November 5, 1914; War Comes to the Middle East

One hundred years ago today, Britain and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Russia had done so three days earlier, and its troops crossed the border in what became known as the Bergmann Offensive in the Caucasus, which I'll discuss soon.. As I noted yesterday, on November 3 Britain jumped the gun and anticipated its declaration of war by two days by shelling the forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles. On November 6, it would land forces in Mesopotamia.

Authors writing from a western European perspective often would characterize the great War in the Middle East as a "sideshow" of the horrors of the Western Front, and outside the region itself few people know much about it. Everybody knows Lawrence of Arabia (or at least Lawrence of Arabia, the David Lean film), and thus something about the Arab Revolt. Australians and New Zealanders know Gallipoli, and the exploits of the Light Horse in Palestine, but only Turks remember the hard, slogging, snowy war in the Caucasus. Even British memory has tended to forget the mass surrender at Kut.

Yet every student of the Modern Middle East knows that this is the era that gives us the creation myth of most modern nation-states in "our" region. The postwar settlement, usually and incorrectly attributed to "Sykes-Picot" (whose map would be largely unrecognizable today) created the Middle East we know today. To quote David Fromkin's wonderful title of his book on the subject, "the war to end all war" ended with "A Peace to End All Peace." (The original joke was made in 1066 and All That, referring to Versailles, but Fromkin gets credit for applying it to the Middle East.)

In the coming days, weeks, and months (and given the opportunity, till 2018), I plan to take the "historical and cultural context" mission of this blog literally and (being a historian by training), retell or, when possible, tell mostly forgotten aspects of the war that forged the Middle East we know today. Since, except for the Caucasus and Mesopotamia, which we'll be discussing soon, the actual battle fronts took some time to develop, I'll also be looking at the strategic calculations and war plans of the various belligerents. Stay tuned.

A Century Ago: Turkey Closes the Straits, Declares Shatt al-‘Arab Inland Waters

In July and August, I posted a lengthy series of posts dealing with the seizure of Turkish dreadnoughts by the Royal Navy on the eve of the European war in 1914 (see here), the flight of the German battle cruiser and cruiser Goeben and Breslau to Constantinople and their incorporation in the Turkish fleet, and the secret German Treaty of Alliance between the Ottoman Empire and the German Reich (Part I; Part I; Part III; and Part IV). Even at the end of all that, Turkey maintained its officially neutral status, despite its Navy now being under German officers. Throughout September, as Turkey mobilized, the Western powers continued to believe that Turkey's allegiance was still undetermined. No one was eager to force the issue, since the Turkish Straits were Russia's lifeline.

Early in September, Constantinople announced that it was unilaterally terminating the system of Capitulations, under which Western consulates exercised extraterritorial rights over their own citizens in Ottoman territory. This was strongly protested by all the European powers, Germany and Austria included.

German (now Turkish) Admiral Souchon, whom we met in my earlier postings, was chafing at the bit, eager to sail against the Russian Black Sea Fleet, but the Turkish Cabinet remained divided, Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha still trying to cut a deal with the Entente Powers, and War Minister Enver Pasha enthusiastically backing Germany. During this period, Germany reinforced its presence in Turkey by sending military men in civilian clothing by train or by boat down the Danube through still-neutral Romania and Bulgaria.

A century ago this weekend, Turkey would take another major step towards Ottoman belligerency, moving to close the Dardanelles to the shipping of the Allied (Entente) Powers, and also declaring the Shatt al-‘Arab between Ottoman Iraq and Qajar Iran as home waters closed to foreign shipping. Of these moves, (along with the closure of the waters around Smyrna/Izmir), the closure of the Dardanelles was the most provocative by far, being in direct violation of treaties and yet another violation (after the Goeben and Breslau) of Turkey's officially proclaimed neutrality.

But I misspeak. Turkey did not close the Strait. A local (German) commander did so.

Rear Admiral Carden

Late on September 26 or early on September 27 a Turkish warship armed with torpedoes, called a destroyer in some accounts and a torpedo boat in others (but with the ability to sink other ships either way), passed out of the Dardanelles into the Aegean. The British flotilla that had pursued the Goeben and Breslau remained in the Mediterranean to prevent their escape and was now under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Sackville Carden, who had replaced Admiral Milne after the escape of the Germans.

Carden's squadron intercepted the Turkish vessel and discovered German sailors on board. They were determined not to let sailors of  belligerent pass, branded it  violation of Turkish neutrality, and required the vessel to return to Turkish waters. Carden apparently had the approval of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, but not of the British Foreign Office.

Erich Paul Weber (Weber Pasha)

The move would certainly not be well-received in Constantinople, but it didn't matter: the German commander of the fortifications on the Asian (the term at the time was "Asiatic") side of the Strait, Erich Paul Weber (1860-1933), was an Oberst (colonel) of engineers and later General, commanding the XV Pioneer Army Corps at Kum Kale. he had been in charge of the fortifications along the Asian side of the Dardanelles and, apparently entirely on his own initiative and without consulting the Ottoman Government, Weber Pasha (as he was known in Ottoman service) closed and mined the Dardanelles.

(There is an intriguing historical family connection of Weber Pasha, which I'll blog about later today.)

Already the Strait had been lined with mines and international shipping had been required to request a Turkish pilot boat to lead them through the minefields. Now the entire channel was mined, signs erected on the coasts, and the guns in the fortifications authorized to be prepared to defend the passage. Russia was cut off from warm-water access to its allies. And neither for the first nor last time in this autumn of 1914, a German officer was determining the policy of the Ottoman Empire.

The Entente protested of course, especially Britain. The Grand Vizier played it down, told the British Ambassador that he personally favored reopening the Straits, that perhaps if the British Squadron could withdraw a bit further into the Aegean, not so close to Turkish waters ...

The British were also noticing other signs of Ottoman drift towards the Central Powers. Egypt, under British de facto control since 1882, was still nominally an Ottoman territory, and the British had detected  Ottoman patrols that appeared to be probing the defenses of the Suez Canal.

As the Turks ratified Oberst Weber's closure of the Straits, only the Grand Vizier's conciliatory talk allowed the British to retain their hope that Turkey could be wooed away from its German suitors. But at the opposite end of the Ottoman Empire, similar calculations were at work.

British India was of course the "Jewel in the Crown" of the Empire, and it was no secret the Germans hoped to spark a revolt there; an alliance with the Turkish Sultan might alienate Muslims throughout the Raj. German naval vessels were known to be headed toward the Indian Ocean. And with the Royal Navy converting from coal to oil, the oil concessions of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company at Abadan were increasingly important.

The Abadan oilfields are on an island that lies between the waterway (itself formed by the juncture of the Tigris and Euphrates) known in Arabic as the Shatt al-‘Arab (roughly, coastline of the Arabs) and in Persian as the Arvand Rud, and a channel from the Karun River to the Gulf. This waterway is one of the most contentious border disputes in history, throughout Ottoman-Iranian history and including the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. But that's a post for another day.

In 1914 the Ottomans had an arguable claim (probably voided by a recent treaty with Persia/Iran) to Abadan island. Qajar Iran had the better claim under treaties, but both were pretty theoretical since the island was controlled by the local Sheikh of Muhammara (today Khorramshahr: this is in Iran's largely ethnically Arab Khuzistan), and he had cut a deal with the British and was under British protection.

Though the British Government was was already charting out an occupation of Basra if Turkey entered the war, it tread gingerly at first, occupying Abadan island, which was not recognized generally as Ottoman territory. West of the island in the Shatt/Arvand, it placed a warship, HMS Odin, respecting Turkish neutrality.

The day after Turkey (or Col. Weber) closed the Dardanelles, the Ottoman Vali of Basra informed the British that the Shatt was now considered Turkey's inland waters and that foreign vessels must depart.

HMS Odin left soon thereafter. A British Indian Division would land in November, but only after the Ottomans were formal belligerents.

The status of the Shatt is debatable. The Turkish Straits are the subject of international treaties. Yet despite this, Turkey would remain officially neutral for another month.

Remembering "Mespot" and an Earlier Military Disaster in Iraq: The Surrender of Kut, 1916, Part I

Note: This is Part I of what will be (at least) a three part post.

Those who do not remember history, it is said, are condemned to repeat it. With Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, and various Kagans telling us why we need boots on the ground, many seem to assume Americans have severe short-term memory loss. One of the big mistakes in the Iraq war was the lack of understanding of Iraq's history. In early 2003, I spoke to a senior Pentagon planner and remarked that if we went in, I hope we didn't make the kind of mistakes that Britain made in 1920. This senior Pentagon official, just weeks before the war started, asked me what had happened in 1920.

I suppose he found out eventually: a widespread insurgency against the occupier, just like happened to us, and in many of the same places.

But 1920 was not Britain's worst moment in the Middle East. Kut was. It was to remain the largest surrender of British Empire troops in history, 12,000, until the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942. (For US readers: Cornwallis had 9,000 at Yorktown.) And it was the Ottoman Army, long derided as corrupt and untrained, representing the "Sick Man of Europe," that took their surrender. (Though earlier in 1915, those perceptions began to change, at least to those British and Anzac troops stuck in Gallipoli.)

The whole Mesopotamian Theater of Operations acquired the soldiers' nickname "Mespot," pronounced "mess pot," and a reminder of the usual perceptiveness of the ordinary infantryman.

There is a frequently quoted (though variously attributed) story of a dialogue by German or other generals about the British: "The British soldiers fight like lions." "Yes, but they are lions led by donkeys." When it comes to British generalship in Mesopotamia in 1915-16, that is a slur on a determined and reliable beast of burden. The main British general in question, Major General Sir Charles Townshend, managed to get his force totally surrounded and cut off, and a succession of other generals, one after the other, failed to relieve him. The story is largely forgotten, but the surrender was a huge defeat, and though Townshend himself would sit out the war in a nice Turkish villa and his officers were also well attended to in captivity, the Indian enlisted men died in huge numbers in less well-appointed Turkish prisons, often of starvation.There are even some celebrity cameos, including T.E. Lawrence (not yet a celebrity and not yet "of Arabia"), as "the Negotiator."

Dramatis Personae

Townshend

Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend came from a military and political family; his great-great-grandfather, George, First Marquess Townshend, had served in the Seven Years' War, was third under Wolfe at Quebec, and after Wolfe's death and Monckton's wounding, took command. He rose to the rank of Field Marshal. Apparently the Field Marshal gene didn't pass down. The younger Townshend's memoir of the war is even more divorced from other accounts than most generals' memoirs, which are always self-serving, but more about that anon.

When Turkey entered the war, the India Office felt that it would be wise to seize the oilfields north of Basra for the war effort. Led by the British Indian Army combined with the Royal Navy's dominance in Gulf and Indian waters, Britain moved to seize Basra and its oil-laden hinterland. It was, to use a term from a later era, a cakewalk.

Basra was taken in November 1914, less than a month after Turkey formally became a belligerent and six months before Gallipoli, and the largely absent Ottoman resistance led to overconfidence and, in time, what a future generation would call "mission creep."

Overlooking the fact that the Royal Navy could hardly operate in force on the Tigris and Euphrates, it was decided to use the Army to take Baghdad. It could have worked; British and Indian troops in the overall theater greatly outnumbered Ottoman; Turkey was preoccupied in Gallipoli, the Caucasus front with Russia, and Sinai-Palestine. But the Turks had interior lines of communication, some decent commanders and experienced troops, and, in this theater, General Feldmarschall Colmar Freiherr [Baron] von der Goltz (Goltz Pasha) of the German Army. Von der Goltz, who had trained the Ottoman Army since the 1870s, had been recalled from retirement at the beginning of the war, and sent to his old Ottoman turf. But he did not get on well with the head of Germany's Military Mission in Turkey, Gen. Liman von Sanders, and also was not a favorite of the Minister of War, Enver Pasha. Von der Goltz was accordingly stuck in what looked initially to be  backwater theater of the war, Mesopotamia.

Field Marshal von der Goltz

But whatever his flaws, Goltz was a Prussian Field Marshal who had joined the Prussian Army in 1861 (over 50 years before), served against Austria in 1866 and in the Franco-Prussian War, taught military history in the Prussian and later Imperial German military academy, and trained the Turkish Army during and after the Russo-Turkish war. And whatever Enver or Liman von Sanders may have thought of this 70-year-old man, a Prussian Field Marshal of the old school was still a Prussian Field Marshal of the old school.

Nureddin Pasha

From April 1915 the Ottoman military commander had been Nureddin Ibrahim Pasha (known as Nurettin Paşa in modern Turkish orthography), who took command of the Iraq Area Command when his predecessor committed suicide. A member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, the "Young Turks") and a multilingual figure with experience in the Arab provinces and a command of Arabic, he was the commander when Townshend began his advance.

Khalil Pasha

Nureddin Pasha's superior in Baghdad, and later successor at the front, was Khalil Pasha (later known as Halil Kut in modern Turkish, since he took his greatest victory as a surname).

An uncle of Enver Pasha, Khalil Pasha has also long been accused in complicity and active involvement in both the Armenian and Assyrian massacres. As governor of Baghdad Province and from April of 1916 commander of the Ottoman Sixth Army, he would be the man to accept Townshend's surrender. He would lead an interesting life in Moscow and Berlin until returning to Turkey after the Republic in 1923; he lived until 1957.

Gen. Sir John Nixon, upstaged by his hat

These were the frontline commanders. But Townshend's superiors were hardly Marlboroughs or Wellingtons either. Lieutenant General Sir John Eccles Nixon, Commander-in-Chief of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force, had gained most of his military experience in the Second Afghan War and other British Indian conflicts around the periphery of the Raj. His experience seems to be all colonial Indian, except for a cavalry command in the Second Boer War. He was not a match for a Prussian Field Marshal van der Goltz, even if Goltz was 70.

Aylmer

Nixon's first effort to relieve Townshend would be led by Sir Fenton John Aylmer, 13th Baronet of Donadea.

He had won the Victoria Cross in a local campaign in India and, as a baronet, obviously had clout in society. He was less impressive in he field, and was soon turned back by the Turks. (The details will be recounted in the future parts of this post.)

Lt. Gen Sir Percy Lake

After Aylmer's failure, Nixon himself was replaced with Lt. Gen. Sir Percy Lake, who had mostly colonial experience and had served as Chief of the Canadian General Staff, though not Canadian. His knighthood dated from early 1916 as he was being posted to save Townshend.

Gorringe

When Lake took command, he tried another relief mission: General George Gorringe replaced Aylmer, and had slightly more military success, but still failed to relieve Townshend. Gorringe may have been a better general, but he still fell short.

In the end, Townshend surrendered, and all these British generals were sacked, kicked upstairs, or otherwise shunted aside. General Maude, who both succeeded to authority and succeeded in the field, is a story for another day.

But while I've introduced the dramatis personae, I still need to tell the tale. Please stay tuned.

Memorializing Queen Victoria in the Gulf

An interesting historical aside has been posted by the British Library: correspondence with British Resident Agents around the Gulf at the time of the death of Queen Victoria in 1901: "The Death of Queen Victoria: the Politics of Mourning and Memorialisation in the British Persian Gulf."

On a Bloody Morning: January 25, 1952 (Police Day), 2011 (the Revolution) and Now

The latest car bombing in Cairo, at Police Headquarters in Cairo's Bab al-Khalq neighborhood,  which augurs no good, reminds us that Saturday is January 25. It is Egyptian Police Day, the 62nd anniversary of a landmark day in Egypt's struggle against the British, and also the third anniversary of the beginnings of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 (inspired by the Tunisian Revolution, Egyptian protesters deliberately chose Police Day to launch their protests).

The original Police Day celebrated the Police confrontation, not with Egyptian protesters, but with the British. As I noted in last year's post:

The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 had provided for British withdrawal of its troops from Egypt, except for bases in the Suez Canal Zone for the protection of the Canal, but with the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain had invoked a clause allowing it to reoccupy Egypt. After the war British troops did withdraw to the Canal Zone, but kept force levels well above the 10,000 troops allowed in the treaty. After the Wafd Party, Britain's traditional nationalist rivals, won the 1950 elections, the Egyptian government in October 1951 unilaterally abrogated the treaty and demanded that Britain negotiate for its withdrawal.

The Cold War was in full swing and Britain (and behind it the US) were already engaged in a struggle with Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq over Iranian oil, and now faced a challenge to the Suez Canal. The Wafd, and its other traditional rival the King, were both losing influence in Egypt to growing social and economic dissatisfaction and the growth of movements with their own disciplined and sometimes armed militias, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Communists, and others.

The Egyptian government decided to sanction the creation of "Liberation" squads, recruited from vlunteers (many from the Brotherhood), who began a guerrilla war against the British in the Canal Zone. The British responded with proactive moves against the "terrorists," and on January 21 entered Egyptian quarters of Ismailia seeking to uproot the Liberation squads. After coming into conflict with Egyptian police, on the 25 the Lancashire Fusiliers surrounded the Ismailia police headquarters.

The Egyptian Interior Minister, Fuad Seraggedin Pasha (who would survive to head the New Wafd in the 1970s and 1980s), ordered the police in Ismailia to resist the British Army, a dubious decision which, after a six hour siege, left some 50 policemen dead. This video, apparently a British newsreel (there's no sound at least in this version), shows aspects of the British operation, including rounding up prisoners:

Let me also rerun that video:
The next day, the 26th, was Black Saturday. More on that later today or perhaps Monday.

About Those Awful Russian Photographers ... and Golf on the Pyramids

Just last month we were all linking to wonderful photos taken by Russian photographers who had climbed to the top of the pyramids, which is illegal despite people having been doing it for oh, 4,500 years (give or take a few); the government screamed, the photographers apologized, and everyone loved the photos.  It's been said that in colonizing the Spanish went where they could find gold, the French and Russians where they could find furs, and the British . . . well, this photo suggests that they went where they could find the ultimate golf tee:

Now, I'm no golfer, though I hope he's using a driver if he hopes to hit the Chephren pyramid. My parents made me take golf lessons as a kid and, like most forced lessons, it soured me on the game forever. But, I wonder if this isn't a picture golfers shouldn't venerate right up there with, of course, the ultimate golfer's dream, hitting a golf ball on the moon: Astronaut Alan Shepard hit two on February 6, 1971:

Vanished States: The Four Month Life of the Syrian Arab Kingdom

A couple of months back I posted about the short-lived (slightly over a year) Republic of Hatay in 1938-39. Today I thought I'd talk a bit about an even more evanescent 20th century Middle Eastern state.

The photo at left may be recognizable to many of you. That is Faisal ibn al-Hussein (1885-1933), and since he was King of Iraq from 1921 until his death, the crown leads one to assume this shows him in that role. But look closely at the flags. Those are not Iraqi flags. One's first instinct is to assume that they are Jordanian flags, due to the seven-pointed stars in the triangular field. But the Jordanian flag's horizontal stripes are black-white-green with white in the middle; these have the white stripe at the bottom (they are in fact black-green-white). In fact, they predate the creation of [Trans-]Jordan. So what are the flags and why are they adorning a portrait of Faisal?

These are the flags of the Arab Kingdom of Syria, which crowned Faisal as its King in March of 1920 and collapsed under French conquest four months later. Here's the Royal Standard version of the flag:

Arab Kingdom of Syria Royal Standard

After the fall of Damascus in World War I, General Allenby allowed Faisal's forces to proclaim an Arab state, though the Sykes-Picot agreement had reserved Syria as a French sphere of influence.  Throughout 1919 Faisal, Britain, and France sparred over the future at the Paris Peace Conference, which Faisal attended. The US set up the King-Crane commission to determine the will of the inhabitants; and found they wanted independence. But the British and French cut a deal: Britain got the Mandate over Palestine/Jordan and added Mosul to Iraq, in return for unrestricted influence for France in Syria and Lebanon. Faisal was left hanging to cut whatever deal he could with the French. British forces, which had protected Faisal in Damascus, were to be withdrawn from Syria.  In January 1920, Faisal negotiated an agreement with the French but had to scrap it when his Syrian nationalist supporters rejected it.

In March of 1920, the Syrian National Congress declared the Arab Kingdom of Syria, a constitutional monarchy with Faisal as King and  Hashim al-Atassi as Prime Minister. Though it did not control all the territory, it claimed to embrace today's territories of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, and the Hatay and Cilician regions now part of Turkey. Meanwhile the San Remo conference confirmed Syria as a French Mandate.

Proclamation of Faisal as King of Syria, March 1920

The Syrian Kingdom was more or less doomed from the start. The League of Nations, Britain and France had all aligned against it, and despite the King-Crane Commission, Faisal's hopes that the United States might come to his aid were disappointed; President Wilson's illness had left the US without clear leadership, and rejection of the League by the US had sent the US back into isolationism. Though it managed to issue some coinage, and remains a point of pride for Arab nationalists and supporters of the Hashemites, it was doomed.

Coins of the Syrian Kingdom

Gen. Yusuf al-Azma

The Franco-Syrian War of 1920 was the result. The French forces under Henri Gouraud met the Syrian Kingdom's Army under Defense Minister Gen. Yusuf al-Azma  on July 23, 1920 at Maysalun west of Damascus. The French easily defeated the Syrians, and General al-Azma was killed. The next day the French besieged Damascus, which quickly fell.

Gouraud reviews French troops at Maysalun

Syrian Kingdom troops at Maysalun

Maysalun became a symbol of Arab resistance to colonialism; Sati al-Husri wrote a well-known book about it. The short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria became a symbol of emergent Arab nationalism and a rallying point during uprisings against the French in the 1920s.

The British, of course, found a consolation prize for Faisal by making him King of Iraq. When his brother Abdullah showed up in Amman intending to fight the French, the British created Transjordan for him. The Hashemites, having lost the throne of Syria in 1920, lost the Hejaz in 1925 and Iraq in 1958, but Abdullah's great-grandson still rules in Jordan.

Queen Visits Aden in 1954: "a Model of Colonial Development"

Since this is Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee year marking 60 years on the throne, a reminder of what the world (and she) looked like in the early years: an old Pathé newsreel of the Queen visiting Aden ("a model of colonial development") back in 1954.

When Tangier Was British

Pursuing one of my non-Middle Eastern interests I was reading a bit in colonial Virginia history, dealing with the well-known colonial governor Alexander Spotswood, who was much involved in the expansion of the Old Dominion beyond the mountains in the early 1700s, and tried to name every river in the colony for his sovereign, Queen Anne. Hence we still have the North Anna, the South Anna, the Fluvanna, the Rivanna, and the somewhat disguised Rapidan, which started life as the Rapid Ann. Yes, he was a bit of a brown-nose, though he did name Spotsylvania County after himself, though Latinized. But I also noticed something in his biography that I don't recall encountering before: he was born in Tangier in 1676

Why was an Englishman of semi-aristocratic background born in Tangier? Because his father was Surgeon to the British Garrison in Tangier. What British Garrison in Tangier? Well, that's the occasion for one of my obscure historical diversions. The beautiful Moroccan city of Tangier was indeed a British colony from 1661 to 1684.

It seems when Charles II married the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, he got Tangier as part of the dowry, along with Bombay. Portugal had held Tangier since 1471. The colony proved expensive to maintain, and Parliament suspected the whole venture as part of the Stuarts' Catholic leanings. And to make things interesting, the British took over just as Morocco was being reunited under the reign of the Alaouite Dynasty, which still rules today. The second Alaouite Sultan, Moulay Ismail, besieged the town, and eventually the British evacuated (Samuel Pepys was along for some reason), destroying the harbor as they left.

Spotswood was not the only one to end up in America after Tangier became Moroccan again: one senior official went on to become governor of a new colony the Stuarts had just seized from the Dutch. They renamed it New York.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Tangier

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Spotswood

The Grand Hotels of Egypt in the Golden Age of Travel

From the Oxford University Press Blog: a conversation with an author of a book about Egypt's grand hotels in the golden age: The Grand Hotels of Egypt: In the Golden Age of Travel. (Note: "Travel," not "Tourism." There was a difference.)  Of course with Shepheard's burned in 1952 the grandest of the grand is long gone, but some of the others still survive: it's neighbor the Windsor, now known mainly for its barrel bar, and the once grand Cecil in Alexandria, Old Winter Palace in Luxor and Old Cataract in Aswan; the book apparently uses lots of old photographs and such. It should be worth a look. I'll confess a lingering romantic attachment to the leftovers of Empire; the tendency to feel that Agatha Christie (or is it Somerset Maugham?) is having tea across the way, or some other echo of a lost era. I also know, of course, that the Imperial visitors were blind to the countries around them and the people who served then their tea. Besides the great ones in Egypt there are other relics I've visited such as the King David in Jerusalem, the Peninsula in Hong Kong or Raffles in Singapore, and doubtless many more in the Subcontinent that I don't know. Anyway, it sounds like a book worth seeing.

A Far Cry from 1956: Port Said Shunned, Ostracized by Other Egyptians

Since the football massacre in Port Said at the beginning of this month, the Suez Canal city has found itself the subject of opprobrium from the rest of the country, taking the brunt of the blame for the disaster in which 74 people died, though others place the blame on the security forces' inaction or the Ultras from both teams. The result has been a boycott of Port Said, leaving shops and coffeehouses deserted, and the city struggling economically to the point that the government has sent in supply convoys from Cairo. Details are provided by Ahram Online here, and earlier and with more details on Port Said in the Mubarak era, by blogger Zeinobia here. As Zeinobia notes, blaming the whole city for the football massacre seems extreme.

Both of these accounts note, and quote Port Said residents as also noting, that it was not always so. Port Said was long celebrated as the city at the center of resistance to the Anglo-French landings to seize the Suez Canal during the Suez War of 1956; Port Said resisted fiercely and became a patriotic symbol across Egypt to resistance to the "Tripartite Aggression" of Britain, France and Israel.

Later, after Israel occupied Sinai and the eastern bank of the Canal in 1967, the three Canal Cities (Port Said, Ismailia, Suez) became the front line. During the "War of Attrition" of 1967-71, Israel and Egypt exchanged artillery fire across the Canal until the Canal Cities were depopulated and largely destroyed.

After Israel withdrew from the Canal after the 1973 War and the Kissinger shuttles, the Canal Cities were rebuilt; under Anwar Sadat Port Said became a free trade zone and prospered. Under Mubarak the city did not do so well, and now, with the boycott, finds itself ostracized by the rest of the country.

To evoke a little of the memory of the 1956 invasion, however, here are two YouTube videos: one an Egyptian tribute to the city showing the resistance to the invaders (some scenes look staged and romanticized); the second is a British newsreel of Anglo-French occupation forces in Port Said after its fall.

Sometimes, Who Dares, Loses: the SAS Gets Caught

Just over a week ago I did a "Who Dares, Wins" post about the British SAS' successful extraction of oil workers from Libya. Lest I be accused of enabling SAS mythology, I should note the massive screwup they've apparently delivered the British government this time round. What's fair is fair, and when you roll the dice, sometimes you lose. And unlike Mission Impossible, the Director can't always disclaim all knowledge of your operation.

Admittedly, the operatives involved fell into the hands of friendlies, instead of the bad guys, so they're already on their way home on a Royal Navy ship instead of being Qadhafi's prize trophy hostages, but they still screwed up. Here's a rather detailed account of the mission that seems pretty credible. A Guardian account here. And, for more fun, the always entertaining Daily Mail has its account, the web version interspersed with many totally irrelevant photographs, but what the heck.

Remembering Egypt's Revolution of 1919

A little while ago on CNN Shibley Telhami noted that this uprising in Egypt is much more of a revolution than the so-called "Revolution of 1952," essentially a military coup by the Free Officers. The rioting on "Black Saturday" that year was more revolutionary, and — has anyone noted this? — Black Saturday was on January 26, while the current uprising started January 25!

But that's not my point here. A much better model for what we are seeing now is what Egyptians have always called the "Revolution of 1919" (thawra 1919), though many English histories follow the British colonial usage and call it an uprising. Like 2011, 1919 had no clear leadership and was largely a genuine popular uprising. It had its own flag, with the crescent and the cross to show both Muslims and Copts supported it, a symbol which the Wafd continued to use and which I've seen a variant of in at least one crowd scene in the past few days.

Saad (Sa‘d) Zaghloul, right, whose return to Egypt from exile in 1923 was the subject of my first Weekend Historical Video post, was the indirect cause; when the British exiled him and the Wafd Party leadership to Malta to prevent their participation in the Paris Peace Conference, Egyptians (and Sudanese) rose against British rule. Students, workers, religious figures and others rose in protest, and in the countryside there were bloody attacks against British facilities, troop trains, and individuals.

The British responded to the bloodshed, which lasted for months, by replacing High Commissioner Reginald Wingate with a military hero, Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, and sending an investigating commission under Lord Milner to study the situation. Though British accounts tend to see the rising as having eventually been put down, Egyptians note that the Milner Commission recommended an end to the Protectorate and thus the revolt led directly to the British declaring Egypt independent in 1922.

It was a limited independence; Britain retained troops in the Canal Zone and the right to deploy them elsewhere in wartime (as they did in World War II during the North African campaign). Sudan was made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium. But Zaghloul returned from exile and the Wafd swept to power.

The 1919 Revolution is little remembered today outside of Egypt, but it is probably a much better analog of the current uprising than the military coups of Ahmad ‘Orabi in 1881 or the Free Officers of 1952.

Note too that in both the pictures shown here (other than Zaghloul and the flag), women, though veiled, are highly visible.

:"Better Late Than Never" Department

Egypt's Minister of International Cooperation has met with the British Ambassador to talk about mine clearance assistance. Not in Sinai or the Bar-Lev Line, but around El Alamein. Apparently there have been some 10,000 casualties since the 1942 battle, due to the large number of uncleared mines.

The National on Remembering Wilfred Thesiger: One of those "Desert-Loving English"

"I think you are another of these desert-loving English: Doughty, Stanhope, Gordon of Khartoum. No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing."

— Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness) to T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia

A piece in The National on remembering Wilfred Thesiger, interviewing his biographer. Thesiger, the explorer of the Empty Quarter, was one of the last (at least in the old mold) of those desert-loving Englishmen.

It's telling that apparently Thesiger didn't like Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Oman when he returned to them in the 1970s. The old breed of explorer wanted to keep the quaintness and backwardness that had attracted them in the first place.

I never met Thesiger (though I know some who did), though he didn't die until 2003, or St. John Philby, or some of the other old Arabian hands. I have Arabian Sands on some shelf somewhere, and The Marsh Arabs too I think.

By most accounts Thesiger, like other desert-loving Englishmen, was eccentric to say the least, even reclusive when in civilization. But eccentricity, besides being valued by the English more than by most cultures (see the works of the esteemed anthropologist P.G. Wodehouse), seems to go with the attraction of the desert. Have you ever read Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta, which he tried to write in Spencerian English and who otherwise is mainly known for an epic poem, The Dawn in Britain, in Spencerian English of course though no one but his biographers has read it; or Palgrave, who traveled in Muslim disguise in Arabia though he was a Jesuit at the time (he later left the order, got married, and became a British diplomat). As for Lawrence and Gordon, well, even their greatest admirers admit to their idiosyncratic behavior: Lawrence's penchant for anonymity after the war while writing books that gained him fame; Gordon's religious attitudes which were, ah, very odd indeed (don't ever try to read his theories on Jerusalem unless you're particularly fond of folks who live in alternate worlds) . . . while the one woman in Prince Feisal's quote above, Lady Hester Stanhope, was mad as a loon. Sometimes called "the mad nun of Lebanon," she survived in part because of the Arab folk tradition that someone who is majnun, "crazy," is possessed by a jinni (genie; the plural is jinn); the words have the same root.

Simpler perhaps to say that the "desert-loving English" tend to be a bit dotty (or a bit Doughty — sorry) in their own way, though their ways may differ.

But the remembrance of Thesiger is a reminder of an earlier day, and the particular sort of Brit who was drawn to the Middle East in its "unspoiled" days but regrets Dubai's skyline no end. And it's also a reminder of how recent the days of exploration were: Thesiger did most of his in the 1940s and 1950s. As late as the 1960s Oman was largely known only to explorers and seconded British officers; Yemen was still a mystery to most of the world; Dubai's main commerce was gold smuggling and Abu Dhabi was a small port town.

Of a later generation and a Brit of less eccentric nature (though still eccentric enough for the British taste), I've posted before about my one meeting with J.B. Kelly.

UPDATED: I just called J.B. Kelly a Brit. He was, as I noted correctly at the linked post, a Kiwi by birth and upbringing, but British-educated and spent most of his career (save for some US years) in the UK. My apologies to any New Zealand readers, unless they don't want to claim him.

J.B. Kelly, 84: The Last Imperial Briton

My last posting was about the last Ottoman prince born under the Empire passing on. In a strange sense of irony, or synchronicity, the last real enthusiast for the British Empire in the Gulf is now gone as well. Here's the Daily Telegraph obituary for J.B. Kelly, dead at 84. He apparently died August 29 but this obit appeared yesterday. With him an age passes, in a sense, not one that needs much mourning, I fear. He was the last of the true defenders of British Empire in the Gulf.

As is so often the case with last-ditch defenders of defunct empires, he was a colonial himself: a Kiwi born in Auckland, New Zealand, and a British scholar by choice until the Reagan-era US beckoned and he spent considerable time on this side of the water. Oxford had become too soft for him. I'll let the Telegraph obit cover the details of the man; my own comments follow.

I only met Kelly once, having lunch with him in Washington once in the mid-1980s sometime. I forget why he was in Washington, though the obituary says he did a lot of work in the National Archives. I also forget who got us together, a mutual friend if I recall correctly, who may have joined us, but in retrospect I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet a true anachronism.

While I hardly agreed with his nostalgia for imperial Britain, he was so much a relic of a different age (though not that old at the time) as to be fascinating in his own right. As the Telegraph obit notes, those who lump Kelly in with Elie Kedourie or Bernard Lewis miss the point, because he was no apologist for Israel either: in his view, none of these foreigners could govern themselves as well as they'd been governed by Britain. (Or at least with British advice: he himself advised some of the local rulers after independence, though they didn't publicize it over much.) Unlike Lewis or Kedourie, I'm sure he yearned for the Palestine Mandate. I politely listened and discussed some of his particular specialties — he understood the bizarre little border disputes of the Gulf better than anyone, knew the tribes and their marital alliances and feuds as well as the old record-keepers of the palaces — and I felt, in a way, as if I'd met Curzon or Churchill or Percy Cox or maybe Sykes and Picot together, but totally out of the proper time frame. This was already the age of the Islamic Republic in Iran.

Since Edward Said's Orientalism has been under discussion recently what with our recent publication on the subject and other works, it's worth noting that J.B. Kelly could have been the poster villain for the book, though in fact his most egregious declaration of his views actually appeared after Said's book, in his 1980 Arabia, the Gulf and the West, published just after the Iranian Revolution and the other events of 1979. In true classic orientalist fashion he was, of course, a solid scholar; he knew every dispute over every palm tree in the UAE, understood Buraimi and the other disputes of the 1950s better than anyone, but never let his profound knowledge undercut his conviction that the West needed to continue to exercise imperial supervision over the Gulf.

I don't know what he thought of the Iraqi adventure. I'm not sure he ever really believed Americans were up to what Britain had done: I also knew a few of the last British civil servants who served on secondment to Oman, the UAE or other Gulf states in the independent period (a class largely gone now), and never met a one of them who liked Americans very much. Too nouveau, you know.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum: he's gone now and I won't criticize him in death. (Although much of what I've said here seems critical to most of us today, I don't think he'd have objected to a word of it. He was straightforward in his beliefs.) He was indeed the last of a breed. I'll let him speak for himself. The concluding paragraph of Arabia, the Gulf and the West was something of a valedictory to empire, but a yearning for a renewed determination. (And let me note that while some modern Islamophobes may seem to say something similar, they never do it with the profound knowledge of the region the old Imperials had.) The last few words may be the most outrageous of the whole book. The paragraph is long, but here are the key parts:

How much time may be left to Western Europe in which to perceive or recover its strategic inheritance east of Suez is impossible to foretell. While the pax Brittanica endured, that is to say, from the fourth or fifth decade of the nineteenth century to the middle years of this century, tranquility reigned in the Eastern Seas and around the shores of the Western Indian Ocean. An ephemeral calm still lingers there, the vestigial shadow of the old imperial order. If the history of the past four or five hundred years indicates anything, however, it is that this fragile peace cannot last much longer. Most of Asia is fast lapsing back into despotism — most of Africa into barbarism — into the condition, in short, they were in when Vasco da Gama first doubled the Cape to lay the foundations of the Portuguese dominion in the East . . . Oman is still the key to command the Gulf and its seaward approaches, just as Aden remains the key to the passage of the Red Sea. The Western powers have already thrown away one of these keys; the other, however, is still within their reach. Whether, like the captains-general of Portugal long ago, they have the boldness to grasp it is yet to be seen.

The captains-general of Portugal long ago! RIP J.B. Kelly, and an era. With your passing, may we truly sound Last Post for Empire?

In fact, let's just play Last Post — the British equivalent of Taps, which they played every time they ran the flag down in a colonial outpost, right now, for those Yanks who don't recognize it, and for all the flags run up when the Union Jack was run down; it's also a suitable farewell for a man who treasured an Empire now gone:

Last Post for Britain in Basra

The pictures of the British 20th Armoured Brigade playing last post and lowering the Union Jack and brigade flag in Basra today naturally evoke earlier scenes of the retreat of Empire. (Do watch the BBC video if you can, though when I first did I had to watch some English ladies discussing detergent before I could see the transfer of command. Perhaps you'll get a more appropriate commercial.) Given Britain's history in Iraq in the 1920s and again in 1941, their presence there always had associations that ours would not evoke. Iraqis are very conscious of Britain's history in Iraq, though I think many Americans were oblivious. The UK has now ended all combat operations in Iraq.

Off the subject of Iraq, but on the subject of that moving bugle call The Last Post, which is played when they run the flag down and is almost as sad as Taps: I'm always reminded of a modern folk song about the carnage on the Western Front in World War I by Australian singer Eric Bogle, variously called The Green Fields of France, or Willie McBride, or sometimes No Man's Land, and sung a lot in Irish pubs in America, the chorus of which runs:

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did they play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

For the 179 British soldiers who died in the Iraq War, it was the Last Post indeed, adding more red to that thin red line of heroes, who often died for the wrong causes. May the American flag be lowered with the same honor and as little shame as possible given some of the recent revelations, as soon as possible without jeopardizing Iraq further. And however we feel about the war, and I'm no fan of this one, let's thank Tommy Atkins for his service to Queen and Country. Today's British Army is a volunteer force that's come a long way since the Victorian era, but I suspect some of the men and women who fought in Iraq, with popular opinion at home usually against their presence there, may empathize with Kipling's verse:

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

I think the British role in Iraq was always unpopular at home, and given Britain's history in Iraq, provocative in Basra, but that doesn't change the fact that once again the (increasingly thinner) red line fought well (and you have to look hard to find the red flashes on a British uniform today), occupied pretty humanely, and lowered the flag with the Last Post, to go back home again. May they never need to return. And may we follow as soon as possible.

Kipling again, the poet laureate of Empire, but this time in Recessional, understood that Empire has its limits:

Far-call'd our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

Funny that Nineveh is in Iraq and Tyre in Lebanon.

It's time to play Last Post for Empire, I think. And Taps too.