Reddit Reddit reviews The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism

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1 Reddit comment about The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism:

u/kerat · 2 pointsr/arabs

According to W.M. Roger Louis in The British Empire In the Middle East: 1945-1951, Britain made some outward pretences towards supporting Arab unity but was secretly acting against it due to fears that it would lead to anti-British policies.

>For example, R.M.A Hankey of the Eastern Department of the Foreign Office (an official who will figure prominently in discussions about British policy at the close of the war) reflected on the ways the British might best prevent a 'pan-Arab revolution' or, still worse, a 'fanatical' religious and military movement directed against Europeans comparable to the Mahdist rising [in Sudan]…. He wrote in Nov. 1943:

>"If we are not to produce a Mahdist or pan-Arab revolution, which will spread from wherever it breaks out to the whole Arab world, we must co-operate with the Nationalists in each country, even if they are difficult, in helping them along the road of constitutional progress towards independence and towards cultural, economic, and also possibly political unity in the Middle East."
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>This was the line of thought that lay behind the ambivalent British support of the Arab League which was formally established in March 1945. The encouragement was ambivalent because the British were aware that a pan-Arab political organisation might turn against them. The fostering of moderate Arab nationalism along the lines suggested by Hankey entailed a risk, but one that the British had to take.

p. 47


Head of the Egyptian Department, Daniel Lascelles, in 1947, p. 140:

>"Can we do anything about this Frankenstein of ours [ie. the Arab League] beyond trying to get rid of Azzam or put him in his place?….. the Egyptians have very little readl title to call themselves Arabs at all… if the upshot [of British intervention] were the disruption of the League, how much would we care? Has the League been so useful to us hitherto …? Egypt is never likely to be a friend of ours; and, to the extent to which the other members of the League fall foul of her through being induced to support us against her, they will become more dependent upon us."
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>Lascelles in short believed that the British should break the Arab League and return to sounder principles of an earlier day. "Divide et impera is still a good maxim, though much blown upon of late."
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>The British sometimes believed that the 'oriental mind' harboured poisonous anti-western thoughts. There was enough venom in the pen of Daniel Lascelles to match that of his Egyptian adversaries. "Of course," Lascelles wrote, the Arab League's hostility to the British was "due to the fact that the League is in the pocket of Egypt and Azzam."


Roger Louis writes about 3 main issues, if I recall correctly -

  • Britain looked at pan-Arabism as a unity of a single race, similar to European nationalism. British officials never understood that the Arab world is a very heterogeneous mix of culturally and linguistically united people.

  • British policy was ambivalent to the Arab League because of French and Russian competition.

  • The Arab League itself was riddled with competition from its main figures like Nuri al-Said and Azzam Pasha and others, but more importantly between Egypt (supported by Saudi and Lebanon), and Syria and the Hashemites


    Also, Lascelles was a rabid racist. He was the head of the Egyptian department but wrote repeatedly about the inferiority of "the Egyptian race". He claimed that anti-British attitude was caused by "the acute inferiority complex of an essentially cowardly and underbred race which we have had to sit on in the past"