noun, sub·al·ter·ni·ty ˌsəˌbolˈtərnətē, -bal-, the quality, state, or position of being subaltern. See also
Merriam-Webster: adjective, sub·al·tern sə- bo l-tərn, a person holding a subordinate position.
42
Baxter, K. & Akbarzadeh, S. (2008). Pg 13-4.
43
Tucker, S.C., Wood, L.M. & Murphy, J.D. (1999). The European Powers in the First World War: An Encyclopedia.
Abingdon, England: Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 677; Gettleman, M.E. & Schaar, S. (2003). The Middle East and Islamic
World Reader. New York, New York: Grove Press. Pg 116; Wagner, H.L. (2004). The Division of the Middle East: The Treaty
of Sèvres. New York, New York: Chelsea House Publishers. Pg 33.
44
Ulrichsen, K.C. (2014). The First World War in the Middle East. London, England: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Pg 186;
Pateman, J. (2012). T.E. Lawrence in Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire, England: The Pateran Press. Pg 7; Zeine, Z.N. (1977).
Struggle for Arab Independence: Western Diplomacy and the Rise and Fall of Faisal's Kingdom in Syria. Delmar, New York:
Caravan Books. Pg 118-9.
45
Shapira, A. (1992). Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948. Stanford, California: Stanford University
Press. Pg 85.

independence of the Levant and Mesopotamia. The Sykes-Picot agreement then
swung into full military force, with Britain and France ‘awarded’ Mandates six
weeks later, splitting the area and engaging locals militarily;
Faysal was forcibly ejected from Damascus by the French, and the British spent ₤40
million suppressing an open rebellion in Iraq. In Mecca, the stunned Sharif Hussein
realised the extent of the betrayal. “I listened to the faithless Englishmen.”
46
Anghie contends that on paper, the Mandate system itself was built on the premise
that inchoate states were not mature enough to rule themselves, requiring ‘nursing’
as they were ‘deficient in power’.47
However by setting up government in
Damascus in such a short period of time, and doing so in accordance to the
understandings held within the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, the Arabs
showed the capacity to administer their land domestically and operate
internationally; this negates the validity of the core mission of the Mandates as
control by great powers ‘until they [the Arabs] can rule themselves’. Stahn, Korman
and Claude argue that instead of supporting the development of young nations, it is
clear that the mandate system ‘served as a surrogate of conquest, because it
granted the victorious powers the substance of control over the newly acquired
territories.’48
46
Teller, M. (2002). The Rough Guide to Jordan. London, England: Rough Guides Publishers. Pg 386-7.
47
Anghie, A. (2004). Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. New York, New York: Cambridge
University Press. Pg 119.
48
Stahn, C. (2008). The Law and Practice of International Territorial Administration: Versailles to Iraq and Beyond. New
York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 75; Korman, S. (1996). The Right of Conquest : The Acquisition of Territory
by Force in International Law and Practice. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 143; Claude, I.L. (1964). Swords
Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill. Pg 323.

Cartoon published in 1907 depicts the Arab perspective on the Sykes-Picot arrangements
The 1920 San Remo Conference proved the ‘consolidation of this scheme’49
,
providing the League of Nations approval necessary for the creation of the
geostrategic groundwork required to support the restructured ownership of the
Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC). This Company was 50% owned by British
Petroleum (BP), 22.5% Royal Dutch Shell and 25% of which was given to France
in exchange for British control of Mosul.50
But as Hunt eludes to in The History of
Iraq, the San Remo Conference and the fulfilment of the Sykes-Picot Agreement
49
Maugeri, L. (2006). The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and Future of the World's Most Controversial Resource.
Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 27.
50
Vassiliou, V.S. (2009). The A to Z of the Petroleum Industry. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., Rowman &
Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 275; Atasoy, Y. (2005). Turkey, Islamists and Democracy: Transition and Globalization in
a Muslim State. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 41; Amineh, M.P.
(2007). The Greater Middle East in Global Politics: Social Science Perspectives on the Changing Geography of the World
Politics. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 30; Fry, M.G., Goldstein, E. & Langhorne, R. (2002). Guide to
International Relations and Diplomacy. New York, New York: Continuum Social Science. Pg 199; Kibaroğlu, M. & Kibaroğlu,
A. (2009). Global Security Watch--Turkey: A Reference Handbook. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood
Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 21.

would have a lasting influence on the region’s stability due to the arbitrary nature of
the boundaries and their geostrategic effects on the ground;
As part of the agreement at San Remo, new national and regional borders were drawn
for each mandate. These essentially amounted to straight lines drawn on the Middle
East map, with little consideration or interest in traditional boundaries of local realities.
The new borders crisscrossed the desert and divided local tribes and clans as well as
inadvertently placing rival tribes under the same mandate. These arbitrarily drawn
borders caused strife throughout the Middle East but were particularly disastrous for
Iraq.
51
1920-1922: The Great Iraqi Revolution and Air Policing
The result of the Sykes-Picot betrayal was felt on the ground immediately. Faisal
and his new Syrian government in Damascus now faced the sharp end of Sykes-
Picot, and their ‘scepticism turned to fear and outrage in late October 1919 as
British troops withdrew from the Syrian interior’52
, leaving Faisal to defend his
independent Arabia alone.53
The French disembarked in Beirut in late 191954
where they took over from British troops, invading Syria and defeating Faisal at the
Battle of Maysaloun by July 24th
192055
which sent Faisal into exile in Britain.56
British priorities had changed, and they now chose to refocus their attention on
control of the southern region of Transjordan - west of the Hijaz Railway - a move
which Heydemann and Kent write was partially to shore up the southern Arabian
region against French encroachment, but mostly to secure important lines of
communication between Iraq and the Suez Canal base of operations.57
Schubert
and Kraus make the argument that the construction of the port and oil refineries at
51
Hunt, C. (2005). The History of Iraq. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 61.
52
Khoury, P.S. (1983). Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860-1920. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press. Pg 89.
53
Hakim, C. (2013). The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea, 1840-1920. London, England: University of California Press.
Pg 251-3; Sluglett, P. & Weber, S. (2010). Syria and Bilad Al-Sham Under Ottoman Rule: Essays in Honour of Abdul Karim
Rafeq. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 588.
54
Beinin, J. (2001). Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pg 82.
55
Tabar, P. (2010). Politics, Culture and the Lebanese Diaspora. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing. Pg 234.
56
Chamberlain, M.E. (2013). Longman Companion to European Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century. New York, New
York: Routledge. Pg 131; Smith, E. (2013). The Alec Guinness Handbook - Everything you need to know about Alec
Guinness. Brisbane, Australia: Emereo Publishing. Pg 185; Taylor, N.W. (2013). The Tapestry of Israel. Bloomington,
Indiana: AuthorHouse UK Ltd. Pg 98.
57
Heydemann, S. (2000). War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East. Berkeley, California: University of
California Press. Pg 50; Kent, M, (2013). Moguls and Mandarins: Oil, Imperialism and the Middle East in British Foreign
Policy 1900-1940. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 25.

Haifa58
and the Transjordan mandate worked together to secure the region as a
‘transport state’ for Mesopotamian oil, projecting power over Egypt as the
geostrategic foundation of a broader campaign for a monopoly over the Suez.59
Given the above overarching British ‘master plan’ for the region, the nature of the
Sykes-Picot deal and the international rubber-stamp of support from the League of
Nations, Grainger writes that the outcome was decided long before it was actioned;
The constitutional [independent] system, monarchy or not, would have involved Britain
and France abandoning their normal imperialistic attitudes, and breaking their
promises to each other in favour of an untried ruler in a devastated country. Faisal
never stood a chance of holding onto a Syrian kingdom, certainly not once Britain and
France decided that their imperial interests demanded that they gain control of parts of
his land for themselves.
60
The San Remo Conference put the region into French control in the north and
British control in the south, eventually including British support for an al-Saud
government in the Arabia peninsula - another promised made during the war -
which would lead to Sharif Hussein’s forced exile from Mecca in 1924.61
A plain
text reading of the actions of the two allied powers may assign blame squarely on
the decisions of persons or characters of the time. However it is useful to examine
these events from the perspective of a realist. Zedalis proposes that the actions of
states are their attempt to accurately ascertain the interests and motivations of
competing players for a region’s wealth, and provide the necessary resources to
counter or rebalance the equation.62
Hadfield-Amkhan further suggest that in the
‘realist paradigm’, states are driven by the ‘imperatives of rational power’ and the
‘cold rules of statecraft’.63
The realist perspective assists in understanding that in
the beyond players and people there existed a cold but rational philosophy of
58
El-Hasan, H.A. (2010). Israel Or Palestine? Is the Two-state Solution Already Dead?: A Political and Military History of the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. New York, New York: Algora Publishing. Pg 137-8.
59
Schubert, F.N. & Kraus, T.L. (1995). The Whirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations Desert Shield and Desert
Storm. Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, The Government Printing Office. Pg 5.
60
Grainger, J.D. (2013). The Battle for Syria, 1918-1920. Suffolk, England: Boydell Press, Boydell & Brewer Ltd. Pg 236.
61
Bowen, W.H. (2015). The History of Saudi Arabia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 174; Campo, J.E.
(2009). Encyclopedia of Islam. New York, New York: Facts on File, Inc., InfoBase Publishing. Pg 468.
62
Zedalis, R.J. (2012). Oil and Gas in the Disputed Kurdish Territories: Jurisprudence, Regional Minorities and Natural
Resources in a Federal System. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 9.
63
Hadfield-Amkhan, A. (2010). British Foreign Policy, National Identity, and Neoclassical Realism. Lanham, Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Pg 101.

international relations by which the actions of the British and French make perfect
sense. Beyond the obvious international relations theories, San Remo also had
immediate impact in Iraq on the ground. Two months after the 1920 Conference in
Italy, the streets of Iraq were seething with anger towards British rule, and Tripp
writes that authorities reacted forcefully to demonstrations with heavy security
forces and intelligence services but were not able to prevent the spread of dissent;
The rebellion was developing its own momentum outside Baghdad. As early as May
1920 the sheikhs of some of the major tribes of the mid-Euphrates had discussed the
possibility of acting against the British occupying forces.
64
Central to the problems faced by the new nation and its imperial masters was the
nation’s very design. Çetinsaya describes the British Mandate agreed to at San
Remo - formalised in 1921 - was made up of the three Ottoman vilayets or
provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.65
This created a nation with a diverse
ethnic and religious demographic most clearly seen along Sunni/Shi’a lines; Basra
a primarily Shi’a Arab province, Baghdad primarily Sunni Arab and Mosul primarily
Sunni Kurd.66
Additionally land and taxation policies, instituted in the immediately
aftermath of San Remo by the British, ignited class divisions where private
ownership now succeeded over the tradition of communal land use and cultivation,
as suggested by Ayubi and Lukitz.67
DeFronzo explains ‘this explosive British
agricultural policy provoked class conflict, accentuating tribalism and tribal
divisions.’68
Along with the structural sectarian issues caused by design and class tension
caused through land policy, the British decision to impose a tax on all those
wanting to be buried in the Holy City of Najaf - where Shi’a from all over the world
64
Tripp, C. (2000). A History of Iraq. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 43.
65
Çetinsaya, G. (2006). The Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890-1908. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 15.
66
Rear, M. (2008). Intervention, Ethnic Conflict and State-Building in Iraq: A Paradigm for the Post-Colonial State. New York,
New York: Routledge. Pg 164; Castellino, J. & Cavanaugh, K.A. (2013). Minority Rights in the Middle East. Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press. Pg 189-190; Davis, E. (2005). Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern
Iraq. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Pg 20; Shamash, V. (2008). Memories of Eden: A Journey Through
Jewish Baghdad. Surrey, England: Forum Books Ltd. Pg 57.
67
Ayubi, N.N. (1995). Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris &
Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 95; Lukitz, L. (1995). Iraq: The Search for National Identity. London,
England: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. Pg 50.
68
DeFronzo, J. (2010). The Iraq War: Origins and Consequences. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Westview Press, Perseus
Books Group. Pg 14.

came to rest - led to an intense hatred of the British authorities from within the
Shi’a clerics.69
After San Remo, the British immediately began regulated money
flowing from Persian-based Shi’a charities and their pilgrimages to shrines,
severely depleting both the income and influence of the Shi’a clerics or
‘mujtahids’.70
The response from the Shi’a clerics was immediate. In the spring of
1920, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi and supporting Shi’a clerics demanded
complete independence under the rule of Faisal or Abdullah, sons of the Sharif of
Mecca, and an end to the British occupation.71
For a time, Sunni and Shi’a even
worked together to formulate the plans for a revolution.72
After the British arrested
his son, al-Shirazi issued a fatwa stating that working for the British Administration
was a sin and forbidden, which incited both peaceful and armed protest againsts
the British.73
The armed revolt began in Mosul and quickly spread along the
Euphrates, and soon the Sunni Kurds of the northern-most regions began revolting
against British rule too. The Kurdish interests was in securing an independence
they believed had been promised to them by the British before the fall of the
Ottomans.74
Of particular note to the central question of stability and motivations is the manner
in which the British forces quelled and ultimately defeated the Shi’a led rebellion. A
great deal of evidence exists that not only did Churchill’s decision as War
Secretary to use Royal Air Force and incendiary bombings cause a turn in the tide
69
Farag, G. (2007). Diaspora and Transitional Administration: Shiite Iraqi Diaspora and the Administration of Post-Saddam
Hussein Iraq. Ann Arbor, Michigan: ProQuest Information and Learning Company. Pg 131; Phillips, D.L. (2015). The Kurdish
Spring: A New Map of the Middle East. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Pg 15.
70
Nakash, &. (1994).The Shi'is of Iraq. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Pg 67.
71
Bengio, O. & Litvakm, M. (2011). The Sunna and Shi'a in History: Division and Ecumenism in the Muslim Middle East.
New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 106; Makdisi, S.A. & Elbadawi, I. (2011). Democracy in the
Arab World: Explaining the Deficit. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 244; Bowen, S.W. (2009). Hard Lessons: the Iraq
Reconstruction Experience: Report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq. Darby, Pennsylvania: Diane Publishing Co. Pg
2;
72
Rubin, B.M. (2010). Guide to Islamist Movements, Volume 2. New York, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Pg 280.
73
Hechtaer, M. (2013). Alien Rule. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 62; Rogan, E. (2009).The Arabs: A
History. New York, New York: Basic Books, Perseus Books Group. Pg 171-2; Israeli, R. (2004). The Iraq War: Hidden
Agendas and Babylonian Intrigue : the Regional Impact on Shi'ites, Kurds, Sunnis and Arabs. Brighton, England: Sussex
Academic Press. Pg 47.
74
Note: The Treaty of Sevres was originally designed to accommodate this, but due to the rebellion of the Atatürks the
Treaty was voided and the Kurds left with no homeland. See Moazami, B. (2013). State, Religion, and Revolution in Iran,
1796 to the Present. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 88-9; see also Ring, T., Salkin, R.M. &
La Boda, S. (1995). International Dictionary of Historic Places: Southern Europe. Chicago, Illinois: Fitzroy Dearborn
Publishers. Pg 192.

in favour of the British, but additionally the use of chemical weapons in the form of
gas shells fired from British artillery positions had significant effect on what was
understatedly referred to at the time as ‘morale’.75
Such actions fuelled Shi’a hatred
of the British forces, and translated into sectarian tensions and conflict when, after
the rebellion, the Sunni Faisal was declared King and supported by a dominance of
Sunni leaders in key government positions of power.76
British Squadron Leader
Arthur Harris reported on the effectiveness of what was at the time referred to as
‘air policing’, a policy designed to reduce the need for an expensive boots-on-the-
ground operation;
“They [the Arabs] now know what real bombing means, in casualties and in damage;
they now know that within 45 minutes a full sized village can be practically wiped out
and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured by four or five machines which offer them
no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective means of escape.”
77
Ironically, it is that same strategic combination of fire bombs from aircraft and
chemical weapons that the West now opposes in Bashar al-Assad’s response to
the civil war.78
In the aftermath of the suppression of the rebellion, between 5,000
and 10,000 Arabs and Kurds, Sunni and Shi’a were killed, just a few months after
fighting broke out.79
After the rebellion, air policing remained a prominent feature in
post-revolution Iraq. British forces were augmented to rely less on ground troops,
with more emphasis placed on the ‘striking power of the aircraft to bomb villages,
tribes and individual leaders that proved unwilling to acknowledge the authority of
75
Mikaberidze, A. (2013). Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes: An Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]: An Encyclopedia. Santa
Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc. Pg 318; Leonard, T.M. (2006). Encyclopedia of the Developing World. New York, New
York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 868; Kaplan, L.D. (1995). From the Eye of the Storm: Regional Conflicts and
the Philosophy of Peace. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi B.V. Pg 127.
76
Panjwani, I. (2012). The Shi'a of Samarra: The Heritage and Politics of a Community in Iraq. New York, New York: I.B.
Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 181.
77
Dwyer, P.G. & Ryan, L. (2012). Theatres Of Violence: Massacre, Mass Killing and Atrocity throughout History. Oxford,
England: Berghahn Books. Pg 273; Grosscup, B. (2006). Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment.
New York, New York: Zed Books Ltd. Pg 55; Cockburn, A. (1995). The Golden Age Is in Us: Journeys and Encounters. New
York, New York: Verso, New Left Books. Pg 191; Young, R. (2003). Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press. Pg 37-8; McDowall, D. (2004). A Modern History of the Kurds: Third Edition. New York,
New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 180.
78
Attar, S. (April 12, 2015). Aleppo Diary: The Carnage From Syrian Barrel Bombs. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April
2015, available from http://goo.gl/b8GzlA; Masi, A. (March 24, 2015). Assad Regime Drops Chlorine Barrel Bombs As Jabhat
al-Nusra, Rebels Battle For Idlib. International Business Times. Retrieved April 2015, available from http://goo.gl/F4ExAe
79
Martel, G. (2007). A Companion to International History 1900-2001. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Pg
214; Moazami, B. (2013). State, Religion, and Revolution in Iran, 1796 to the Present. New York, New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 89.

the central government of Iraq’ or ‘to pay taxes.’80
The rebellion changed British
imperial strategy. Rather than relying on an expensive ground campaign, they
decided to rule through superior technology combined with increased but still
limited autonomy. At the Cairo Conference in 1921 Britain, represented by
Churchill and Lawrence, planned the reorganisation of Iraq into a quasi-
independent nation still subservient to British interests.81
Despite the instability
caused by the revolution and the significant cost of suppressing it, Bromley states
that Iraq remained geostrategically essential to British interests as an area that
along with Transjordan, Palestine and Egypt, ‘connected the eastern
Mediterranean to the Gulf and hence to India’.82
Choueiri and Rogers write that
Churchill’s plan was cunning; with Faisal as King, Britain would maintain control
over ‘military, fiscal and judicial administration’, and would rely on the ‘vicious but
low-cost use of air power’ to pacify the tribes, as well as a higher subsidy paid to
Arabian leader Ibn Saud financed by revenues from Mosul oil. 83
The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1922 developed in response to the 1920 rebellion was
the tool of this continued exploitation, and despite seeming to provide Iraq with
more autonomy, Axelrod describes the deal below as a ‘canny’ and ‘diplomatic
sleight of hand’;
In the treaty of 1922, the British pledged to prepare Iraq for membership in the League
of Nations - the final mark of sovereignty - “as soon as possible.” It was a vague
phrase that gave the British an indeterminate amount of time to continue to conduct
themselves in Iraq pretty much as they had under the mandate. In fact, all that was
different was the word mandate.
84
80
Terry, J.D. (2008). The Forty Thieves: Churchill, the Cairo Conference, and the Policy Debate Over Strategies of Colonial
Control in British Mandatory Iraq, 1918--1924. Ann Arbor, Michigan: ProQuest LLC. Pg 5-6.
81
Fieldhouse, D.K. (2002). Kurds, Arabs and Britons: The Memoir of Col. W.A. Lyon in Kurdistan, 1918-1945. New York,
New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 94; Fawcett, L. (2005). International Relations of
the Middle East. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 48.
82
Bromley, S. (1994). Rethinking Middle East Politics. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Pg 77.
83
Choueiri, Y.M. (2005). A Companion to the History of the Middle East. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Pg 515; Rogers, P. (2008). Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of Control. New York, New
York: Routledge. Pg 63.
84
Axelrod, A. (2009). Little-Known Wars of Great and Lasting Impact. Beverly, Massachusetts: Fair Winds Press, Quayside
Publishing Group. Pg 247.

Davis agrees and cites the move of British policy in Iraq from the Foreign Office to
the Colonial Office shows the true attitudes of London.85
Spencer discusses an the
reciprocation of such hostile attitudes found in Iraqi poetry written in response to
the strings-attached nature of the new arrangement;
In the Book of Politics we are a people,
Owners of Sovereignty, yet we do
not even possess wreckage we could call our own.
In the Book of Politics we are Free,
Yet we are no more than handicapped orphans.
86
One cannot help but hear in this Middle Eastern poetry echoes of European
Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau; ‘Man is born free; and
everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still
remains a greater slave than they.’87
The appearance of Faisal working for the
British seemed to some, like Grand Ayatollah Mahdi al-Khalisi, to be sinful
according to earlier fatwas issued by al-Shirazi. He would later issue his own
decrees boycotting the 1922-3 elections, snowballing sectarian conflict with Sunni
elites who had succumbed to the British and joined the new government.88
The
rebellion against British imperial forces was a sign that the region was deeply
angered. The policies of the British immediately after the rebellion stoked the fire of
tension between groups with the hope that the British could prevent further united
revolt.89
It later became clear that the brutal suppression of the 1920 revolt was
very much connected to reasserting the primary imperial goal of securing
85
Davis, R. (2013). British Decolonisation, 1918-1984. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Pg
49.
86
Spencer, W. (2000). Iraq: Old Land, New Nation in Conflict. Brookfield, Connecticut: Twenty-First Century Books, The
Millbrook Press, Inc. Pg 64.
87
Rousseau, J-J. (1913). Social Contract & Discourses. [Translated Cole, G.D.H.]. New York, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
88
Sluglett, P. (2007). Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country, 1914-1932. New York, New York: Columbia University
Press. Pg 56; Osman, K. (2015). Sectarianism in Iraq: The Making of State and Nation Since 1920. New York, New York:
Routledge. Pg 70; Haddad, F. (2011). Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity. Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press. Pg 42.
89
Kevorkian, H. (2008). Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 179.

Mesopotamian oil concessions and monopolies for their corporate interests in the
field, first and foremost the Iraqi Petroleum Company.
1922-1939: The Iraqi Petroleum Company and Quasi-Independence
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord Curzon announced at the end of the
Great War that the ‘Allies floated to victory on a wave of oil’.90
He made the
statement as the Chairman of the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference, which Ferrier
and Bamberg describe as ‘an expression of allied euphoria’ post victory.91
It
signified the energy and economic intentions of the British and French for the
decades to come and was one of was the first signs that the McMahon-Hussein
accord would not stand after the war. The allies had won and they had done so
using a resource that conveniently happened to be found in rich quantities in a
region they had just ‘liberated’ and thus conveniently already had under their
control.92
The euphoria between allies and the cooperation shown at the Inter-
Allied Petroleum Conference of 1918 was to be short lived. The British were the
first to make an aggressive move to secure an oil monopoly, demanding the return
of the strategically important French-owned but British-registered oil tankers,
representing the bulk of the French fleet.93
A monopoly was essential to survival, and there can no underestimating the
significance of this for the research question. Under Churchill’s tenure as First Lord
of the Admiralty, the entire British Royal Navy fleet had been converted to oil from
Welsh coal.94
Compared to the safe, domestically available coal, the faster, more
90
Olien, R.M. & Hinton, D.D. (2007). Wildcatters: Texas Independent Oilmen. Austin, Texas: Texas Monthly Press. Pg 13;
Clark, W.R. (2005). Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society
Publishers. Pg 69; Heshelow, K. (2008). Investing in Oil and Gas: The ABC's of Dpps (Direct Participation Program).
Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse. Pg 55.
91
Ferrier, R.W. & Bamberg, J.H. (1982). The History of the British Petroleum Company: Volume 1, The Developing Years,
1901-1932. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 356.
92
Coleman, D.C. & Mathias, P. (1984). Enterprise and History: Essays in Honour of Charles Wilson. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press. Pg 242; Li, X. & Molina, M. (2014). Oil: A Cultural and Geographic Encyclopedia of Black Gold
[2 volumes], Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 248; Frank, A.F. (2005). Oil Empire: Visions of
Prosperity in Austrian Galicia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Pg 202.
93
Nowell, G.P. (1994). Mercantile States and the World Oil Cartel, 1900-1939. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Pg 113.
94
Yergin, D. (2012). The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power. New York, New York: Free Press, Simon &
Schuster, Inc. Pg 140; Rasor, E.L. (2000). Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965: A Comprehensive Historiography and Annotated
Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 157.

efficient oil had given the British greater sea power and naval supremacy over the
German Navy, which would now require an uninterrupted supply.95
Foreign policy
was now required not be subservient to energy security, and energy security
subservient to national security. Despite parliamentary opposition to the
conversion, it was ultimately the lobbying of Managing Director of Anglo-Persian
Oil Company (APOC) Charles Greenway that convinced Churchill - who had
helped to form APOC - to complete the move to oil, a policy begun by under
Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher in response to the lobbying of Royal Dutch Shell
founder and President Marcus Samuel.96
Behind the betrayal of Arab independence for oil wealth and economic dominance,
lies the role played by and commercial interests of the companies, manipulating
the geopolitics to their own ends. Whilst APOC was set up to take advantage of
Persian strategic oil reserves97
- discovered in Tehran by British geologist William
Knox D’Arcy in 1908 after being granted an oil exploration concession in 190198
which was first secured by the British defeat of Iran 1856-799
- the Iraqi Petroleum
Company was set up in Mesopotamia in much the same circumstances and for the
very same purpose. The oil giant which would go on to become British Petroleum
(BP) was originally named the Turkish Petroleum Company (referred to hereafter
as ‘the Company’), and formed in 1912 and attained oil concessions from the
Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople.100
By 1914, following Churchill’s move to
convert the British fleet to oil, the British government moved to become a majority
95
Shojai, S. (1995). The New Global Oil Market: Understanding Energy Issues in the World Economy. Westport,
Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 218.
96
Vassiliou, V.S. (2009). The A to Z of the Petroleum Industry. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., Rowman &
Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 136; Tamminen, T. (2009). Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction.
Washington, D.C.: Island Press, Shearwater Books, The Centre for Resource Economics. Pg 84.
97
McCormick, J. (2010). Comparative Politics in Transition. Boston, Massachusetts: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Pg 506;
Davenport-Hines, R.P.T. & Jones, G. (1989). British Business in Asia Since 1860. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press. Pg 36.
98
Pesaran, E. (2011). Iran's Struggle for Economic Independence: Reform and Counter-Reform in the Post-Revolutionary
Era. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 24.
99
Mirza, R.M. (2010). American Invasions: Canada to Afghanistan, 1775 to 2010. Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Publishing.
Pg 240; Wright, D. (2001). The English Amongst the Persians: Imperial Lives in Nineteenth-Century Iran. New York, New
York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 128.
100
Campbell, C.J. & Wöstmann, A. (2013). Campbell's Atlas of Oil and Gas Depletion. Berlin, Germany: Springer Science &
Business Media. Pg 287; Orwel, G. (2006). Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors. Hoboken, New Jersey: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pg 101.

shareholder of APOC, and subsequently had the British-controlled Turkish National
Bank’s 50% share in the Company transferred to APOC.101
In the same year, the
Company signed a deal with Ottoman Grand Vizier Mehmed Ferid Pasha giving it
exploration and mineral production rights in the vilayets of Baghdad and Mosul.102
This status quo continued after the war until a settlement with American interests
which changed the name of the Company from ‘Turkish’ to the Iraqi Petroleum
Company (IPC, will continue to be referred to hereafter as ‘the Company’) in a deal
known as the ‘red line agreement’.103
This agreement redistributed shares of the
Company into five components as shown in the table below.104
Percent Company Ownership (Modern Name)
23.75% Anglo-Persian Oil Company British majority (BP)
23.75% Royal Dutch Shell 60% Dutch, 40% British (Shell)
23.75% Compagnie Française des Pétroles French majority (Total)
23.75% Near East Development Corporation American (Exxon, Mobil, Chevron)
05.00% Calouste Gulbenkian Armenian oil billionaire investor
With so much to gain - or lose - from the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the
concessions already granted, it is clear that these oil exploration and production
interests were a major motivation for the Sykes-Picot arrangement, the deals made
at the 1920 San Remo Conference and the suppression of the Iraqi Revolution that
followed them both. It was necessary to secure the region and control who came
out on top, post-war. The presence of imperial British forces and influence -
101
Weissenbacher, M. (2009). Sources of Power: How Energy Forges Human History. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO,
LLC. Pg 374-5; Askari, H., Mohseni, A. & Daneshvar, S. (2009). The Militarization of the Persian Gulf: An Economic
Analysis. Gloucestershire, England: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Pg 102; Hahnemann, S. (2014). Oil, Israel and
Modernity: The West's cultural and military interventions in the Middle-East. Hamburg, Germany: Books on Demand. Pg 76-
7.
102
Styan, D. (2006). France and Iraq: Oil, Arms and French Policy-Making in the Middle East. New York, New York: I.B.
Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 13; Mitchell, T. (2011). Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the
Age of Oil. London, England: Verso, New Left Books. Pg 58-9.
103
Marcel, V. (2006). Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East. London, England: Chatham House, Royal
Institute of International Affairs, Brookings Institution Press. Pg 18; Nersesian, R. (2015). Energy for the 21st Century: A
Comprehensive Guide to Conventional and Alternative Sources. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Pg 152; Hurewitz, J.C. (1979). The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record. British-French
supremacy, 1914-1945. London, England: Yale University Press. Pg 399-400.
104
Kayal, A.G. (2002). Control Of Oil. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 68-70; Markus, U. (2015). Oil and Gas: The
Business and Politics of Energy. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 75-6; Davies, N.J.S.
(2010). Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Nimble Books, LLC. Pg
331-2; Alam, M. (1995). Iraqi Foreign Policy Since Revolution. New Delhi, India: K.M. Rai Mittal, Mittal Publications. Pg 144.

operating from two major military bases - was a seriously destabilising force in Iraq
over the research period. Heptulla writes security forces operating ‘as ‘advisors’
remained active instruments for the British to convert this independence into a
veiled protectorate’105
and helped attain monopoly over Iraqi oil concessions and
production;
In 1925, the British-controlled Iraqi government agreed to award a concession to
explore and eventually produce oil, which covered most of Iraq’s territory, to the Iraqi
Petroleum Company (IPC), of which Iraq owned nothing except the name… the
companies were ‘to determine the output, price and export levels’, effectively placing
the political and economic destiny of the country in the hands of a few multinational
companies with very strong ties to Western countries.
106
The key phrase here is ‘British-controlled Iraqi government’, which on one hand
was the root of the instability, rebellion and fissures between groups that supported
the British and ones that did not, but on the other hand the very source of total
British control over oil concessions. With the balancing act required by the above
competing realities, and with Britain ‘concerned primarily with protecting the Suez
Canal and gaining access to Arabian oil reserves’107
, the Iraqi government was
made a puppet to their interests, a rubber stamp mechanism that they could control
by force.108
The sequence of key dates (1908 oil is discovered in Persia, 1912 the Company is
formed, 1914 Britain buys majority in APOC, which then buys majority in the
Company) as well as the earlier decision by Churchill to complete the conversion of
the fleet to oil by 1914, indicates an unavoidable reality; the British interests in
Mesopotamian oil not only pre-dates the Great War and the fall of the Ottoman
Empire, but both the McMahon-Hussein and Sykes-Picot arrangement. Before the
Great War even began, the British government had purchased a majority stake in
the Company with sole rights to Mesopotamian oil at the same time as having
105
Heptulla, N. (1991). Indo-West Asian Relations: The Nehru Era. New Delhi, India: Allied Publishers Limited. Pg 100.
106
Looney, R.E. (2012). Handbook of Oil Politics. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 250.
107
Parsons, T.H. (2014). The Second British Empire: In the Crucible of the Twentieth Century. Lanham, Maryland: The
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Company, Inc. Pg 73.
108
Falola, T. & Genova, A. (2005). The Politics of the Global Oil Industry: An Introduction. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger
Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 184; Casey, M.S. (2007). The History of Kuwait. Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 86.

converted their entire navy to the resource. It is the contention of this thesis that it
is very unlikely that the overtures made in the McMahon-Hussein
Correspondences regarding a fully independent Arabia were ever legitimately
sincere, given the essential nature of oil to British national security well before
1915. Bawardi writes that oil was now a function of national security as ‘reliance on
oil after converting from coal began to drive its [Britain’s] policy in the Middle
East.’109
Collier and O'Neill argue it was the combination of the ‘growth of the Royal
Air Force and the mechanisation of the British Army’ with the change to an oil-fired
Navy - moves both predating and following the McMahon-Hussein letters - that
‘rapidly increase the British dependence on the Middle Eastern oil fields.’110
Indeed, as is displayed in the 1920’s era cartoons below, the moves of ‘Western’
governments as interested in nothing else other than unfettered access to oil did
not go unnoticed;
Two period cartoons from 1920 depicting reaction to Western energy policies.
109
Bawardi, H.J. (2014). The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship. Austin, Texas:
University of Texas Press. Pg 162.
110
Collier, H. & O’Neill, R.J. (2010). World War II: The Mediterranean 1940-1945. New York, New York: Rosen Publishing
Group, Inc. Pg 14.

Satia writes that oil concessions continued to dominate the Anglo-Iraqi relationship,
especially in the lead up to the 1932 official Iraqi ‘independence’ negotiations.111
Many writers agree that the outcome of the 1932 negotiations can be at most be
signified as an ‘increase in autonomy’ or ‘quasi-independence’.112
Roshwald makes
the argument that the British created a ‘façade of Arab self-government [wrapped
in] their hegemony’ using ‘Arab nationalism as the handmaiden of their imperial
ambitions.’113
Dodge adds that Iraq was given ‘de jure independence’ -
independence on paper only - because without the assistance of British air policing
and financial loans from the British Exchequer, Iraq’s Sunni politicians could not
control the ‘diverse and divided population.’114
It is for this reason that the formal end to the British Mandate in Iraq in 1932 makes
little difference to the question of British energy and economic policies causing
instability through the research period. By 1936, under the endless British
influence, air policing and control over government in addition to a crushing of tribal
unrest, the nation imploded.115
In October 1936, Iraq had its first military coup, in
which the IQAF (Iraqi Air Force) was an integral component.116
Within a year the
leaders of the coup were assassinated, and between 1936 and 1941 there were six
more coups with military officers playing decisive roles in ‘deposing or appointing
prime ministers either through the threat of or the actual use of force.’117
By
creating a weak central government to rule over three completely different
demographic strongholds as one, puppet nation, the British government secured
the oil concessions it needed for the Iraqi Petroleum Company. However, in the
111
Satia, P. (2008). Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle
East. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 18.
112
Aboul-Enein, Y.H. & Aboul-Enein, B.H. (2013). The Secret War for the Middle East: The Influence of Axis and Allied
Intelligence Operations During World War II. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. Pg 41; Natali, D. (2005). The Kurds
And the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, And Iran. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. Pg 47.
113
Roshwald, A. (2001). Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-23.
New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 152-3, 188.
114
Dodge, T. (2003). Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-building and a History Denied. London, England: C. Hurst & Co.
(Publishers) Ltd. Pg 31.
115
Al-Marashi, I. & Salama, S. (2008). Iraq's Armed Forces: An Analytical History. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 46.
116
Wien, P. (2006). Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941. New York,
New York: Routledge. Pg 21; Rayburn, J. (2014). Iraq after America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance. Stanford,
California: Hoover Institution at Leland Stanford Junior University. Pg 58.
117
Bergquist, MAJ R.E. (1982). The role of airpower in the Iran-Iraq War. Darby, Pennsylvania: Diane Publishing Co. Pg 21.

process it set in place a chain of circumstances whereby the Iraqi government was
permanently unstable. Unable to govern it is own right without the assistance of the
British air force, Iraq was strife with sectarian tensions caused by preferential
treatment and support. Plagued by tribal uprisings, Iraq was utterly dependent on
British finance, all contributing to an entire era of military coups and revolts.
1939-1948: The Needs of Great Wars and the Little Wars That Fund Them
In the period which followed, political, social and sectarian conflict rose both as a
function of the past, but also in response to the events of the day, and the
mounting casus belli in continental Europe. In Iraq, Faisal had passed away in
1933 and in 1939 Faisal’s son King Ghazi - who was a vocal critic of British
influence118
- died suddenly in car crash, with British forces widely suspected of
killing him.119
Ghazi was too independent for London’s liking, and Tripathi writes
that British ambassador, Maurice Peterson, saw Britain’s only options as to have
him ‘controlled or deposed’;
R.A. Butler discussed with Peterson the “relative merits” of finding other members of
the royal family to replace Ghazi “in case any emergency might arise.” Only a few days
after these conversations, King Ghazi died in a car crash. The damage to the car was
minimal, and the two other passengers in the car “disappeared without a trace” … the
episode inflamed the anti-British sentiment in Iraq. Riots broke out, and the British
consul in Mosul was assassinated.
120
The British named Ghazi’s three year old son King Faisal II, with his uncle Crown
Prince Abd al-Ilah as regent. Black writes al-Ilah was chosen precisely for his
support of the British, and was able to form a stable government with Prime
Minister Nuri al-Said, ‘generally viewed as tolerant of the British presence in
Iraq.’121
With a child as King and a puppet as regent, the British once more had a
firm grip on Iraqi politics, despite the seven military coups in six years.122
At the
118
Tripp, C. (2000). A History of Iraq. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 98.
119
Khadduri, M. & Ghareeb, E. (1997). War in the Gulf, 1990-91: The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and Its Implications. Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press. Pg 43-4.
120
Tripathi, D. (2013). Imperial Designs: War, Humiliation & the Making of History. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books. Pg 72.
121
Black, E. (2004). Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict. Hoboken, New
Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pg 309.
122
Simon, R.S. (1986). Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Militarist Origins of Tyranny. New York, New York: Colombia
University Press. Pg 107; Dougherty, B.K. & Ghareeb, E.A. (2013). Historical Dictionary of Iraq. Lanham, Maryland:
Scarecrow Press, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 22.

start of the Second World War, the British government moved to secure their oil
reserves in Iraq as a function of total war against Germany, for Iraq was ‘the object
of a peripheral but critical struggle between Great Britain and the Axis powers.’123
Nicosia also refers to a ‘contentious mix of opinion within the Iraqi government
toward the two sides in the war’ of deep concern to British interests.124
Pro-Axis
Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, who had become a major player in the
opposition to British rule pre-war, led a short-lived coup in April 1941. This coup
precipitated the May 1941 Anglo-Iraq war which was successful in suppressing the
riots, overthrowing the coup leaders and re-installing British Hashemite puppets.125
In a broader context, regional anti-British sentiment and pro-Axis leanings led
Egypt’s King Farouk to express ‘great admiration for the Führer’126
, with Saudi King
Ibn Saud expressed great respect for Germany in its anti-Jewish stance, promising
‘active assistance [in] jointly fighting the Jews.’127
The Saudi King even provided
Arabia land as support, becoming ‘a way station for German weaponry shipments
to Palestine.’128
Other players in the Middle East, such as the Mufti of Jerusalem
Haj Amin al-Husseini, were also pushing a pro-Axis agenda129
in line with Farouk
and Ibn Saud’s preference for German allegiance as a counterbalance to the
stranglehold Britain had held since the fall of the German-supported Ottoman
Empire.130
123
Mikaberidze, A. (2011). Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara,
California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 420.
124
Nicosia, F.R. (2015). Nazi Germany and the Arab World. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 163.
125
Kaplan, E. & Penslar, D.J. (2011). The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History. Madison, Wisconsin: The
University of Wisconsin Press. Pg 324; Barrett, R.C. (2007). The Greater Middle East and the Cold War: US Foreign Policy
Under Eisenhower and Kennedy. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 109.
126
Reynold, N. (2014). Britain's Unfulfilled Mandate for Palestine. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, The Rowman &
Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 236.
127
Stegemann, B. & Vogel, D. (1995). The Mediterranean, South-east Europe, and North Africa, 1939-1941: From Italy's
Declaration of Non-belligerence to the Entry of the United States Into the War. New York, New York: Oxford University
Press. Pg 172.
128
Silberklang, D. (2007). Yad Vashem Studies. Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein-Verlag GmbH, Verlag und Werbung. Pg 126.
129
Küntzel, M. (2007). Jihad and Jew-hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. New York, New York: Telos Press
Publishing. Pg 31-3.
130
Muravchik, J. (2014). Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. New York, New York: Encounter
Books. Pg 7; Ṣulḥ, R. (2004). Lebanon and Arabism, National Identity and State Formation 1936-1945. New York, New York:
I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, St Martin’s Press in association with The Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford. Pg 129; Kedourie, E.
(1974). Arabic Political Memoirs and Other Studies. New York, New York: Frank Cass & Co Ltd. Pg 24.

Thus the anti-British sentiment felt at the beginning of World War II in Iraq must be
seen in the context of the legacy of the imperial years of oppression and the
regional influence and control that Britain sought to keep in other nations like Saudi
Arabia and Egypt. At the same time it was also a proxy European conflict playing
out in the strategically important Middle East. In order to understand the actions of
the British in 1941 against the coup, it is useful to consider the geostrategic
importance of Iraq in the broader context of the British war with Germany. In
addition to British concerns for the safety of the Suez Canal, Diamond explains
why it was imperative Britain kept oil flowing out of Iraq; apart from American lend-
lease agreements, all British oil came from Iraq.
If Iraqi oil fell into German hands, coupled with an interruption in the transatlantic flow
from the United States, Britain would probably have to surrender. Iraq’s loss would
have also fanned the flames of Arab nationalism … which could have made the Middle
East indefensible. The loss of the Suez Canal to Rommel, together with a successful
rebellion in Iraq, would have threatened British control over India. Thus British control
over Iraq was vital.
131
So naturally when al-Gaylani took power in 1941 and attempted to cut off oil to
Britain, the imperial forces invaded and swiftly defeated the pro-Axis Iraqi forces,
sending al-Gaylani into exile in Germany. This demonstrated that instability was
only unacceptable to Britain when it threatened strategic oil fields and through
them national security.132
Diamond is suggesting that if Iraq fell into in German
hands - or even out of British geopolitical orbit - and had Britain surrendered long
before the end of 1941, Axis powers may very well have won the Second World
War. There would be little stopping the British mainland falling to Germany.
In conclusion the strategic importance of oil as a function of national security
cannot be overstated when reviewing the events. The British had entangled their
external security in oil when they converted their fleet in 1912, ensuring naval
supremacy in the First World War, but exposing themselves to reliance on a
131
Diamond, J. (2012). Archibald Wavell: Leadership, Strategy, Conflict. Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing. Pg 32.
132
Gilbert, M. (2014). The Routledge Atlas of the Second World War. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis
Group. Pg 37; Majd, M.G. (2012). August 1941: The Anglo-Russian Occupation of Iran and Change of Shahs. Lanham,
Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. Pg 157; Lyman, R. (2005). Iraq 1941: The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah
and Baghdad. Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing. Pg 16.

foreign energy resource. Thus at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British had a
compelling interest in maintaining a monopoly over Mesopotamian oil, signing
several agreements with the French, Dutch and American from 1920 through the
research period to both politically and economically control the nation. Iraq
revolted, Shi’a-led sectarian strife grew in response to preferential treatment of
Sunnis by the imperial establishment, and imperial control created a weak central
government. This puppet government was weak and vulnerable to collapse and
division, leading to an era of military coups. Finally a pro-Axis coup coupled with
the requirements of the Second World War forced Britain to invade Iraq once more
to prevent circumstances that would lead to British surrender in Europe. The period
was characterised by instability, with Britain motivated by the need to exploit Iraq
for oil to ensure the national security of the Empire.

2. French Mandate in Syria: Not to Be Left Out
“The key element was imperial perspective, that way of looking at a distant foreign
reality by subordinating it in one's gaze, constructing its history from one's own
point of view, seeing its people as subjects whose fate can be decided by what
distant administrators think is best for them. From such wilful perspectives ideas
develop, including the theory that imperialism is a benign and necessary thing…
Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires,
that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate." - Edward
W. Said133
France, in its imperial control of what is now modern day Syria and Lebanon
(referred to from here on as ‘Syria’), much like Britain in its imperial control of what
is now modern day Iraq, was a major contributor to the ongoing regional and
internal instabilities that plague these two nations. Much like Britain in Iraq, French
economic and energy interests in the region were key motivators for imperial
presence in Syria. As mentioned earlier, the events of the research period are but
one part in a series of four eras in Middle East history - as outlined by key author
Turner134
- that has removed agency and autonomy from the Arabs. This made
them subalterns according to a body of postcolonial critical theory espoused in
works by Sabry, Spivak, Courville and Mignolo and Escobar with influences from
Marx and Foucault.135
Importantly for the French in Syria, Lockman explains
Gramsci’s original works on ‘hegemony theory’, which is the model by which
imperial powers ‘convince subaltern groups to believe in the historical construction
133
Said, E.W. (July 20, 2003). Blind Imperial Arrogance: Vile stereotyping of Arabs by the U.S. ensures years of turmoil. Los
Angeles Times. Retrieved April 2014, available from http://goo.gl/bSm0eI
134
Turner, J.A. (2014). Religious Ideology and the Roots of the Global Jihad: Salafi Jihadism and International Order. New
York, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, St Martin’s Press, LLC. Pg 146.
135
Sabry, T. (2010). Cultural Encounters in the Arab World: On Media, the Modern and the Everyday. New York, New York:
I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 187; Morton, S. (2007). Gayatri Spivak: Ethics, Subalternity
and the Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Pg 162; Courville, M. (2010). Edward Said's
Rhetoric of the Secular. New York, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Pg 95; Mignolo, W.D. & Escobar,
A. (2010). Globalization and the Decolonial Option. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 339-340.

of political community propagated by the ruling class’, adding that ‘control through
self-discipline by subaltern groups themselves is a much more efficient form of
domination than the exercise of force or violence.’136
It is this combination of what
Nye coined as ‘soft-power’137
and traditional hard, military power that allowed
France to control Syria during the Mandate period for its own imperial energy and
economic gain. This makes it an Empire, just like all the others.
Post-First World War cartoon depicting Ottoman Empire shared amongst the victors.
136
Lockman, Z. (1994). Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East: Struggles, Histories, Historiographies. Albany,
New York: State University of New York Press. Pg 295; Howson, R. & Smith, S. (2008). Hegemony: Studies in Consensus
and Coercion. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 57-9; Makaryk, I.R. (1993). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary
Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press Incorporated. Pg 345; Martin, J.
(2002). Antonio Gramsci: Marxism, philosophy and politics. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg
445-6.
137
Nye, J.S. (2004). Soft Power: The Means To Success in World Politics. PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group.

British and French Imperial Policies in the Middle East

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