CHAPTER 16
The Ottoman Empire in World War I
European rivalries in the Muslim world were one of the aggravating factors in the march toward war, but in 1914 all the conflicts appeared to be resolved. Imperial Germany, not possessing colonies in that vast region of the world, had largely refrained from intervening in the Balkan Wars. It returned to its posture as the friend of Islam and the protector of the Ottoman Empire, giving rise, among the Franco- British, to the specter of a pan- Islamism of Germanic inspiration.
The assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Francis Ferdinand was a remote consequence of the Treaty of Berlin, which placed Bosnia- Herzegovina under Austrian administration, making the dual monarchy the enemy of Serbia, whose historical aim was to unify the “southern Slavs.” The mechanisms of the alliances, combined with national passions and the sense among many that war was inevitable, allow us understand how, this time, European diplomacy was unable to avoid a war whose intensity and capacity for destruction was unimaginable.
Control of the Muslim world was secondarily at stake in the “European civil war,” as it was designated by the last generation of the twentieth century. France and Great Britain conceived of themselves as great Islamic powers because of the millions of Muslims living in their colonial empire. The same was true for Russia. That colonial integration had been the result of a century and a half of recent history. Although the French Army of Africa and the British Army of India could levy large contingents from these populations, the Islamic peoples under domination nevertheless appeared to make the allies vulnerable against a Germany that was now openly protective of Islam, and which succeeded in drawing the Ottoman Empire into its camp and into the war on November 2, 1914.
The desire for emancipation from European rule was the primary driving force behind the Young Turk regime’s decision. Russia was more than ever the hereditary enemy, and there was a desire to liberate the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus. France and Great Britain, because of their control over the economy, were considered the major obstacles to economic emancipation. On September 9, 1914, the Ottoman Empire unilaterally denounced the capitulations, a move that was rejected by the powers of the Triple Entente. They nevertheless proved ready to open discussions leading to greater equality, provided the Ottomans would maintain strict neutrality in the conflict under way. After the Battle of the Marne, the Entente Powers took a much tougher stance, which precipitated the rift.
As a consequence of these events, the Triple Entente again found itself in a defensive position against the pan- Islamist threat. Of course, the Muslim populations proved particularly loyal to the Europeans during calls for holy war launched by the sultan- caliph, but anxieties remained. It should be noted that the Ottoman Empire launched its jihad against the “oppressive entity that bears the name ‘Triple Entente’ . . . whose national pride takes extreme pleasure in the subjection of thousands of Muslims.” Because the Ottoman Empire belonged to the Central Powers, it could not make any reference to a Christian enemy, which was in keeping both with nineteenth- century reformist thought and with the increasingly national character of the war.
The first use of counterpropaganda consisted of denouncing the Ottoman caliphate for being illegitimate because it was non- Arab. Fatwas were issued to that effect by various religious authorities of the colonial empires. But caution prevailed. In British India, the Friday prayer still invoked the name of the caliph of Constantinople, even among the troops levied to combat his armies.
The question of the caliphate preoccupied the French in particular. The Commission Interministérielle des Affaires Musulmanes collected various notes on that subject. In 1915, Lyautey boldly proposed the constitution of a “Western caliphate,” with the sultan of Morocco as commander of believers. That caliphate was to encompass the French colonial empire as a whole. There would therefore be a “French Islam.” That proposal elicited protests from the other colonial proconsuls of North Africa, who did not want to be answerable to Morocco.
The French also considered inciting a Syrian revolt, but that would have entailed sending precious troops to the East, at a time when all the available men were needed on the French front. For a time, the Allies were content to maintain the Ottoman Empire under their tutelage. But the decision to launch the Dardanelles expedition, which was believed capable of putting an end to the war, raised the question of the territorial goals of the conflict. The Russians demanded Constantinople, their historical objective for at least two centuries. The FrancoBritish were obliged to acquiesce and to accept a partitioning of the empire.
Although French and British interests were of the same nature, their ways of approaching the future of the Arab provinces were totally different. For French decision- makers, the pre- 1914 “France of the Levant” constituted the frame of reference and was to be preserved and extended. That voluntary assimilation of French culture made it possible to dream of a greater France, whose universal vocation would be harmoniously wed to its imperial designs. Adopting the discourse of the French geographers, who evoked a “natural Syria,” the colonial faction became a “Syrian faction,” integrating a certain number of exiles from that region into the Comité Central Syrien and its press organ, the Correspondance d’Orient.
For the British of that generation, by contrast, Levantinism represented the worst of moral flaws. The British specialists on Cairo, as a result of their naturally differentialist view of the world, and in view of the scope of French advantages, had fallen under the spell of the cult of Arab authenticity and purity. That purity was incarnated first and foremost in the desert Bedouins, gradually dissipating in the settled peasant populations and in the city dwellers.
The French and British immediately considered countering the Ottoman jihad by appealing to an authority other than the sultan- caliph. Hussein bin Ali, emir and sharif of Mecca and head of the Hashemite family, was naturally the best candidate. He had the ability both to incite an Arab revolt and to call into question the religious authority of Constantinople. Sir Henry MacMahon, who succeeded Kitchener— now minister of war—in Cairo, was assigned the task of negotiating. Coming from the Indian administration, he had no particular familiarity with the Near East and relied on the advice of the Anglo- Egyptians, small groups of specialists and amateurs such as the archaeologist T. E. Lawrence, who wanted to expand the Egyptian experiment to the region as a whole.
The negotiation unfolded via a secret exchange of letters. The possibility of an Arab caliphate for the sharif was suggested to him. The risky circumstances of the exchange were coupled with semantic ambiguity. As good Britons, the men of Cairo contrasted the Levantines to the “pure” Arabs, a notion incomprehensible to their interlocutor, who held the genealogical view that the Arabs all descended from the same ancestor. No map was drawn up, and major points remained to be resolved. According to London and Cairo, the Arab state or states to be constituted would be located in the interior of the countries. The coastal Levantine regions would be under the direct control of the French and British.
The subsequent negotiation between the British representative, Sir Mark Sykes, and the French representative, Georges Picot, unfolded on that foundation. The aim was to establish the cartography of the French plan, called “Syria,” and of the British plan, named “Arabia.” After some vicissitudes, the result of their work was ratified through an exchange of correspondence between Paul Cambon, French ambassador to London, and the British Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, in May 1916. Everything was approved by Russia, which received a large part of Anatolia, and later by Italy.
The Dardanelles expedition, from April to December 1915, became one of the bloodiest episodes of the war, with 200,000 dead and wounded among the Triple Entente forces, versus 120,000 on the Ottoman side. On the western fronts, regular armies fought terrifying battles; but from the Baltic to the Red Sea and even to the borders of India, civilians were the first victims of violence, which continued until the early 1920s and caused millions of deaths. Even though, proportionally, Eastern Christendom paid the heaviest human cost during these terrible years, millions of Muslims were also victims of the conflicts arising from the European civil war.
In the Ottoman space, one of the main causes was the Allied blockade, supposedly directed at the enemy’s war effort. The previous communications network had largely used sea routes, and the Ottoman army had requisitioned pack animals; as a result, the blockade undermined the entire resupply circuit. Many regions of Anatolia and Syria were stricken by scarcity, which in some sectors, such as Mount Lebanon, turned into a famine primarily affecting Christians.
Throughout that period, the Young Turk regime conducted itself ruthlessly. After the terrible defeat of the Caucasus during the winter of 1914–1915, using as a pretext the immediate danger of a Russian invasion of Anatolia, the Ottoman government gave the order to deport the Armenian populations to Syria. In a large portion of the regions concerned, that deportation became the occasion for massacres in which the authorities and the local populations were directly involved. About two- thirds of the Armenians of Anatolia died in that upheaval. In the following years, military operations and epidemics associated with the conditions of scarcity gravely affected the Muslim populations, though to a lesser extent than they did the Armenians. In Syria, the Mount Lebanon famine raised the question of the Ottomans’ direct responsibility, which is still a matter of debate.
The Ottoman authority, represented by Jamal Pasha, conducted a harsh repression of the Arab autonomists, who were accused of treason on behalf of France. A number of notables were executed in Damascus and Beirut, while those under less suspicion were interned in Anatolia. Those who could escape went back to Egypt. That repression played a major role in the people’s disaffection with the Ottoman regime, though a significant portion of the elites remained faithful to the empire to the end.
In Mesopotamia, the British landed in the Basra region, securing the protection of the Gulf and the neighboring oilfields. The British army then began to advance up the Indus Valley. But its vanguard went too far and, finding itself surrounded in Kut, it had to surrender. That conquest of Mesopotamia was achieved by the Army of India, which already saw that region annexed to the Indian empire, with the importation of millions of Hindu workers to develop it through major hydraulic projects. Its architects saw the plan as a noble mission destined to feed the rest of the world.
The Rest of the Muslim World
Persia, which knew it was particularly vulnerable, proclaimed its neutrality on November 1, 1914, without having the means to repel foreign interference. Russian troops, however, had been present in the southern part of the country since 1912, and the British were forced to acknowledge the expansion of the Russian zone of influence. The Ottoman armies penetrated that region without declaring war, portraying themselves as liberators. They were well received at first, but came to be despised because of the taxes they imposed and the devastation of the war. Anatolian Christians also took refuge in these regions and went over to the Russians’ side. After the Russian revolution of February– March 1917, the Russian troops scattered and anarchy increased, with Muslim massacres of Christians in the Urmia region.
It was a sign of the times that the British coupled their traditional defense of the Indian route with protection of oil resources. In the south, they organized local forces headed by British officers, but met with an uprising of the tribes in the province of Fars, encouraged by a German mission commanded by the famous Wilhelm Wassmuss. The Germans tried to stir up other regions of Iran, as well as to incite an Anglo- Afghan war. They sent in agents to that end, in what was one of the last episodes of the European Great Game, which had begun in the late eighteenth century. For part of 1915, a good share of the Persian territory was in the hands of the pro- German dissidents. The shah refused to join a pro- German government and remained in Tehran, but his supposedly pro- English government now controlled only the capital. The Anglo- Indian army intervened en masse to repress the pro- German and pro- Ottoman movements. After the Russian collapse, the British troops headed back to the Caucasus and temporarily occupied Baku.
These troop movements and various uprisings devastated the country. Inevitably, famine and epidemics took hold, claiming tens of thousands of lives. The state no longer existed and, after the Russian retreat, Great Britain seemed to have assumed control in a lasting manner.
Russian central Asia experienced relative calm for the first two years of the war, but there were rumblings of discontent, caused by the advance of Russian colonization at the expense of the nomadic populations. The announcement in June 1916 that men not required to do military service would be mobilized into work units set off the explosion. The Russian agricultural settlers were the initial target of the revolt of summer 1916. Two thousand were killed, and the repression was very harsh. A third of the Kirgiz took refuge in China. Many lands were confiscated. After the Russian revolution of February– March 1917, the conflict between the Russians and the indigenous people increased, especially since the provisional government was speaking only in vague terms of the region’s future. The Muslims attempted to organize political movements in preparation for the future elections and distanced themselves from the conflicts between Russians. After the October Revolution, they refused to recognize the Bolsheviks’ power. In February 1918, the Soviets forcibly established their authority, but central Asia gradually sank into anarchy, concurrent with the Russian civil war.
In Egypt, the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war gave the British the opportunity to depose Khedive Abbas Hilmi and to proclaim their protectorate over Egypt. Egypt became a sultanate, entrusted to a member of the khedivial family of Hussein Kamil, a sign of its emancipation from the Ottoman Empire. The British also made a vague promise to move Egypt toward “self- government,” a form of association in which the governed assumed some of the tasks of governance.
Egypt became the major rear base of the British. The Ottomans boldly launched an offensive on the Suez Canal in February 1915. The artillery of French and British warships positioned in the canal successfully repelled the attack. Then the British undertook a slow and methodical conquest of Sinai, consisting of short advances followed by long halts, which allowed them to establish a railroad line and a freshwater pipeline. At that rate, it took them almost two years to reach the Palestine border.
Despite their noble proclamations about their interest in the well- being of the Egyptian population, the British repeatedly requisitioned pack animals and peasant labor to deal with the logistics of the troops’ advance. Although, officially, the Egyptians did not fight, most of those whom the British used found themselves under fire. The Egyptian peasantry suffered greatly throughout those years, but the urban milieus took advantage of the first stages of a necessary industrialization to produce what could no longer be imported from Europe and to resupply the British armies of Egypt and the Dardanelles.
In Libya, the Sanusiyya resumed war against the Italian occupiers, who quickly lost control of a large part of the territory. The insurrection turned against the French of Tunisia and the British of Egypt. The war also spread to Chad and Niger, which were under French domination. The insurrection received assistance from a small Turko- German military mission that arrived by submarine. The French, also using modern means of transportation such as trucks, managed to block the brotherhood’s advance. In Egypt, after initial successes, the Sanusiyya was pushed back into the Western Desert. The Allies negotiated a compromise. In 1917, the brotherhood was granted a form of territorial autonomy over the territories it controlled. This was a suspension of conflicts more than a true political settlement.
That desert war was the concrete realization of the great colonial anxiety about an Islamic uprising. That fear had led the colonials to repress the independent brotherhoods as a preventive measure and thus to push them toward revolt.
In Morocco, Lyautey refused to evacuate the interior of the country, even though a good share of the French troops had been recalled. He established a permanent deployment to use his remaining forces to best advantage, wagering on the movements and surveillance of the rebel tribes. Beginning in 1917, the French resumed their “oil- spot” territorial expansion.
North Africa played an important role in the French war effort: 173,000 Algerians, 80,000 Tunisians, and 40,000 Moroccans were mobilized. Of the nearly 300,000 men, 260,000 fought in the trenches, and 45,000 of them met their death there. In addition, 180,000 conscripted or volunteer workers were sent to toil in the metropolis, in factories, transport ships, or the fields. That fellowship in bloodshed foreshadowed a change in colonial relations.
The scarcity of transport ships resulting from the submarine war demonstrated the inadequacies of economic development in the French possessions, including Algeria. Far from taking advantage of the historical circumstances to become industrialized, the three countries ran into a number of bottlenecks, which resulted in a drop in industrial, mining, and agricultural production.
A Change in Perspectives
The strategy of the combatants was to promote uprisings of Muslims in the other camp. They thereby toppled the colonial or Ottoman order and opened the way to the rise of national movements. The first priority of the Triple Entente strategists was to thwart the Ottoman jihad by pandering to Arab sentiment. Such was the content, for example, of a proclamation by scholars from Al- Azhar University, made at the instigation of the Allies on January 21, 1916, and addressed to “our brothers, soldiers of Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and the Hejaz”:
You are being deceived by the Turks, who are using you to realize their own aims. A few of them, who have sold out to Germany, lure you with false promises. These individuals hate France and England only because these two countries have supported and continue to support the Arab element in Turkey, and because their representatives are always ready to stay the hand of criminals who want to destroy the Arab element.
Consider the part of Iraq currently occupied by the English; consider the fate of Lebanon and of the Western Arabs protected by France; then you will perceive the difference existing between the conduct of the English and French, and that of the Turks.
The Turks have a grudge against the Arabic language, the language of the Prophet and the Qur’an, the language of prayer, and seek to destroy it and substitute their own. Therefore our language, hunted down everywhere in Turkey, was able to find asylum only in two regions that have escaped the hold of the Turks, thanks to France and England: Syria and Egypt.
In Syria, the Lebanese, through their many writings, and the Jesuits, by their talent, have become the propagators of the Arabic language. In Egypt, thanks to the assistance of the English, that language has thrived. These two powers never refused their protection to the Arab element; just recently, when the Arab Congress met in Paris, France offered it all its solicitude. What did Turkey do? It hanged a dozen Arabs. If you ask me why Turkey bears a grudge against our element, I will reply that it is because Turkey senses it is the usurper. The Qur’an, the Prophet, and Islamic law belong to us; Turkey wants to deprive us of them. It committed a first crime, and it will not recoil from others.1
The Arab revolt of June 1916 was the culmination of that strategy. The original discourse of the revolt, represented by Sharif Hussein’s first proclamations, was more Islamic than Arabist in nature; what was rejected was the Young Turks’ modernizing atheism.
One of France’s first actions, in September 1916, was to organize a pilgrimage of Maghrebian Muslims to Mecca. Si Kaddour Benghabrit, a Muslim personality from Algeria who had already rendered considerable services to France in Moroccan affairs, was assigned to lead it. A permanent hotel was set up to serve the pilgrims from the French empire. The idea of a Western caliphate was abandoned in favor of a “French Islam” that would bring together the populations of the empire and the Muslims who were beginning to have a significant presence in the metropolis. Benghabrit became the advocate of moderate reforms in Algeria to emancipate the indigenous peoples from the unjust treatment they suffered and to allow them to better assert their Arab and Muslim personality, without calling French domination into question. That was the message of a memorandum he sent to the prime minister in April 1917.
The absence of unrest in Algeria and the subsequent participation of the local population in the war effort was a happy surprise for French policy makers, and Benghabrit was sharp enough to allude to it. In the colonial view, the subject people’s loyalty had to be rewarded, and the argument for French gratitude became a particularly strong theme. The indigenophiles wanted to move forward, but in the direction of association, so that the Algerian Arabs could benefit from the “very liberal regime,” that of the Tunisians and Moroccans.
For Benghabrit, there could be no question of
suddenly granting to more than four million subjects prerogatives that would make them ungovernable and would bankrupt colonization. To dream of the Arab’s complete assimilation is the worst foolishness, which could arise only in minds steeped in Rousseau’s theories. It is as impossible to train their minds as to turn a yellow man white. And, may I add, it is not even desirable. Progress can occur more harmoniously through the collaboration of the races, with each preserving its genius, than by fusion, whose results will always be mediocre.2
The issue at hand was to abolish discrimination, raise the level of education of the native populations, and make public employment more available to them. From the perspective prevailing at the time, the Arab revolt did not call into question the colonial system and would lead to a more complex form of indirect government, with the new Arab state or states under the supervision of European advisers, in accordance with the movement’s demand for reforms in 1912–1913. It was on that principle that the so- called Sykes- Picot Agreement was built: in the French zone of influence, the advisers would be French; in the British zones of influence, the advisers would be British.
Thanks to the Hashemites, the Franco- British would thus control the holy cities of the Hejaz. Similarly, through the conquest of Mesopotamia, the Shiite holy cities would come under British influence; and since Persia too would be absorbed by the British zone, there would no longer be any risk of pan- Islamism, even if the Ottoman caliphate survived.
The Russian Revolution of February– March 1917 and the United States’ entry into the war in April 1917 threw these prospects into confusion. President Woodrow Wilson attempted to impose the right of peoples to self- determination, though he was primarily thinking of the European peoples. As the partner and not the ally of the Triple Entente, the United States was not bound by the secret accords reached between the European powers. It did not declare war on the Ottoman Empire, which for the time being it sought to treat with tact. The immediate concern of American missionaries, who had a great deal of influence with President Wilson, was the survival of the Armenians and the Arabs, who constituted most of their local clientele.
In January 1918, the twelfth of Wilson’s Fourteen Points set out the American perspective:
The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of an autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.3
Sykes was one of the first to understand the changes under way. As the British armies gradually made their advance in Mesopotamia and Palestine, his public declarations came to be marked with what looked increasingly like a right to self- determination. At least in discourse, it was necessary to abandon references to imperialism and to favor the new right to nationhood. In a memorandum from the first half of 1918 regarding Mesopotamia, Sykes was able to express himself forcefully:
Our position in Mesopotamia if judged by pre- war standards is sound. Our armed forces are quite able to hold the ground. The population is tranquil. Our rule is popular. Our relations with the surrounding tribes are exceedingly friendly. If America had not come into the war, if the Russian revolution had not taken place, if the idea of no annexations had not taken root, if the world spirit of this time was the world spirit of 1887, there would be no reason why we should take any steps to consolidate our position against a peace conference, it would be good enough.
However, we have to look at the problem through entirely new spectacles, Imperialism, annexation, military triumph, Prestige, White men’s burden’s, have been expunged from the popular political vocabulary, consequently Protectorates, spheres of interest or influence, annexations, bases etc, have to be consigned to the Diplomatic lumber- room.
If Britishers are to run Mesopotamia we must find up to date reasons for their doing so and up to date formulae for them to work the country on. We shall have to convince our own Democracy that Britishers ought to do the work and the Democracies of the world as well.4
The appeal to Zionism, which Sykes was the first to make, can be understood within that perspective. Here was a national movement that pleased the Anglo- Saxon Protestants. If the call for a national Jewish homeland in Palestine was answered, it could attract the favor of the very influential American Jews, who until that time had been considered pro- German, and of the Russian Jews, whose role in revolutionary Russia was poorly understood. Finally, Zionism was an instrument for calling into question the Franco- British accords, at least the part regarding the internationalization of Palestine. It must not be forgotten that the theory of differentialism defined the Jews of the world as constituting a “Jewish people”— it encountered no particular objections on that point— whereas the French assimilationist view rejected that perspective. The Israelite was the Jewish counterpart of the Levantine.
On that matter, Sykes had the support of the Anglo- Egyptians, who wanted above all to make Palestine a zone under British control, in order to better protect the Suez Canal. For some, such as T. E. Lawrence, who had thrown himself heart and soul into the Arab revolt— even running the risk of losing his way there— it was necessary to call into question all the Franco- British accords. Lawrence had taken on the mission of transporting Emir Faisal (Sharif Hussein’s son, who commanded the southern army) to Damascus. With that fait accompli, the partitioning would be called into question. He clashed with Sykes, who was still intent on cooperating with France. Conversely, Lawrence refrained from any intervention in Palestine and opposed recruiting Arab Palestinians.
Lawrence and Sykes shared the same overall vision. They saw a sort of springtime for the Eastern peoples (Armenians, Kurds, Arabs, Jews), who would definitively emancipate themselves from the Ottomans and would live harmoniously under the accepted but temporary tutelage of the British. They did not perceive the danger stemming from the contradiction in the national goals of each of these peoples. And they fended off future conflicts by appealing for brotherhood among the different races and religions and, for the time being, caution in the expression of demands. Some French people, such as Louis Massignon, then an active member of the Picot mission assigned to represent French interests in the Near East, shared that political vision, though he wanted to replace the British with the French in the advisory mission.
Despite clear-headed warnings from those of the old school, such as Lord Curzon, and after several successive drafts, the British government adopted the so- called Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. Although the prospect of European domination remained in place, it was now accepted that the nationality principle, henceforth the right of peoples to self- determination, applied to the Muslim populations, or at least to some of them.
The First Arbitrations
With the arrival of winter in 1917– 1918, military operations in the Near East bogged down. The Ottoman army, led by German officers, mounted a heroic resistance, despite being increasingly at a disadvantage both in numbers and materiel. The British advance was also hindered by troops being transferred to the European western front, where the final battle would be played out. The same was true for the army of Salonika, called the Army of the Orient, which formed under French command after the evacuation of the Dardanelles.
The Russian withdrawal from the war and the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest- Litovsk on March 3, 1918, marked the end of the threat to the Ottoman Empire from the hereditary enemy. The empire recovered the Caucasian territories of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum, which it had lost in 1877. The Young Turks were greatly tempted to posit the unity of all Turkish peoples, from the Mediterranean to China, by adopting Touranian ideas. The first phase would be to establish Ottoman authority over the Caucasus as a whole, by overcoming the Christian states then being formed (Georgia and Armenia). Germany opposed the plan, citing the priority to be given to the British threat. But the arrival of British troops in Baku changed the situation on the ground. The final Ottoman offensive was launched in early September 1918 and managed to penetrate as far as Azerbaijan. Although it was already too late for the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus became entrenched in a cycle of all- out wars.
The retreat of troops from the Russian front gave the Germans on the western front a numerical advantage, at least until the American forces arrived. The Franco- British had to resist the blunt force of the German army by using their abilities to rapidly move strategic reserves. As the war of position turned into a war of maneuver, the enormous advantage of receiving regular supplies of oil increasingly became the determining factor. The Allied armies of 1918 had massive numbers of trucks, tanks, and airplanes. In August 1918, the Allies began to take the offensive and continuously attacked on both sides of the front. According to Lord Curzon, their victory came on a wave of oil. French ruling circles thought more in terms of a “useful Syria,” providing access to petroleum resources, than of a “natural Syria,” which would have particularly high management costs and uncertain benefits.
Following on the first victories of the Triple Entente, the peripheral armies saw action in mid- September 1918, in Iraq and Palestine as well as in Salonika. The collapse of Bulgaria on September 26 isolated the Ottoman Empire, and its capital became vulnerable. In early October, the Ottomans attempted to open armistice negotiations, but the British wanted to seize the maximum territory beforehand, so as to be in a position of strength during the final settlement. In Syria, Emir Faisal’s troops entered Damascus on October 1, 1918. The French established their authority in Beirut on October 10.
In many respects, the Armistice of Moudros of October 30, 1918, was a capitulation that the British imposed unilaterally, without consulting their allies. It unconditionally opened the Ottoman territories as a whole to the Allied forces. In the weeks that followed, the capital was occupied, as was a portion of the Anatolian provinces.
At a time when the Ottoman Empire was foundering, the political weight of the United States became increasingly apparent. Wilson clearly let it be known that he opposed the constitution of zones of influence and preferred the tutelage of the conquered regions by a neutral power on behalf of the League of Nations. To satisfy the U.S. president (and to play for time), France and Great Britain, after consulting him, published a joint declaration on November 7, 1918:
The goal that France and Great Britain have in mind in pursuing the war in the East, unleashed by German ambition, is the complete and definitive emancipation of the peoples long oppressed by the Turks, and the establishment of national governments and administrations that draw their authority from the initiative and free choice of the native populations.
To carry out these intentions, France and Great Britain have agreed to encourage and aid the establishment of native governments and administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia, now liberated by the Allies, and in the territories whose liberation they are pursuing, and to recognize these entities as soon as they are effectively established. Far from wanting to impose one kind of institution or another on the populations of these regions, the only concern of France and Great Britain is to assure, through their support and efficacious assistance, the normal functioning of the governments and administrations that the populations will have freely bestowed upon themselves. To assure impartial and equal justice for all, to facilitate the country’s economic development by pressing for and encouraging local initiatives, to favor the spread of education, and to put an end to the divisions too long exploited by Turkish policy, such is the role that the two Allied governments claim in the liberated territories.5
The reference to Syria had multiple consequences on the ground. For example, Palestine, occupied by the British, claimed to belong to “southern Syria,” in order to benefit from the promises in the declaration and to use them against Zionist ambitions. In Syria itself, the situation was particularly muddled. Faisal’s adversaries proclaimed themselves Syrians and rejected the Arabs as uncivilized Bedouins. The same was true for the pro- French Christians. The Franco- British declaration made no reference to the Arabs. Faisal and his advisers acted intelligently, portraying themselves as nationalists who rejected a religious identity (“religion for each, the nation for all”) and constructing an all- encompassing discourse addressed to the “Arab Syrian nation.”
But on December 4, Clemenceau went to London to meet with Lloyd George. His aim was to work out the difficulties emerging in the Near East within the framework of an overall resolution of the war. During a private interview, Clemenceau abandoned Palestine and the vilayet of Mosul to the British, in exchange for assurances regarding the petroleum issues and the general settlement.
When the peace conference met, the Americans seemed to be the arbiters of the situation. President Wilson enjoyed enormous popularity. Although he was opposed to the fundaments of European imperialism, he was convinced that the non- European populations were not ready for independence and that they needed temporary oversight. The principle of the right of peoples to self- determination was transformed quite simply into the consent of the governed. It was on that basis that Versailles adopted the famous article 22 of the League of Nations covenant of April 28, 1919:
To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well- being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant.
The best method of giving practical effect to this principle is that the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake this responsibility, and who are willing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League. . . .
Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.6
The principle of mandatories gave concrete form to the final push of European imperialism in the Muslim world, while at the same time condemning it. This was a result of the evolution in international relations during World War I. That transformation can be understood in several ways: first, in terms of the long evolution of independent Muslim societies and their complex process of modernization; second, as the aftereffect of the policies of the combatants during the war, who sought to stir up the “native” populations of the enemy empires; third, in terms of the difficult affirmation of a new international right founded on the equality of peoples; and fourth, in relation to the redefinition of the great powers’ economic interests, with the emergence of petroleum interests.
For the time being, the great colonial empires remained in the Muslim territories, but colonial expansion ended, both because it lacked legitimacy and because the ruling powers realized that these empires were becoming increasingly difficult to manage, both in terms of their administrative costs and as a result of the growing burden of maintaining internal order and external protection. In the early postwar period, the British system was the first casualty.
The Birth of the Middle East
In early 1919, British power in the Muslim world seemed irresistible. Nearly a million soldiers were encamped from Egypt to Afghanistan, in countries that were theoretically independent or aspired to be so. But even though these consisted in large part of colonial troops, that burden became unbearable for British finances after the enormous expenditures of the war. In addition, the “white” troops who had volunteered for the war effort, or who had been conscripted to defend their homeland, would not tolerate being kept under military conditions. Nearly everywhere, the delay in demobilization gave rise to particularly worrisome mutinies. It took a few months to realize that the empire was overextended, and that it was necessary to begin a withdrawal, or at least a redeployment.
The debate pitted the defenders of a classic form of imperialism, based on the white man’s burden, against the proponents of a “new imperialism” that would entail a rapid devolution of powers to the local authorities, while assuring the preservation of vital British interests. For the boldest in the second group, such as T. E. Lawrence, it was even possible to envision over the medium term the constitution of a Muslim “brown dominion” within the commonwealth under formation. The idea was truly to constitute states and nations. The Egyptian revolt of 1919 and the political impasse that followed, the withdrawal of British troops from Syria, the unrest in Palestine in 1920, and the Iraqi revolt during the same period all demonstrated the impossibility of continuing to apply the old imperial formula. Winston Churchill’s arrival at the Colonial Office in 1921 and the creation of the Middle East Department institutionalized the new perspective.
The Middle East, which some ironically defined as the space between the Colonial Office and the Indian Office, would stand outside the institutional structure of the British Empire. It would be composed of “independent” states linked to Great Britain by bilateral treaties. These treaties would assure the security of the “imperial communication routes,” defined as the seaways (the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf), the airways (a network under construction of military airports that would allow people to travel from England to India while remaining continuously in territories under British control or influence), and the oil pipelines to be constructed. Significantly, unlike at the beginning of the century, there was no mention of railroads. The new armies would be under the control, at least temporarily, of the British officers who organized them. Local military deployment would be considerably reduced, in favor of aviation capable of striking anywhere zones in a state of rebellion.
Empire by treaty was a radical innovation. It abandoned the traditional notion of territories in favor of networks designed to preserve the “useful” part of the new spaces. It entailed a change of mentalities on the part of colonial administrators, who had to accept the idea of a more or less rapid transfer of powers to the local elites. But though direct authority was destined to decline, interventionism remained a constant given. The high commissioner, then the British ambassador, would be a permanent actor on the political stage, responsible for making sure that personnel favorable to British interests remained in power.
The testing ground was the British mandate in Iraq, with the creation of a monarchy in 1921 entrusted to the Hashemite Faisal. Transjordan was created the same year, separated out from Palestine, and became an emirate with Faisal’s elder brother Abdallah as its leader. In 1922, Egypt was granted independence, subject to conditions to be established by a treaty. The Arab countries of the Gulf coast remained protectorates, with little British intervention in internal affairs. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under formation was locked within the British defense system, and Ibn Sa‘ud turned out to be an attentive partner of the ruling power.
In the Levant, the French both admired and feared the British model. At first, they sought to move in the same direction, seeking a partnership with Faisal. Extremists in both camps precipitated the failure of the compromise considered in late 1919, and the French army occupied Damascus in July 1920. As a result, Arab nationalism was defined as the enemy, not only for its capacity to do harm in the Near East but also because there was a risk it would spread to North Africa. The French opted to partition the territory. But for the medium term, the prospect was access to independence, with a transfer of technical skills and political powers.
Islam and Nationalism
The Turkish war of independence illustrated the impossibility of establishing direct European domination. During the Peace Conference, the Europeans showed little appetite for administering Anatolia and were ready to entrust it to the Americans as a mandate. The Treaty of Sèvres of August 10, 1920, stipulated that Anatolia would be divided between the European powers and the Kurdish and Armenian states, leaving the Turks only the center of the Anatolian Peninsula. The national movement, led by the dissident Mustafa Kemal beginning in 1919, took the opportunity to form a coalition of all Muslims. An exhausting war of independence followed: it pushed the French back to Syria and drove out the Greeks. The Treaty of Lausanne of July 24, 1923, marked the death of the Ottoman Empire and ratified the existence of a completely independent Turkey (the capitulations were definitively abolished), after the elimination of the Ottoman sultanate and then of the Ottoman caliphate. The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed on October 29, 1923.
Kemalism planned to build a Turkish nation- state populated primarily by Muslims but belonging fully to Europe. This was a cultural revolution imposed from above, and it followed a systematic and coherent plan. The Kemalists proclaimed their desire to be modern. Population exchanges with Greece eliminated the large Anatolian Christian populations, which had suffered terribly from the massacres and forced displacements of the previous period. The aspiration was to break completely with the past. Secularism was imposed as a sign of progress. Turkey banned many outward displays of religious practice and subjected what remained of the religious institutions to close supervision, so much so that it is possible to speak of a state takeover of religion. The country adopted the Latin alphabet in 1928. Western- style patronymics became obligatory. Women in Turkey won the right to vote in 1935, ten years before women in France. In 1932, when a Turkish woman was named Miss Universe, it was considered a great national victory.
The people’s fatigue after more than ten terrible years, and the prestige of the nation’s savior, made it possible to impose a new national mythology, according to which the Turks were the descendants of the oldest inhabitants of Anatolia (the Hittites). This myth, however, denied the many thousands of years of that region’s history. The plan was to reconstitute a nation on the basis of the Anatolian peasantry and of the many populations that had taken refuge in the Balkans and the rest of the vanished empire. That mythification became more extreme in the 1930s, now painting the Turks as the trustee of humanity’s primordial civilization. The non- Muslim minorities, or rather, what remained of them, were marginalized; non- Turkish, even non- Sunni, Muslims were refused any identity proper to them. The government harshly repressed Kurdish revolts in defense of Islam and ethnic particularisms.
Europeanization involved adopting Western clothing as well as entire legal systems. The new regime proved particularly authoritarian, and its nationalism hypersensitive to any sign of foreign encroachment. Kemalism led to a national unanimism that rejected all pluralism.
The Republic of Turkey, with its nationalism and exclusivism, was altogether similar to the Balkan states, the successors of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, the republic signed the Balkan Pact of 1934. Although its population was Muslim, it thoroughly rejected the Muslim heritage, which it confused with that of the Arabs. Secularism and modernism created a new image for the country in Europe, both in the democracies and in the authoritarian systems.
As for Persia, in 1919 the British had attempted to take advantage of the historical circumstances and the eclipse of Russia to impose a quasi- protectorate there. Although the government accepted that accord, the Parliament would not ratify it, and the country seemed about to disintegrate after the ordeal of World War I. A national uprising culminated in a coup d’état on February 11, 1921, under the leadership of Reza Khan, commander of the Cossack Brigade. The army became the principal organized force and gradually reestablished the country’s territorial unity. In 1925, Reza Khan deposed the Qajar dynasty and founded his own. (The religious element was hostile to the idea of a republic because of the Kemalist example.)
The new shah, Reza Pahlavi, also styled himself an authoritarian modernizer. His first great success was to abolish the capitulations in 1928, thanks to the adoption of a civil code and penal laws inspired in great part by European models. The new regime attempted to establish nationalist feeling, based in large part on references to glories that predated Islam. In 1935, the country took the name “Iran,” which, though already in common use among the population, primarily made it possible to impose an image in the outside world that was more modern than that of Persia. Secular education, for girls as well as boys, was set in place. The Shiite clergy who opposed these reforms were harshly repressed. In 1936, Iran banned the wearing of the veil. Unlike the Republic of Turkey, however, the new regime did not adopt a discourse of Westernization. Europe’s contributions were defined in terms of tools and technologies, but the cultural touchstone was pre- Islamic Iran. For example, the solar calendar Iran adopted was a reference to Iranian history.
Reza Shah did not go nearly so far on the path of secularization as Mustafa Kemal. The shah’s extremely brutal government made major cultural and economic changes. He succeeded in restoring the Iranian state and of extending his authority over the territory as a whole. The Soviet Union replaced tsarist Russia as the northern enemy. Wishing to limit British influence, Shah Pahlavi undertook a first test of strength of the petroleum concessions of the AngloPersian Oil Company, which would become the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company. In the 1930s, he sought a certain rapprochement with Nazi Germany, to better assure his country’s independence, thereby stirring up Great Britain’s anxieties.
As in the case of Kemalism, Iran’s political independence from Europe seemed to depend on a voluntarist modernization and Europeanization policy, at the expense of the traditional religious institutions. This policy was also in continuity with the elitist reforms of earlier times. The Turkish and Iranian experiments represented the apogee, even the extreme limit, of earlier authoritarian reformism on the part of the state. These experiments had the merit of reestablishing the self- respect of the respective nations, thanks to their recovered independence and the extolling of largely mythified national glories. The price to be paid was heavy nonetheless. Even more than in the nineteenth century, authoritarian reformism marked a traumatic divorce between the continuity of Islamic culture and modernity, while stripping modernity of its essential component, the consent of the people expressed through liberal and democratic institutions.
A redoubtable trap was thereby constructed. The slightest slackening of authoritarianism risked eliciting an Islamic reaction that might contest imported modernity as a whole.
British India and the Trap of Communalism
In the second half of the nineteenth century, British India had been a focal point for Islamic reformism, which evolved alongside a similar reformism of Hinduism. That return to the origins entailed a growing reliance on the Arab sources of Islam. As in the rest of the Muslim world, the reformism at the start of the twentieth century tended to be divided between modernism and fundamentalism.
Until World War I, the Indian Muslims appeared to be the firmest supporters of British domination. The war against the Ottoman Empire and the recognition of the Sunni Islam caliphate were a formidable test of that support. In 1919, for the first time, a powerful popular movement united the Indian Muslims under the banner of maintaining the caliphate. There were several episodes of violence before the movement faded away, having been forced to face the reality of Mustafa Kemal’s suppression of the caliphate. The Congress Party, led by Mahatma Gandhi, gave the movement its support, but the results were very mixed. The caliphate issue was linked to that of constituting a purely Islamic state, and the possibility of Indian independence raised the question of the Muslims’ future status. The demand made at the time was to constitute a separate Indian Muslim electorate, which would allow the Muslims and the Hindus to share power.
Although some Muslims participated in Ghandism, in the name of the message of universal justice contained in the Qur’an, the strongest tendency was communalism, which united the Muslims based on their particular interests, at the expense of regional or national identifications linking them to the Hindus. Muslims also took an interest in pan- Islamist issues, particularly the Palestine question.
The British began the process of devolving powers by providing the indigenous people access to high public posts and by increasing the powers of the regional elected assemblies. In 1935, provincial autonomy became a reality. The proclaimed objective was gradual accession to the status of a Dominion. In the new political structures, separate electorates were constituted for minorities, including Muslims. Depending on their numerical importance, the Muslims sometimes played an essential role— in the provinces (Bengal, Punjab), for example, where they represented a significant share of the population— while elsewhere they were obliged to ally themselves with the Congress Party. Muslim identity was no longer merely cultural but took on a political reality. Nevertheless, it did not manage to find expression within a perspective encompassing India as a whole. The result was a lasting malaise, which translated into a defensive attitude and the reassertion of Muslim demands for a status of their own, with personal status laws and political guarantees vis- à- vis the Hindu majority. The proliferation of violence between the Hindu and the Muslim communities reinforced that separatist sentiment, but it did not yet take the form of a demand to constitute a distinct territory.
The discourse of the Congress Party was twofold in nature. For Gandhi, Indian nationalism had to return to its religious sources; under the reign of God, all religious groups would be protected and the poor elevated. For Jawaharal Nehru, by contrast, the adoption of the socialist and secular model would make it possible to move beyond religious oppositions. These orientations were not enough to calm the fears of minorities, who saw the Congress Party as the political expression of the Hindu majority.
The Hindu nationalists held the British responsible for dividing the society into communities, even as the British were doing their best to manage an increasingly difficult situation. In reality, what produced the new community consciousness was the modernization movement accompanying the spread of education: on one hand, religious reformism, which entailed a return to the sources; on the other, a political use of history. For the Indian radicals, Islam was defined as a foreign entity violently imposed on India; conversely, some Muslims exalted the glory days of the Timurid and Mogul empires, in order to demand recognition for the existence of two separate nations.
Wherever Muslims were greatly in the minority, the tendency of fundamentalists was to preach the existence of a Muslim culture and society constituting a totality in itself and based on the imitation of the Prophet’s example. The purification of religion depended on the rejection of popular religious culture, accused of superstition, and of colonial culture. Stemming from that rejection was a form of pietism based on strict respect for religious norms. Paradoxically, though separatism advocated isolation from the rest of the world, it made possible the abandonment of any political or territorial frame of reference and a life apart within a majority non- Muslim society.
The Indian situation served as a counterexample to what was happening in Turkey and Iran. The absence of authoritarian modernism and the gradual establishment of liberal institutions within the context of religious pluralism encouraged the formation of political and even social separatism. To be sure, the same tendency could also be found in Hinduism: a rejection of traditional customs; the establishment of a religious practice based on a sacred text and with an idealized era as its frame of reference; and recourse to new means of propaganda, dissemination, and communication (the printed word for the most part). Hindus as well as Muslims affirmed a spiritualism with political aims (Muhammad Iqbal, Gandhi), and, in both groups, modernists attempted to find solutions that would reconcile a purified religious heritage with European culture. It was because they were so similar that Muslims and Hindus came to be at odds with each other within the increasingly disabled British system.
The Construction of States in the Middle East
The recognition of the right of peoples to self- determination, even translated into the bastard form of a mandate, entailed a contract for building states destined to become independent. In legal terms, the mandate structure suspended the capitulations without abolishing them, but it was clear that returning to the past was not a possibility. From the start, there were two major constraints: the end of the Ottoman Empire and its consequences, and the presence of a unified Arab nationalism.
The Ottoman Empire’s Sunni religious administration did not recognize the existence of non- Sunni Muslims, whereas the state had approved the status of separate non- Muslim communities. When the empire disappeared, the Sunni religious organization had to be redefined within the framework of the state’s new territorial space. “Grand muftis” or “muftis of the republic” occupied the place once held by Istanbul centralization. At the same time, non- Sunni Muslims sought to emancipate themselves from Sunni tutelage. And ultimately, the state was controlled by external rulers, at least temporarily. The consequences of that de facto situation led the Muslims to adopt the communalist model, which until that time had been reserved for non- Muslims. The evolution came about gradually and was enshrined by orders from the mandatory authority, then by the independent state.
The process of communalizing the Muslims was not the result of manipulation by the external power, though its policy necessarily played a role. France saw its Levantine states as the means to counter unified Arab nationalism and to take on a noble mission, that of emancipating human groups held in contempt until that time and kept in a subjugated condition. Great Britain conducted the opposite policy in Iraq, entrusting the workings of the new state to Arab Sunni nationalists. The majority Shiites had expressed their resolute opposition to the mandatory structure and did not appear to possess the elites necessary to run the new administration.
By establishing a definition of the territories and a capital city, the mandatory powers, whose actual presence was slight (a few hundred public employees), defined the context for the local elites’ political action. The elites had to take control of the space thus defined by achieving the subordination of the territory as a whole to the new capital. The preeminence of Beirut over all of Lebanon had to be recognized, as did that of Damascus over Syria, that of Jerusalem over Palestine, and that of Baghdad over Iraq. Two complementary logics were at work. The mandatory administration itself hierarchized the territory into administrative districts. The political class, waging the nationalist battle against the mandatory power, was working at the same time to establish the authority of the capital city over its competitors (Damascus versus Aleppo, Jerusalem versus Nablus or Haifa). The struggle for independence depended on discrediting the various regionalisms, which were accused of compromising with the foreign ruler.
The economic evolution moved in the same direction. The suspension of capitulations made it possible to continually raise protective customs duties and to make the shift from an agricultural tax system to one based on levies on imports. Through that mechanism, the Near Eastern space was partitioned into distinct, even competing, economic units. (France, by means of “common interests,” maintained the economic unity of Syria and Lebanon.) The communications revolution also made it possible to strengthen the supremacy of the leaders in the capitals, who could now transmit their voices everywhere by telephone and could intervene quickly via automobile.
Arab nationalism regrouped during the 1920s, recovering its momentum in the 1930s. New pan- Arab structures were set in place. Iraq, independent since 1932, saw itself as the “Piedmont” or “Prussia” of Arab unity. But the elites, in adopting the plan for fusional unity, refused in their discourses to take into account the new territorial and religious realities, on which they nevertheless based their political action. They even went so far as to discredit these realities, as they had done for regionalism.
Unlike the new states, Arab nationalism possessed neither a defined center (a capital city) nor a determinate territory. As a result, competition for power inevitably pitted one group against another. During the interwar period, the Hashemites portrayed themselves as the defenders of unity, while their adversaries, who sometimes set forth even more unitary discourses, were in reality working to affirm the new realities of the states.
With Iraq’s independence in 1932 and the treaty with Egypt in 1936, which led to the abolition of the capitulations in 1937, Great Britain confined itself to defending the “security of imperial communication routes.” France attempted a compromise with the nationalists in 1936 but returned to direct management in 1939. The two imperial powers hardened their positions beginning in autumn 1938 (the Munich Conference). The colonial empires were ready to go to war before the metropolises.
With all its complexities, the mandatory experiment belonged both to the colonial past and to the future of the various parties involved (through the transfer of powers). A new form of social engineering was under way, in preparation for relations after independence. An equivalent situation existed in Egypt, which was increasingly emancipated from the outside. Although it was still too early to speak of “technicians of decolonization,” a store of new expertise was being constituted.
Ticking Time Bombs: Palestine, Oil, Islamism
The mandatory era was not a period of calm. The European withdrawal occurred in fits and starts, giving rise to growing impatience on the part of the peoples being emancipated. Colonial violence remained a permanent dimension, particularly during the Great Syrian Revolt of 1926 and the Palestinian revolt of 1936–1940. “Anti- imperialism” entered the vocabulary of local nationalist movements in the 1920s. The longer the European withdrawal dragged on, the greater the hostility toward Europe.
Political contingency and cultural sympathies had led the British to agree to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. By the early 1920s, they could see the implacable contradiction of their pledges. The establishment of a Jewish national homeland ran counter to the “self- government” promised to the Arab population. The British attempted by every means to keep their dual commitment, but the reality ascertained by royal investigatory committees prevailed. No mechanism for the devolution of powers was possible. At most, the British were able to transfer certain powers to Jewish and Arab community structures. Hajj Amin al- Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem, thus became the recognized political leader of the Arabs of Palestine.
What was called the Wailing Wall Uprising in August 1929 extended the dangerous question of the holy sites, heretofore confined to the Christians, to the Muslims and Jews. Both groups played on religious feeling, giving rise to a new and lethal opposition between the Jewish and Muslim worlds. All the Jewish communities in the Muslim world found themselves destabilized; the mechanisms for their destruction were inexorably set in place, putting an end to a coexistence dating back more than a millennium and rich in exchanges between the two groups.
The Nazis’ rise to power put Great Britain in an impossible situation. The “Jewish question” took on a tragic dimension. Although Palestine was able to serve as a refuge for the Jews of central Europe, the rise in immigration caused tensions that erupted into violence, first during the general strike of 1936, then during the revolt lasting from autumn 1937 to late 1939. Hajj Amin al- Husseini, in exile in Lebanon, assumed the political leadership. The “Arab world” (the term entered the vocabulary in 1936) backed the Arab Palestinians, who were being subjected to an extremely brutal repression. In autumn 1938, world war became a certainty, and the British Empire could not allow itself the luxury of having the security of imperial communication routes compromised. In spring 1939, it set draconian quotas on future Jewish immigration. The war against Nazism would mean the abandonment of the Jews of Europe. Although promises of Arab independence were again made, Arab political activity was practically banned.
Europe of the industrial revolution had enjoyed total self- sufficiency in energy resources (coal, then electricity). The advent of the internal combustion engine and oil fuel changed that situation. In the interwar period, oil was primarily a strategic product indispensable for waging war. But France and Great Britain had no oil. The Near Eastern settlement reached after the war was largely inspired by that new reality.
In large part, cartels controlled the oil industry, because of the size of investments and the desire to keep the selling price constant. The petroleum map of the Middle East was defined in the 1930s. In Iran, the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, now BP) held the monopoly on Iranian concessions. In Iraq, the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), a consortium made up of the Compagnie Française des Pétroles (precursor of the Total group), the British companies Shell and the AIOC, and American firms had received the concession. In the late 1930s, consortia comprising British and American companies began operating in the Gulf (Bahrain, Kuwait), while an American consortium undertook exploration of Saudi Arabia.
The British seemed to have a lock on the oil system (payments were made in pounds sterling), though the French and the Americans also participated. New “oil cities” appeared (Abadan in Iran, for example), true Western enclaves that adopted the model of the Universal Suez Ship Canal Company. As the importance of the Indian route declined (but not that of the junction between Europe and the Indian Ocean), the oil- producing Middle East, with its pipelines and refineries, became vital for the French and British empires, and the Americans also began to take an interest in the region.
The emerging reality went counter to the logic of European withdrawal, by creating a mutual dependence (of Europe on the region’s producers, and of these producers on Europe). Reza Shah was the first Muslim head of state to subject oil production profits to a test of strength. In the Arab world, petroleum revenues were still too recent and too small to change economic conditions. The identification between Islam and petroleum production was already being set in place. (The first version of Hergé’s comic book Tintin: Land of Black Gold, which also contained allusions to Palestine, appeared as a serial beginning in September 1939.)
What was called the “liberal Egypt” of the interwar period appeared in the first place to be the political expression of Muslim modernism, stemming from the reformism of the previous period. By establishing a modern education system in the process of Arabization, the country aspired to be the most active cultural center of the Arab world, or even of the Muslim world. But many disillusionments followed. The British intervened constantly, and the political system functioned poorly. In the name of Islam, King Fuad’s monarchy disputed the popular legitimacy of the majority party, the Wafd.
The abolition of the caliphate created a new situation. Until then, the “sultanates” had implicitly retained a Muslim dimension. That was not true of the “kingships” (mamlakat) that proliferated during and after World War I. The first was that of Sharif Hussein, whom the Allies recognized as king of the Hejaz. In Iraq, his son Faisal also took the title of king, and Egypt followed suit in 1923. But some Muslim thinkers did not believe in adopting a fully Western form of state. They began to evoke the specific nature of the Islamic state to be created.
In 1928, Hassan al- Banna created the Muslim Brotherhood, which rapidly spread throughout Egypt. Like Indian fundamentalists, the brothers saw Islam as an all- encompassing system of life, extending into the political realm. The fight for social justice went hand in hand with the battle (jihad) for the liberation of Muslim countries under foreign domination. The rejection of anything that “denies the teachings of Islam” implicitly included European culture. Very early on, the Muslim Brotherhood militated for the Palestinian cause and attacked the Jewish community of Egypt. It was the first to develop a form of anti- Semitism similar to European anti- Semitism.
Unlike the other Arab Muslim fundamentalist movements, often modeled on Anglo- Saxon Protestant organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission was to take power, by force if necessary, but its institutional program lacked clarity. The doctrine embraced a “Muslim” nationalism, giving rise to a conflict with Arab nationalism.
The political Islam of Hassan al- Banna revolted against what remained of European political domination, and beyond that, against the notion that the price of the Muslims countries’ emancipation would be the Europeanization of their political institutions and even of their social culture. Through his use of the political language of Islam, his puritanism, and his appeal for social justice, he seized on a powerful potential for popular mobilization.
Colonial North Africa
During the interwar period, North Africa remained the strong expression of colonialism and therefore found itself lagging behind the rest of the continental Muslim world, which was in the process of emancipation. Fascist Italy resumed in earnest the conquest of Libya, which had been halted by World War I. Once achieved, that conquest was accompanied by an attempt to establish settlement colonies. The “pacification” of Morocco continued apace, ending only in 1933. One hundred thousand Moroccans lost their lives in the process, along with twenty thousand French soldiers, half of them indigenous Moroccans.
In 1923, the Rif revolt, which began in Spanish Morocco, spread to the French protectorate. The “Rif Republic,” headed by Abd al- Krim, was both a tribal league and the forerunner of a modern state. It received the support of anticolonialists of various ideological persuasions. In 1925, Lyautey was replaced by Philippe Pétain, who crushed the revolt, at the cost of enlisting an army of 150,000 men. In 1926, Abd al- Krim was forced to surrender. He did not have the support of urban Moroccan society, which was anxious about the tribal and rural aspect of the movement.
In the terms of the French historian Daniel Rivet, the two protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco grafted an authoritarian technocracy onto a traditional state.7 In a collusion of interests, they rallied to their side the old government elites. At the same time, the two countries accepted fewer settlement colonies than Algeria.
The colonial contradiction quickly came to light. Modernization, urged on by the external ruler, created new social groups that protested against the colonizer, who tended increasingly to be supported by the most archaic structures of society. In Tunisia and then in Morocco, there emerged both a small elite that had received a modern education, and an increasingly large urban proletariat. The native people’s demand for political participation in the government, and even for independence, began to be formulated. It was taken up by college graduates who had opted for professional careers rather than public administration, where they felt they had no place beside the Europeans.
In Algeria, the participation of Muslims in World War I for a time created the impression that discrimination would be abolished. And indeed, the Clemenceau government considerably improved the legal status of the Muslims, but without abolishing the Native Code. Disappointment rapidly set in, despite the creation of the body of Muslim elected officials, who demanded full equality with the Europeans. In the 1930s, the Association of Muslim Ulemas made Islamic reformism a political program, rescuing Muslim and Arab identity from the temptation of Gallicization, but also setting aside the Berber heritage.
In France proper, the war had led to the permanent establishment of a proletariat of Algerian origin. Under the patronage of the French Communist Party, Messali Hadj’s Étoile Nord- Africaine moved from championing the anti- imperialist struggle to militating for Algerian independence.
The colonizer’s conduct became more hard- line in the 1930s. The centennial of the Algerian conquest and the Colonial Exposition of 1931 celebrated imperial glory. The settlers opposed any further expansion of the rights of the native peoples and applauded the repression measures taken against the nationalists. Only “liberal” elements, recruited from intellectual circles, repeatedly warned of the dangers of a violent confrontation between the races.
The Third Republic in decline had no clear course of action. The European elements in the protectorates pressed for the abandonment of “association” in favor of “assimilation,” inspired more or less by the Algerian model. But the administration was unable even to coordinate action in the three French possessions. (Algeria rejected anything that might entail falling under Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Colonies.) No one anywhere showed much inclination for developing a curriculum promoting Arab culture and the Arabic language. But even as the French sought to spread their own culture, they opposed bringing the native peoples into the French commonwealth. With the global crisis, it was the metropolis that kept the economy of its North African possessions afloat (Algeria included), while at the same time declaring that these possessions were a source of power. The North African rural exodus resulted in a constant migration of the labor force to the metropolis, a migration favored by the imperial structures and deplored by French demographers with eugenist leanings.
The Political Space of the Muslim World
Although the Great War had given the Europeans a sense that their civilization might be mortal, the appeal of their culture remained strong in the Muslim world. The essential transformation in that period was that the European model was no longer unique. For a time, the prestige of the victors consolidated the image of the liberal institutions. For the mandates, such institutions remained the price of admission to the League of Nations and the most prominent sign of modernity.
But the crisis of liberal democracies was already perceptible in the 1920s. The Soviet Union had spread the watchword of anti- imperialist struggle, which the various Muslim nationalist movements adopted. Moscow, however, held little attraction during that period. The Sovietization of what were becoming the “Muslim republics” of the Soviet Union occurred with extreme violence and produced a new exodus of residents, who dispersed throughout the Middle East (a small current settled in Europe as well). Kemalist Turkey and Reza Shah’s Iran maintained cautious relations with their powerful neighbor, who was still also their hereditary enemy. The first Turkish and Iranian Communists were considered traitors.
In the Arab East, the first Communists were recruited from among minorities (especially Jews and Armenians) and did not manage to make inroads in Muslim circles. The first labor unions were offshoots of the nationalist movements. Although some Muslim intellectuals had socialist leanings, they were more attracted to democratic socialism than to Bolshevism.
It was through the migration of Maghrebian labor to France that the Communists were able to reach the North African population. But relations between the French Communist Party and Étoile Nord- Africaine rapidly reached the point of collapse. Even as Messali Hadj radicalized his pro- independence discourse by giving it a more Islamic dimension, the Communists, in shifting toward anti- Fascism, found it indispensable to moderate their own anti- imperialist struggle in order to constitute popular fronts. Although some European intellectuals supported the anticolonial struggle, by far the majority current among the so- called progressive forces merely sought to correct the “abuses” of colonialism and not to abolish it. Only the North African settlers equated pro- independence nationalism with the international Communist movement.
European nationalism remained the most appealing element. Although the Italian nationalism of the Risorgimento had traditionally been a source of inspiration for the nationalist movements in the Arab world, there was considerable mistrust of Fascist Italy, because of its brutality in Libya and its proclaimed designs on the Mediterranean as a whole. Nazi Germany appeared more effective and less dangerous. In the Arab world, it was the beneficiary of the Germanophilia left behind by William II’s Germany. In the 1930s, the Fascist model seemed to be working much better than the tired liberal democracies in retreat all over Europe. Everywhere, nationalist youth movements adopted the garb of politicized European youth (blue or green shirts). But the borrowings remained superficial: above all, “the enemy of one’s enemy” was seen as a potential “friend.” The fact that, until the war, Nazism left the monopoly on Mediterranean policy to Fascist Italy fostered the mistrust.
In 1934, with the Arabic broadcasts of Radio Bari, Fascist Italy launched a propaganda war in the Arab world. In 1935 (the Italo- Ethiopian War), the attacks against British policy turned violent. In response, in January 1938 the BBC began to broadcast in Arabic as well. The network was particularly anxious to maintain its independence from the government. In March 1938, it was Nazi Germany’s turn for Arabic broadcasts.
Fascist Italy sought primarily to exploit the Palestinian issue in order to embarrass the British. It succeeded in that respect, but without creating a particularly favorable climate for its own cause. By contrast, the German broadcasts on the eve of war were openly anti- Semitic (even though Berlin was simultaneously encouraging the Jewish emigration to Palestine), but within the broader context of identifying the Jews with liberal democracy (plutocracy) and proletarian internationalism.
People tuned in to these broadcasts primarily because they broke the monopoly on information that the Franco- British had held in the Middle East.