‘Selling the same horse twice’

British strategic interests—one of their few major blunders, as they were later to realize to their great dismay.

Britain had been forced, through her relative weakness following the disastrous failure of the Gallipoli expedition in 1915, to grant France the oil concessions of the Mosul, in addition to recognition of previous French claims over the Levant. But Britain’s loss of the Mosul oil riches was only a temporary tactical expedient in her long-term designs to dominate world petroleum supplies, as we shall see.

’SELLING THE SAME HORSE TWICE’

The major embarrassment for Britain, when details of the secret Sykes–Picot agreement became public, was the simultaneous and directly contradictory assurances England had given Arab leaders, in order to secure Arab revolt against Turkish rule during the war.

Britain had gained the invaluable military assistance of Arab forces under Sherif Husain ibn Ali, the Hashemite emir of Mecca, and guardian of the Muslim holy places of Mecca and Medina. Britain had assured the Arab forces who served under the command of T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’) that the reward for their help in defeating the Turks would be British assurance of full postwar Arab sovereignty and independence. The assurances were contained in a series of letters from Sir Henry McMahon, Britain’s high commissioner in Egypt, to Sherif Husain of Mecca, then self-proclaimed leader of the Arabs.

Lawrence was fully aware of the British fraud to the Arabs at the time. As he admitted some years later in his memoirs,

I risked the fraud on my conviction that Arab help was necessary to our cheap and speedy victory in the East, and that better we win and break our word, than lose … The Arab inspiration was our main tool for winning the Eastern war. So I assured them that England kept her word in letter and spirit. In this comfort they performed their fi ne things; but of course, instead of being proud of what we did together, I was continually and bitterly ashamed.5

The loss of 100,000 Arab lives was part of this ‘cheap and speedy victory.’ Britain quickly betrayed her promises in a move to secure for herself the vast oil and political riches of the Arab Middle East. To add insult to injury, once publication of Sykes–Picot had revealed a contrary commitment to France in the Middle East, Britain