Sykes-Picot: Carving up the Middle-East

Summary

In this Empire Podcast episode, the hosts delve into the intricacies of the famous Sykes-Picot Agreement, which marked a pivotal chapter in Middle Eastern geopolitics. The episode explores the dubious dealings and obliviousness of British and French diplomats who, in 1916, casually divided the Middle East with little regard for local demographics or cultural landscapes. Through in-depth analysis and interviews, listeners are exposed to the historical blunders and their enduring consequences, such as geopolitical tensions and the perpetual Middle Eastern conflicts.

Highlights

• The Sykes-Picot Agreement symbolizes the cavalier attitudes of Western powers toward the Middle East during World War I. 🌍
• The agreement was clandestine, involving a 'coloring in' exercise with crayon lines across the map to decide territories. 🎨
• Sykes claimed linguistic prowess in Arabic and Turkish but was largely bluffing, showcasing the superficial expertise of the era’s diplomats. 📜
• The agreement was only revealed to the world by the Russian Revolution, showcasing how secrecy shrouded these diplomatic dealings. 🔍
• Today's Middle Eastern conflicts can trace roots back to the capricious decisions made under the Sykes-Picot Agreement. 🕰️

Key Takeaways

• The Sykes-Picot Agreement showcases imperial greed and ignorance, as powers carved up the Middle East without local insight or consent. ✂️
• British diplomat Mark Sykes and French diplomat François Georges-Picot were pivotal in shaping modern Middle Eastern borders with crayon lines on a map. 🗺️
• This agreement serves as a historical lesson on the folly of imposing arbitrary borders without considering ethnic and cultural realities. 🤔
• The podcast connects the dots from past to present, highlighting how early 20th-century decisions echo in today's geopolitical landscape. 🔄
• Sykes and Picot's decisions underscore the complex web of diplomacy and deceit which often underpins international agreements. 🤝

Overview

In the latest episode of the Empire Podcast, hosts Anita and William take us on a journey through the tumultuous and often secretive process of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This early 20th-century accord between Britain and France is scrutinized for its role in shaping the modern Middle East, a testament to the shortsightedness and disregard of Western powers for local complexities.

Listeners are introduced to key figures like Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, whose now-infamous secret negotiations split the region without thought for the native populations. Through detailed discussions and expert interviews, the episode exposes the agreement's flaws and the deceptive practices that defined it.

The podcast doesn't stop at history; it connects these early blunders to current geopolitical realities. As the hosts unravel this tale of imperial folly, the episode leaves us pondering the enduring influence of arbitrary borders and the ever-relevant lesson of considering cultural and ethnic contexts in global politics.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Sykes-Picot Agreement Overview In the introduction to the topic of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the document is described as both astonishing and controversial. It highlights the role of greed, suspicion, and stupidity in its formation. The agreement is criticized for its duplicitous nature, setting the tone for a discussion that will delve into the broader implications and historical context of this agreement. Anita Arnen introduces the episode alongside her co-presenter, emphasizing the significance of understanding the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
• 03:00 - 06:00: George Antonius's Quote and Discussion The chapter discusses a powerful quote from George Antonius, a significant Palestinian nationalist leader. The conversation aims to explore Antonius's influence and role, comparing him to David Ben Gurion as a political leader. However, unlike Ben Gurion, Antonius did not succeed in leading the Palestinians effectively. The podcast intends to delve deeper into Antonius's contributions and the reasons behind his inability to lead successfully.
• 06:00 - 12:00: Mark Sykes and His Background The chapter introduces Mark Sykes, focusing on his reaction to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a notable event in imperial history. The agreement exemplifies how regions like the Middle East were divided by influential figures with limited personal experience of the area. This context sets the stage for discussing the impact of such historical moments.
• 12:00 - 17:00: Francois Georges-Picot and His Background The chapter discusses Francois Georges-Picot and his role in the division of the Middle East. While he is said to have knowledge of Turkish and Arabic, he likely knew very little. The chapter suggests that the agreements he was part of laid the groundwork for the current geopolitical borders in the region, despite not being identical to today's map. The narrative implies that many of the Middle East's issues can be traced back to decisions made by Picot and another individual, highlighting the impact of external influence on the region's fate.
• 17:00 - 25:00: British-French Negotiations and Objectives The chapter provides an insight into the British-French negotiations and objectives during the partitioning of territories, likely focusing on the Middle East. It draws parallels with the partition of India and Pakistan, highlighting the arbitrary decision-making process by individuals unfamiliar with the region's intricacies. The narrative underscores the feelings of confusion and betrayal resulting from such historical decisions.
• 25:00 - 30:00: Sharif of Mecca and His Role The chapter discusses the historical context of the conflict between India and Pakistan, tracing many contemporary issues back to the partition. It highlights the role of the Sykes-Picot agreement in creating these enduring conflicts.
• 30:00 - 37:00: British Cabinet Decisions and Edward Grey The initial discussion revolves around a book titled 'A Line in the Sand' by James Barr, which explores the British and French influence in shaping the Middle East. The speaker highlights how, contrary to common principles of establishing nations—such as considering demography, geographic barriers, and economic viability—none of these factors seemed to concern the British decision-making process, particularly under the influence of Edward Grey and the British Cabinet.
• 37:00 - 43:00: Sharif Hussein's Expectations and Misunderstandings The chapter discusses the expectations and misunderstandings of Sharif Hussein, focusing on geopolitical boundary drawing in the early 20th century. It highlights the lack of established frontiers during British involvement and the arbitrary drawing of borders, depicted as a pencil crayon line hastily drawn on a map. This historical context is essential for understanding the geopolitical issues of the time.
• 43:00 - 53:00: Sykes-Picot Map and Division of Middle East The chapter discusses the historical context and implications of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Middle East during World War I. It begins with a personal reflection on why the author, who previously wrote about Lawrence of Arabia, was drawn to this topic. Lawrence was notably anti-French, which influenced his perspectives and actions during the war. The chapter touches upon his role in Cairo at the onset of World War I.
• 53:00 - 58:00: Russian Involvement and Revelation of Agreement The chapter explores the theme of Russian involvement and the revelation of an agreement between Britain and France. It introduces the upcoming discussions with experts in military intelligence, highlighting Anthony as the next guest. The focus lies on the tension and anti-French sentiment present in the backdrop of British and French interactions, emphasizing the unexpected regions affected by their dynamics.
• 58:00 - 62:00: Legacy and Impact of the Sykes-Picot Agreement The chapter examines the legacy and impact of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The narrative begins by discussing the personalities involved, specifically highlighting the intriguing personas of Sykes and Picot, whose photographs left a strong impression on the author. This interest in the images and figures involved in the agreement led the author to delve deeper into the historical events surrounding its outcome and its significant implications on subsequent developments.
• 62:00 - 66:00: Conclusion and Next Episode Preview The chapter discusses the historical figure Sir Mark Sykes, known for the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The conversation highlights the contrast between two individuals in terms of their facial features and attire, using a humorous comparison. The focus then shifts to the British side of the historical context, starting with Sykes, who is described in relation to his full name and background, specifically mentioning Sledmere House.

Sykes-Picot: Carving up the Middle-East Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] the Sykes Pico agreement is a shocking document it is not only the product of greed at its worth that is to say of greed Allied to suspicion and so leading to stupidity it also stands out as a startling piece of double dealing hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita arnen and me
• 00:30 - 01:00 William durable now that is quite a powerful quote but what is he going on about well we're hoping to explain this in the podcast first of all William who who is that quote from that quote is from the great Palestinian nationalist leader George Antonius who in many ways was the sort of early Palestinian version of what David Ben Gurion would successfully become the political leader of of the Palestinians the one though who who failed to take the Palestinians
• 01:00 - 01:30 to statehood and this was his reaction on discovering the Sykes Pico agreement which is what we're going to be talking about today which is I mean it's one of those classic moments in imperial history which in a sense the very reason that we're doing this entire podcast where the Middle East is sort of stitched up by a bunch of people who share the same Club in London who are Chums who have very little personal experience of the Middle East Sykes who is the main character we'll be talking
• 01:30 - 02:00 about today claims to have have Turkish and Arabic but probably has very little and he divides up the Middle East it doesn't actually become the shape of the map that we have today but it's the beginning of that process well I mean you know there's that old hackneyed expression all roads lead to Rome well all catastrophes in the Middle East seem to lead back to this one episode where two men in a locked room decide the fate of an entire region in which they do not live and in many ways you're going to I
• 02:00 - 02:30 think hear Echoes of of that sense of um confusion betrayal that happened over partition where again a man who didn't know an area is seated in front of a map in a sweaty place where he doesn't want to be but he has to solve this quickly and therefore just completely arbitrarily draws a line and it is literally a partition we are talking the partition of the Middle East here rather the petition of India and Pakistan but it is the same thing and just as uh we
• 02:30 - 03:00 have shown I think in our first series how the partition of India and Pakistan there's many ways the sowing the seeds of all the conflicts which still bedevil the region so I think you can put a great deal of the current violence anger statelessness of some people's the refugee status of others many many of these troubles come down to the fudge that was the Sykes Pico agreement well as you as usual when we have a thorny issue like that we like to call upon a big brain to come and lead us through
• 03:00 - 03:30 the Minefield and um well he's written an excellent book and I commend to you A Line in the Sand by James Barr Britain France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East James is with us and James just on very very basic basic tenets when you are trying to form a nation or even think about forming a national boundary there are certain things that should be right at the top of your head should be like demography maybe you know natural geographic barriers economic viability none of that mattered here did
• 03:30 - 04:00 it none of it at all none of it matters at all Anita you're absolutely right so they knew this even at the time if you read things that were written at the beginning of the 20th century British people who were involved in boundary drawing already knew that you had to have some sort of Frontier and in this case there was no such thing there was a pencil crayon line across a map drawn in in great haste and in some ways it's understanding that context the the fact
• 04:00 - 04:30 that it was a rush job that explains a lot of what happened was that James what Drew you to write about this because you've spent many years of your life unpicking this agreement and analyzing it in great detail in your amazing book what drew me in was that I had written a book already about Lawrence of Arabia and the thing that I didn't know about him was that he was very anti-french and it wasn't just him it was the people around him if you don't know anything about Lawrence he started the first world war in Cairo and he worked in
• 04:30 - 05:00 military intelligence there Lawrence will be our next episode in fact following on from you we got Anthony satted on next week so I don't want to I don't want to spoil himself his land James aside who knows loads about this so but there were lots of people there who were very anti-french and that was the thing that really interested me and so a line in the sound is a story really about Britain and France but it's about Britain and France in a part of the world where you didn't necessarily knew
• 05:00 - 05:30 know how how much they are responsible for what has happened since and in trying to explain you know how it ended up coming to blows there I started with Sykes Pico and I want to start with the personalities because I I always get drawn into any Story by just looking at pictures I think it's maybe the way I tumbled into writing my first book it was by an accidental view of a photograph but I became quite obsessed with these mustachioed Duo so I mean you've got you've got Sykes who he's just handsome very kindly face Patrician
• 05:30 - 06:00 again with this extraordinary uh Edwardian throwback uh mustache and Pico on the other side who's slightly harder faced sort of looks a little like a Skittle in a uniform with a with a less successful facial Furniture Arrangement but but let's start with Sykes let's start with the British side of this tell us about psych tell us this and let's first of all give him his full name because it's only Sykes of Sykes Pico to most people I mean Sir Mark Sykes uh of sledmere house I suppose is the best way
• 06:00 - 06:30 of putting him which is a beautiful beautiful house in in the Yorkshire walls it is well worth a visit let's start there it's a slightly funny looking place but it sits up on top of the Yorkshire walls and it's one of those country houses that slightly subverts the Country House genre in that when you go in there you start to see strange things that you wouldn't see in a in a country house like like little sort of Corgi sports cars on antique furniture and and stuff like that and that is that little um I remember when I went there it's almost 20 years ago now uh but you get
• 06:30 - 07:00 this little insight into the humor of the family this part of the the family and Mark's father sir Tatton was they were baronettes he was a baronet and he was an extremely unusual man whose interesting through the milk pudding Church architecture and the maintenance of his body at a constant temperature so he would go around putting on overcoats and taking them off to try and keep himself at 36 point something degrees tell us more about the milk pudding I
• 07:00 - 07:30 think that's probably as deep as my knowledge goes but he was the he was the the master of this of this country estate and and Mark was his only child and so Tatton had a very very uh ordin and increasingly difficult uh marriage to Jessica his wife who was pretty much half his age and when you go to sedmir today there's these amazing Persian tiles and these these these gorgeous orientalist rooms is that Mark that's Mark Mark inherited the baronazi uh
• 07:30 - 08:00 before the first world war and uh and he had already been traveling widely around the Middle East firstly with his father it was his father who inspired his interest in in that part of the world and he was essentially an adventurous tourist with plenty of money so he bought lots of souvenirs including those beautiful Turtles wonderful is Nick Tyler yeah no I mean just just drilling down to that so this is a man who has you know fondness for the Middle East but is he as he claims fluent in Arabic
• 08:00 - 08:30 and Turkish is he as he claims a man who can draw the map of the region on the back of his hand how much does he know about this area so the art the simple answer is no he couldn't speak Arabic or Turkish but he was one of those people who went round saying alhamdulillah and and whenever something good happened to him and and so he went into it there's a very famous cabinet meeting we'll come on to that but but he he left people in that room with the impression that he was fluent in both both languages and that he certainly was not okay well
• 08:30 - 09:00 actually I mean let's get into that cabinet meeting you've given us a beautiful tear up for it the meeting you're talking about it's the 16th of December 1915. uh behind that very famous black door at number 10. what is going on so they face uh the cabinet faces are very awkward crisis which they had not wanted um and they wanted to deal with as quick as possible and this was over the need to reach some kind of diplomatic arrangement with France over
• 09:00 - 09:30 the future of the Middle East if we're gonna go if we if we're trying to explain all this the background is Gallipoli so going right back everyone will know that the first world war was supposed to have ended by Christmas 1914 but of course it didn't and as that became clear at the end of 1914 a group of British politicians officials started to try and think of other ways to win the war they were called the easterners and the idea that they came up with was to attack the Turkish Empire the Ottoman
• 09:30 - 10:00 Empire land at Gallipoli which was all of 150 miles away from the capital Istanbul and and not the Turks out of the war and they thought that would be an easy job yeah we've had a whole podcast on Gallipoli just uh a few weeks ago so there we go and and in fact at that time initially the the clever idea was to land both at Gallipoli and at a place called alexandreta which is modern iskandarin so it's somewhere that's just been very badly affected by uh the earthquakes that's happened in Turkey it's the port that sits at the sort of
• 10:00 - 10:30 the kind of crook of where Syria joins turkey and it's a deep water port and it was very important and the British thought they would land there and and cut various Communications the railway the Telegraph and leave the Turks in in chaos and that would make their job at Gallipoli easier but it didn't happen because of French suspicions and this brings in the French side of things because Britain and France have been rivals in this part of the world for 100 years or more the French as soon as they
• 10:30 - 11:00 got wind of the Gallipoli idea their worst suspicions were raised they thought that Britain wasn't really interested in dealing with the war on the Western Front winning the war they were off on some kind of great Imperial adventure and so the psych Pico agreement grew out of this it was it was something that was made necessary to allay French suspicions in early 1915 but in the way of one of these sort of bureaucratic deals it it actually way outlasted Gallipoli Because by the time
• 11:00 - 11:30 it was signed at the end of 1915 and the mat was signed off in January 1916. there was no chance of Gallipoli ever succeeding that's fascinating so it's a kind of the Diplomatic and the kind of bureaucratic momentum is carrying on even as events are completely changed we're nowhere near knocking turkey out of the war total failure of Gallipoli massive defeat and yet the Committees are still grinding on drawing lines on maps and making Grand plans for the Post ottoman world and the lion the line on
• 11:30 - 12:00 the map now is it true again this is you can tell me if this is true or not that Sykes in this meeting this fateful meeting at number 10 says let's just draw a line from the e of acre through to the K of kirkuk and that's how we'll do it did he say that that's what the minutes say so the minutes of this meeting you know how often people you've actually got the minutes out and they do actually say that they they do say that because I mean I I once in a job I did wrote minutes and the aim was to keep them as Bland as possible and paper over
• 12:00 - 12:30 disagreement but the wonderful thing about this particular set of minutes is they look they certainly read like a Verbatim account so you get these wonderful snatches of of extraordinary dialogue including this phrase so the thing that Sykes went into that meeting knowing that they needed to reach a deal with the French and try to suggest something that he thought would work so he says he wanted a belt of English controlled country across the region running from the Mediterranean Sea right
• 12:30 - 13:00 up to the border with what was then called Persia and the idea was that would be a cordon that would keep all other comers as far away from India as possible which meant in this particular circumstance presumably Russia in particular which is at that point looking as if it's going to move South and both Russia and France so historically the the big British concern was Russia it was Russia's threat to India either through Afghanistan and Central Asia or increasingly from the 1870s onwards they were worried about Russia coming down through what is now
• 13:00 - 13:30 Iraq and launching an attack on India that way so that was that was the big thing but so Sykes comes into the meeting he wants this belt of of country and he says this magical line or a magical appalling line he proposes a line from the e of acre to the last K in Kirk okay forgive me but tell me tell me in the minutes is there not enough because this is not a you know a cabinet of idiocy at the time are there not people who then throw up their arms saying stop being such a stupid ass how
• 13:30 - 14:00 can you just suggest just drawing an arbitrary line on an atlas from two letters and what is the reaction to this suggestion I think there's there's two things going on the first thing is the context and the context is that the cabinet is more worried about conscription there are lots of other things it has to think about and the Middle East is is very very low on its priorities I think this is this is always the case and the more I study the imperial history you find that huge massive decisions happen at the end of
• 14:00 - 14:30 cabinet meetings when when several other things are on the agenda and a bunch of people have no idea about the geography the ethnography the history or the politics of the place end up making a decision very quickly that's going to have massive historical repercussions but is there dissent I mean I've just pleased homie some people even even if time is running short in the Box needed ticking and you need to move on to any other business tell me some people saw this for the the bizarre thing that it was definitely so there were there were four people in that meeting who really mattered and asked with the Prime
• 14:30 - 15:00 Minister was sort of running out of steam I think that's the politest way to put it there was Kitchener who had worked in the region who sort of was interested in in the situation he'd been in Egypt for a while hadn't he he had been the High Commissioner in Egypt or the government governor general exactly and and so he did know the territory and he he knew a lot of the people and in fact Mark Sykes worked for him so he had you know he he kind of knew what was going on but so and the other two people in the meeting who mattered who had completely
• 15:00 - 15:30 different views on this subject were Arthur Balfour who had been a the conservative prime minister there's a declaration coming there somewhere there's a decoration coming out well this is the thing so the most interesting thing about the entire set of minutes is that Balfour is the skeptical one he's the one who says why are we trying to to take over the bit east of Egypt so in 1915 two years before he put his name to a declaration that essentially was designed to extend British Imperial control over Palestine he was saying are you sure this is a
• 15:30 - 16:00 good idea and the other person was Lloyd George Who of course goes on to be prime minister in in a sense it's it's the fact that these two people Balfour and Lloyd George do end up in a position of power which is what matters and both Lloyd George and Mark Sykes are extremely religious and their knowledge of the Middle East is really based on biblical learning they're used to seeing biblical names on the map they've also both gone through classical education so when they're thinking about the Middle East they're not looking at an ottoman map they're looking beyond that in the
• 16:00 - 16:30 sense to their education with the classics and in the Bible that's right and that's something that I underplayed in my book and I increasingly think is really important about Balfour as well they a book I read makes the very interesting point that a lot of the members of the cabinet at that time had grown up in the fringes in the in the in Wales in Scotland they had received very very traditional and and religious educations they also unfortunately had an idea that Pacers like Palestine were fairly empty there was this view that
• 16:30 - 17:00 everyone lived in a tent and could pick up their tent and move it somewhere else like there's David Roberts Prince where they just have a few Bedouins scattered yeah always a few bedwinners in the in the foreground aren't they before the the picture of the the domes and the minarets in the background and the you know but this it's the sparseness isn't it that when you see a Robert's picture there's never that many people in it and that's critical well I mean if you're if you're gonna crush a region you need to the two hands to clap together the other hand belongs to the French uh it's sort of a good idea to point out what their
• 17:00 - 17:30 position is so the British you know thinking that the Ottoman Empire is about to collapse have withdrawn because they want to keep their Mercantile safe but the French have been spending quite a few years filling that Gap so they have Ambitions don't they um and they're also looking to see what bits they might be able to Hive off should the whole thing Fall to Pieces the French it goes back to goes back to the battle of the Nile from then on from 1798 onwards the French are trying to get back in and and
• 17:30 - 18:00 being beyond that the French are obviously being taught in their schools because you see this coming up over and over again in their Memoirs and in their writings about the Crusades and at the end of this when when the French actually do March into Damascus the general famously goes up to the tomb of Saladin and said do they March into Damascus is that a spoiler is it yes I think she does this he does this James he does this we'll get back to that everybody delete that from your memory
• 18:00 - 18:30 banks and pretend that didn't happen oh you're hilarious anyway let's go back let's go back to previously previously French what are the French thinking and what swimming them yeah why are they why do they think the Crusades gives them a right to end of this so so yeah there is that there's that strand it's like it's easy to take the Mickey out of really but there is a strand of French thinking that as you say it goes right back to King Louis and the Crusades and and of course the French were then given a kind of
• 18:30 - 19:00 privileged position in the Ottoman Empire in the in the 1500s they were under something called the capitulations they got uh they're sort of role protecting the religious places of the holy land was was recognized by the Ottomans so it goes all the way back to there but I think the key thing is the 19th century where they backed uh Muhammad Ali the pioneering modernizing tyrannical ruler of of Egypt and then of course they were instrumental in building the Suez Canal after that so at
• 19:00 - 19:30 a point when Britain was beginning to rethink its policy it was beginning to pull back and realize there were limits to what it could could do the French were investing more and more heavily and they invested in particular in in in utilities so electric lights the water company uh they bought a railway concession and built that down into into Lebanon so there was stuff like that going on and that meant that the French had more and more of an interest of
• 19:30 - 20:00 financial interest in what was going on and they also had this bigger cultural interest so if you were if you were an ottoman in 1900 let's say and you had Ambitions for your children you would have sent them to a French school you wouldn't have sent them you wouldn't have put them into the State education system that was run by the Ottomans because that wasn't very good instead you'd have packed them off to a French school you still find this don't chewing this is like Cairo that the the elite tin Cairo speak perfect French and less good English exactly and if you go to so I remember going to balbec in in Northern Lebanon
• 20:00 - 20:30 some years back and if you look there you can see graffiti from 100 years ago written sort of way up where someone's managed to clamber up and the best thing about that graffiti is that the handwriting is friend it's written by an Arab but the handwriting is absolutely in the French curses it's French handwriting they have learned that you know their handwriting has been learned what does the graffiti say sorry I just this is fascinating what kind of thing I can't remember it's someone's name kind of thing Abdul and Muhammad was here yes
• 20:30 - 21:00 exactly it's exactly and so it's uh so it's an Arab name but written in French handwriting well look look this is this is now we've set the stage beautifully for uh entry um the man who has a little unkind in describing as a Skittle in a uniform but Pico it doesn't certainly doesn't do Justice's amazing mustaches I think it's a bit Scraggy compared to um not that these things are imported in this story but I you know he came off less well I thought in the Mustachio Stakes it's the full War there's two long sort of sideburns
• 21:00 - 21:30 flying in the air it doesn't have the face to support it it's just too much it's too much how could you support a mustache like that some kind of scaffolding but anyway back to who is He Who Is He And what why is he here and how important is he going to be so an easy you said I mean the thing about Sykes was he had this twinkle even if he was a bit of a chance and he was sort of making it up as he went along he's slightly a liar pants on fire I
• 21:30 - 22:00 mean I'd go there he was huge but he was hugely engaged too wasn't he he was hugely Charming hugely charming and and people you know people couldn't help but like him even if they they knew you know they knew that he was he was um it's a podcast we can say a bullshitter a bullshitter okay so exactly Charming won uh and and so he was you know peasant Pleasant to deal with and and and so on Francois George Pico to give him his full name which I'm
• 22:00 - 22:30 sure he would have expected had he been has he if he were a listener was not like that at all he was I think by all accounts a fairly humorless character um he was called George so the family name is Pico but his father was called Georges Pico and he was a very famous uh sort of opinion former I think we'd call him today he was a lawyer he'd written lots of books he'd written a book about the British takeover of Egypt in 1882 among other things and Francois took his
• 22:30 - 23:00 father's full name as if to say well I am the son of this this great man uh George Pico and he went into the law like father did but clearly he didn't flourish there and in 1898 and this is the critical thing I think trying to work out what was going on inside his head in 1898 he decided that he would shift he would change career and become a French diplomat at the cadorsay and that is a crucial year because it's the year of the fashoda incident one of
• 23:00 - 23:30 these magnificent kind of squabbles between Britain and France that nearly went to war so for shoulder is a place on the upper Nile the French came up with the brilliant idea of trying to take that part of what is now Sudan and and essentially so they could damn it so they could render British rule in Egypt Downstream impossible but the British who at that point didn't really control that part of the world at all since since the murder of Gordon hurried southwards they launched an
• 23:30 - 24:00 expedition they then sent a a party on to confront the Frenchman who'd planted the tricolor on the Nile at fashoda and and the French were forced in rather ignominious circumstances to back down and that is the story that was playing out as Francois Georges Pico became a diplomat so I mean does that because he's sort of famously not a great fan or not a great truster of the British I mean I hard as it hard as it is to believe that the French and the British
• 24:00 - 24:30 don't trust each other that he particularly does not and is it does this sort of proceed for shoda or does foreshadow set his mind as to what do you think the Brits are about I think it's a bit of both uh I think that the whole family was very much uh tied into the French Empire they were they were strong promoters of it but I think they sort of reinforced prejudices so he he saw you know he saw what was happening and he and others took away the lesson from this that you know when you were dealing with the with the with the British you needed to be a lot tougher
• 24:30 - 25:00 let's now get to the point we need to jump ahead because otherwise we talk about this stuff all day when do the mustachios entwine when do they when do they cross paths and what is what is the what are the terms of Engagement between the Versace yeah the the the The Clash of mustachios happens because the committee that so Britain's Britain wonderfully the British government set up a committee to decide what it wanted if the Ottoman Empire collapsed this is the debunson committee isn't it this is the debonson committee which is a bunch
• 25:00 - 25:30 again of sort of classicists who who's knowledge of the Middle East is all from Omar and I wouldn't like to be quizzed on exactly who the members were but Sykes was the youngest man on this committee and he was then after they come up with their plan which was really sort of allow a kind of a series of Patchwork of of sort of little states to emerge that Britain would try and influence manipulate whatever sax got sent off to India to sell this deal to people who were going to be much more skeptical about it the the government of India the British government of India at that point were
• 25:30 - 26:00 very much Believers in the the straight line approach to we've met some of these characters in previous Brokers this is Lord Harding sitting in Calcutta who wants to absorb the whole of the Middle East into his Department doesn't he well he thinks it should all become under the rule of similar and Calcutta or be ruled from India but obviously and they had great schemes they had they had an idea that they would they would fix all the ancient irrigation of of what is now Iraq had been allowed to collapse and they would turn the country back into a you know the Bread Basket of of India so
• 26:00 - 26:30 Sykes goes off to do that but on his way back he comes to Cairo and unwisely he kind of confides what's going on to a pair of French diplomats as he is sitting at a bar I mean he just lets it out over a GNT or well as obviously thought you know oh it's understandable he thought they are they were they were our allies which is you know Charming but of course the thing that the French dipstats do is perk up their ears and say well we didn't know anything about it and also we've we've got you know don't be pushing on Syria I mean some of this stuff is ours well only as ours as
• 26:30 - 27:00 the rest of it was ours um from a British point of view I mean it was no more theirs than absolutely but in their heads I mean they've already you know it's game set and match they've already I mean this is the autopsy of a place that isn't dead it's that's what's so horrifying about this exactly and I mean even I mean the diplomats may not have actually thought you know they might they might have been in there thinking that Syria wasn't wasn't necessarily you know shouldn't be French so these two French diplomats send back a report and that reaches the desk of of Del Casey
• 27:00 - 27:30 the the French foreign minister and I mean he like like people on the British side are a bit skeptical about all this but he faces a lot of pressure from the French Colonial Lobby and in that Lobby is Francois George Pico and and the other parts of the Pico family and it's they who put the pressure on the French and say look you have to stand up to these Brits are going to steal them Arch on you again you've got to do something about this and uh Francois Georges Pico who who had served briefly as France's
• 27:30 - 28:00 Consul to Beirut before the war but he Engineers himself a job as France's negotiator in London so he writes his own negotiating brief and and arranges for himself to to end up in the French Embassy well now let's let's introduce the third key person in in all of this the Sharif of Mecca tell us about him who is he and what is he like so he's the complicating Factor because whilst all this has been going on uh between
• 28:00 - 28:30 Britain and France the other thing the British have been doing is trying to reach some sort of deal with Sheriff Hussein and Sharif Hussein uh claimed to be descended from uh the prophet Muhammad he had taken over running Mecca in a few years before the first world war broke out but he was a rather obstreperous and an independent-minded man you get an idea of who he was there's one one important factor fact he about him he was the the man who had the telephone number Mecca one
• 28:30 - 29:00 and uh so from his sort of his kind of big house in in Mecca he ran things but he was he was quite skeptical about the ultimates he didn't really want ottoman interference the Ottomans he found out about a plot where the Ottomans were trying to to bump him off and and so the British the British were were quietly behind the scenes sending him letters and gradually they they managed to to to reach well a deal with him but he makes a very big demand he
• 29:00 - 29:30 says look if I'm going to support you if I'm going to revolt against the Ottomans then you need to recognize my claim to a vast wave of what is essentially the the Arabian Peninsula but territory right up as far as the the modern border between Syria and turkey so we have our three characters we've got Mark Sykes with his house parties and his sort of tourist Arabic we've got pico and his mustaches and his suspicion of the British but is
• 29:30 - 30:00 a professional Diplomat who knows how to negotiate unlike Sykes who doesn't and then you've got the Sharif of Mecca austere turbaned white bearded and suspicious really of both these characters but with no option because the ottomans are planning to assassinate his best chance so three people with very very different interests after the break we'll have a look to see how this resolves [Music]
• 30:00 - 30:30 welcome back so before the break we were talking about the three pivotal characters who would form the backdrops of this Sykes Pico line which now defines so much of Middle Eastern politics in the world but we should go back James because there's one person we didn't mention before the break and that is Edward gray the British foreign secretary because again you know if you are somebody who is planning future planning for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire as everybody seems to be
• 30:30 - 31:00 do you see allies in these other two or do you see rivals in these other two what is the British attitude to to all of this interest that is coming in I think you've just touched on what is the sort of fundamental weirdness of this which is the British are thinking to a post-war World in which they won and in that world their big rivals are not going to be the countries that they have defeated it's not it's not the ottoman Turks and the Germans and the austro-hungarians they've got to worry
• 31:00 - 31:30 about but it's their allies and that is the mindset that is driving all of this so the first world war breaks out Britain is Allied to to France and to Russia but at this point in the discussions the the whole thinking behind the discussion is after the war we're going to face a challenge from from France again in this part of the world and and from Russia so we need to come up with some sort of strategic idea that that protects us and protects India from both of them and who do they who do
• 31:30 - 32:00 they sort of the British Trust more because I mean it's kind of almost choosing between two people you dislike very very much because they don't I mean historically we know that Asquith and Lloyd George do not like Muslims and Arabs and yet we know the British have historically hated the French forever and ever so I mean plus yeah plus the British think that the Arabs are basically on the ottoman side and while they're negotiating with the Sharif of Mecca they're pretty well assuming that the Arabs will not rise up uh we know of course in retrospect what happens but at the time they're assuming the Arabs are
• 32:00 - 32:30 going to be uh with their ottoman Masters well not for the last time there's a sort of extremely dubious Intelligence coming from the Middle East before a major British military action and I mean they just they they didn't know they they had Snippets of information suggesting that there were these Arab secret societies that existed so so before the war the Arabs had had wanted greater autonomy within the Ottoman Empire there were you know there was a sense of nationhood building things like the growth of newspapers for
• 32:30 - 33:00 example Arab literacy there was a much better among Arab Christians aren't they because they've been educated by generations of missionary schools they are uh they've gone to University abroad and many have come back and founded newspapers or liberal institutions of Civic Society across the ottoman World in places like Damascus and Alexandria and Beirut and there's a lot of development uh and Arab nationalism if if only the British should be looking out for it was there in plain sight some
• 33:00 - 33:30 of the British were looking out for it but the point was I suppose is that Sykes wasn't Sykes was you know he was a romantic and a traditionist he liked to go there to see the old stuff he went there to see you know the crumbling architecture and the you know people wearing extraordinary costumes and as he saw it so stuff like that that interested him whereas in fact there was also a railway line and there were Telegraph polls sprouting up and there was you know concessions oil concessions and he was alive to that interestingly so one of the things he did I've just
• 33:30 - 34:00 been just been reading about and seen the report in the National Archives he wrote a report about all about the prospects for oil in Iraq when he was a diplomat Sykes did what year 1906 or so but do you know what happened to that report it was just completely ignored so he sent it back it was it has some nice maps in it and it said look here are the places that look like they might have oil and it just it died of death so so Sykes went into the negotiation really into thinking that oil was not important and that's another crucial thing that Sykes Pico is not about oil okay so so
• 34:00 - 34:30 we're back back to you know the people now who have to make decisions and and this is slightly largely in in the lap of the foreign secretary like who is he going to side with who is he going to trust now does he have does he have a favorite Contender I don't think he does I think the point is about him is that he is tired like the rest of this government in 19 beginning of 1916. he is tired and there is a wonderful uh little chit of paper again in the archives that really sums this up
• 34:30 - 35:00 because when the discussion about what terms they should offer Sheriff Hussein secretly arises someone comes up with a form of words and in the cabinet meeting this must be given to gray sir Edward gray who's the foreign secretary and he writes on a little piece of paper he writes Lord K so that's a reference to Lord Kitchener and he goes and then the next line says will this do question mark and then EG and and this is the thing and this is what illuminates just
• 35:00 - 35:30 how at Sea all these people were with the particular issues in this part of the world it wasn't what they were worrying about they were thinking about the domestic consequences of having to bring in conscription to to mobilize how many people you know that sure okay but what happens is this makes it all I mean just history turns on the most uh frustrating things so you know you've got a knackered cabinet you've got this sort of three parties in involved in as I said performing an autopsy on a body that isn't dead but there is a there's a
• 35:30 - 36:00 missive that goes off to the the Sharif which seems to suggest that Britain will back them up that Britain will allow them the territories that they want I mean is it is it that it's a deliberate attempt to mislead them because you know inevitably it sucks Pico it's not Sykes Sharif is it it will be psychspico that decides this this Reformation of what will be the Middle East are they lying to them or they're just too knackered to actually make themselves clear and it's ambiguous and
• 36:00 - 36:30 therefore the Sharif takes it one way but the Brits mean it another way well so this is exactly what happened there it was deliberately obscure what the wording that they wrote and you can see all the drafts of this in English the wording that they chose is we won't go into it here because it's just a bit too much but they they chose a very very careful set of words and those words were then Lost in Translation when they were written in Arabic and sent to the sheriff and they only found this out in 1920 so the British lost their copy of what was sent I think it sort of ended
• 36:30 - 37:00 up down the back of a filing cabinet did they lose their copy or lose their copies well no I think they probably lost it and I I think conspiracy for the up theory of History over the conspiracy yeah I think it's the Cocker yeah I think I think this is the British government at its Rolls Royce finest and they did actually lose the thing but most importantly they but they they created something where they were going to trip up over their own shoelaces because they'd set out to to be disingenuous they uh they need but they
• 37:00 - 37:30 also needed to keep the sheriff on site so the thing that had happened the crucial thing that happened was just as Sheriff Hussein said right I want all the Middle East they then heard this intelligence from a man called faruki who was a an Arab soldier in the ottoman Army who'd been taken prisoner at Gallipoli and he confirmed this idea of all the sort of there was a sort of Arab Network working beneath the beneath the surface the Arabs were weighing up weather to back British or the Germans at that moment in time so this was all very very finely balanced and and this
• 37:30 - 38:00 all this sort of information arrives in cabinet cabinet struggling to to cope with it but kind of sensing there is something really bad here so they delegate the whole job back to the British in Cairo and just say look fix it we don't care in a way we don't care how you do it but just don't let this blow up on us and so that gives the local the local officials a great deal uh of of wiggle room uh and unfortunately they then they then come and they're the ones negotiating with the Sharif so they're negotiating with
• 38:00 - 38:30 the street bear in mind the Sharif knows nothing about Sykes and Pico they he doesn't know that simultaneously or you know yeah simultaneously the British are having to deal with the French but the French again get wind of the negotiations with the sheriff and they can't believe that the British would do something as as unwise as make a big promise to somebody who they think is a non-entity we haven't actually talked about the negotiations that are going on between Sykes and Pico were headed up by
• 38:30 - 39:00 Sykes and Pico so where are these happening what is the what is the level of negotiation that is going on and at what point is Pico told about um the kind of ambiguous weird letter that's gone out to to the Sharif so so the negotiation with Sykes and Pico hasn't started when Pico hears the all-important confirmation that yes the British have sent Hussein the promise so that happened so Pico gets himself posted to London and he has a strange meeting where he is sort of on one side
• 39:00 - 39:30 of the negotiating table on on the other there are representatives of all the relevant British government departments so it's a it's a pretty uneven away fixture for him and he's so he's there and the British realize that they're going to have to come clean about what they promised to say because they they really want Pico to agree to it they want him to say okay you know I I see I I can understand that your concern about about the Ottomans is so great that you need the sheriff on your side but of
• 39:30 - 40:00 course Pico doesn't Pico plays a Blinder and he looks sort of offended affronted everything at the same time he he has an inkling of what's going on but he is also an extremely good actor and a very good negotiator and a very good negotiator and the thing that he says is that is he touches on the you know on the the really raw bruise that that affects the on taunt all the way through which is that the French have lost far more soldiers in this war so far and have Germans on their territory I was thinking the other day you know if you
• 40:00 - 40:30 think of the pressure that zelensky is under in Ukraine you get an idea of what it was like for the French back in 1915 they were they had the Germans on their soil and yet here are the British saying oh let's go off to Gallipoli well we'll fix this war but it's going to be the long way around you know the French are facing massive public pressure at home to you know to launch an offensive to end the war and the British are all Maneuvers so so Pico does this faux flounce which is you know diplomatically very powerful did the British Panic that okay what did they do and so the British
• 40:30 - 41:00 do panic because they think they they have been wandering for a little while by late in 1915 when this is you know do the French have it in them to laugh this out you know our French casualties are very very high what is French public opinion feel and for a long time British thought well I think they'll they'll manage but then you start to get these reports coming from the British Embassy in Paris saying well we're not so sure anymore we're not so confident so this uh question over what will happen to the Middle East
• 41:00 - 41:30 suddenly it acquires a much greater significance and the fear is you know if we if the British insists on there you know what they want don't give the French um something in return that this might be the the straw that breaks the camel's back what do they want we have we haven't even yet sort of said in these negotiations around the table while they're sitting in front of a map what what is the um you know the kind of trading that is going on like you take Libyan I'll take Syria I mean you know what level is it being pitched so this it really only concerns the sort of the
• 41:30 - 42:00 narrow Heartland of the Middle East bear in mind that that the bigger the bigger question of Morocco and Egypt have been resolved by the Anton cordial in 1904 so under that the British said to the French you you know we won't get in your way in Morocco and the French finally exceeded of British control of of Egypt but this is about really this is about it's about it's about Palestine what is now Israel and Palestine and it's about Syria and Lebanon where the French have got that's where the the French interest
• 42:00 - 42:30 is strongest and just to add add the element we're going to talk about the Balfour Declaration and the different podcasts but how far are our negotiations with the zionists and all that strand of things going is Balfour is he dreaming of the Balfour decoration already is Rothschild and he in in discussions so I mean there are certainly some people already working on that but I think the critical thing is and this does affect the Sykes Pico story so I think we maybe we should try and touch on it in a minute or two but the quest the fifth so the thing is that
• 42:30 - 43:00 the British are aware they're aware of or they believe that there is there is significant support for Zionism and that that needs to be accommodated in some way but it hasn't yet become a a sort of neurosis for the British we've established that both Lloyd George uh and Sykes are extremely religious and they have a very religious worldview how far is that affecting their attitude to the Zionist cause it is affecting it it it's it influences their their world
• 43:00 - 43:30 view and it helps explain a strand of British Pro pro-jewish policy uh that goes back 50 years by by now but I don't think it's the it's not the critical Factor right yet that that comes after the Sykes Pico deal has been done got it got it so at this point Palestine is being disputed between English and French on one side and the Sharif of Mecca on the other there isn't uh Azan is claiming it at the cabinet at this point not a powerful
• 43:30 - 44:00 one but it becomes it becomes an issue after the so so the thing about the Sykes Pico agreement was they couldn't agree about Palestine they they agreed to disagree so in the map that was signed off in January 1916 Palestine is is colored in brown sort of yellowy brown color and they agree it will have an international administration because they can't really work out what to do about it is this is this really how they so they have a a map in black and white and they've got crayons please tell me
• 44:00 - 44:30 that we're crayons I love this notion in my head of coloring in territories and although I mean as you say Palestine question is is not what it becomes at this point there is a lot of trading going on over Lebanon for example and mosul those are contentious areas tell us how that works and how long is this meeting anyway I mean how how do two Powers carve up a region the the answer that very last question is I'm not actually sure so so what happens is that Pico went into the meeting with the
• 44:30 - 45:00 British with when he was a raid against multiple officials that's inconclusive he makes some big demands then the British starts scratching their heads thinking this is a potentially really you know bad if it goes wrong and at that point Sykes like sort of Tigger arrives in the cabinet meeting in December 1915 and says I've got a plan and he produces a map and it's a square map I actually I now own a copy of this map not the actual sites but not the not the sites became that but but the basic
• 45:00 - 45:30 map on which the deal was drawn was a a map that the raw geographical Society had published in 1910 and you can occasionally come across copies of one of it so I managed to get one it's about it's a bit like holding a bit spit narrower than an old broadsheet newspaper to hold in your hands about symptoms so the thing about this map is it's incredibly portable all previous Maps High scale maps of the Ottoman Empire were vast because you got to try and get everything from Constantinople if you're just talking about the eastern
• 45:30 - 46:00 territory of the Empire you're trying to get Constantinople through to Basra on a piece of paper and you need to have a stretch that's bigger than mine to hold that map in your hands then you if you do that even if you're holding it your nose is pressed against the mat because you're so big um so it's useless but what the raw geography Society did in 1910s they produced this little map of the middle of the Middle East the sort of the Heartland that matters and the fascinating thing this is an exclusive for you which I'm sure you'll be delighted by is that Sykes actually help draw that map I hadn't realized this
• 46:00 - 46:30 until now but he both as a diplomat and he had done it he'd actually trained in surveying in some way and he helped draw the map that the Sykes Pico agreement was eventually drawn onto so he had this map he goes into the cabinet meeting he announces his line from the e of acre to the last K of kirkuk everyone there is delighted that here is a man who clears to have command of Arabic and Turkish and a command of the issues and the geography yeah a geography yeah exactly
• 46:30 - 47:00 because I mean I ask a lot of these people where half these places were on the map they'd have struggled here he is he he appears to be in full command of the detail let's delegate this job to him and so at that point that's December the 15th 16th of of 1915 at that point he is told to go off and fix it with Pico and I I can't remember the date on the map but it's early January 1916. so in a matter of three weeks they had
• 47:00 - 47:30 cooked this one up and now they looked in a room together or what what's the I think so I suspect that it looks like crayons I mean you know just coloring in regions so yeah so the map itself so it has this diagonal line which runs you know South Southwest to to north east across the region and the and the Vestige of this is still visible on the map so if you think of Syria today it's it's a right angled triangle with the right angle in the top left corner and the diagonal line is is not exactly what
• 47:30 - 48:00 Sykes and Pico draw on the map but it memories of it that is yeah that is so that's the the vestiges of this of this line but the two men sit there Sykes had a nice house in um Buckingham gate he was he lived just around the corner from Buckingham Palace and uh so I suspect they did meet there did they meet I don't I don't know exactly where they meet they met it's all a little bit unclear but they they had his math you had the three areas that were colored in there was a blue bit for what the french were going to get and a red bit for what
• 48:00 - 48:30 the British were going to get and then to square the circle with what had been agreed with Sheriff Hussein they came up with a fudge so so the Blue Area the blue French area and the red British area the best thing is to look at if you uh search on the internet for Sykes Pico map you'll you can see this for yourself as you as you listen to this but the blue French area and the red British area were on the coast so the red British area was at the head of what was then the Persian Gulf the gulf uh
• 48:30 - 49:00 covering Basra almost up to Baghdad and the French area was Lebanon and Syria and a bit of sort of mushrooming into turkey and then Inland the area was going to be split and the Arabs were going to get some autonomy there so this was the sort of this was the way they tried to square the circle with what had already been promised to Hussein is is the modern Israel Lebanon border again a Vestige of this this creating exercise that came that came later because that
• 49:00 - 49:30 was thrashed out in the 20s by surveyors and and the Palestine on this map is a is a very very sort of simple shape it's kind of a it's a sort of hard to describe it's got it it runs down the Jordan so you have everything sort of west of the uh east of the Mediterranean uh to the Jordan and then there's a sort of a a kind of curved line that carves around north of the Sinai desert Peninsula so and that was gonna that was going to be International
• 49:30 - 50:00 because the French wanted this because they said well we've always you know protected the rights of of the religions in in Jerusalem in the holy city and the British desperately wanted it for their strategic plan which was essentially to have all the Territory between the Suez Canal and the the mountainous Frontier of Persia so Sykes walked out having failed essentially and one of the the fascinating details I don't know how much you can read into this but on the map that they drew and this is so it's all as you say Anita it's all in in blue
• 50:00 - 50:30 and red and sort of a slightly dodgy Oak colored crayon all her hand drawn no there's no I don't think it's even a ruler involved it's it's freehand where is this map today in the National so it's in the National Archives and it's one of those things it's so controversial that you can't if you can go into that anyone can go and look go and get a ticket my appointment go to the National not on display you have to go and look at it in a special room in fact because um you know it is an object of some controversy I mean we we are sort of
• 50:30 - 51:00 heading heading towards the the end of this but this we should remind everybody as a top secret meeting and a top secret coloring in exercise but there is one party that needs to be informed about this because for any of this to work you need the Russians to allow it um so what do the Russians say when they hear about this this grand plan cooked up between the French and the British the two of them Sykes and Pico then go off to to Saint Petersburg or petrograd in in 1916 to sell this one because
• 51:00 - 51:30 petrogate is about to go up and smoke with the Revolution and yeah exactly so they go there actually the Russians the Russians I think are okay about because the Russians in the meantime want control of this the boss for straight that's that's their key demand so they get that they get the uh the British and the French to agree to that you just you just dropped that about uh giving the Russians control of the monsters but hasn't the whole of anglo-fredge policy for 150 years be to keep the Russians
• 51:30 - 52:00 away from the Busters exactly and and you know and the and the British until 1907 regarded the Russians as Public Enemy Number One really and we'll so again do so again immediately after the revolution precisely so it's just it's a sort of you know it's a momentary Hiatus but the the Russians do accept it but actually Pico did stay on I'm just struggling to remember the real detail of this but Pico tried to stay on to get the Russians to support a French Palestine after you know so so both sides had sort
• 52:00 - 52:30 of agreed this deal they didn't it wasn't it wasn't a deal it wasn't to treat you it was actually an exchange of letters in the end between the French Ambassador in London Paul combo and and Edward gray they they sent letters to each other in their own language so it's not a formal treaty so like the Balfour Declaration it's just a letter so it has no final word what is the legal standing of this I I'm I'm not a lawyer and I don't know but it it's an exchange letter so the two-sides
• 52:30 - 53:00 swap letters and even and that creates it means it's an understanding yes exactly and and that and that essentially it's a sticking plaster it's a diplomatic sticking plaster to resolve something which as we said already was you know it's already out of date because they weren't gonna the Ottomans had proved uh incredib incredibly resilient and you know Gallipoli had not succeeded and yet this spat had had escalated out of all proportion at what point does the world get to hear about
• 53:00 - 53:30 Sykes Pico following the Russian Revolution following the 1917 Revolution because the you know the the the Bolsheviks enter the the the thesaurus archives and start throwing papers left right and center and find this agreement and uh and and they say what is this you know piece of scarless perfidious imperialist uh wrangling and it and they release the the agreement so it's known
• 53:30 - 54:00 about before the end of the war and that creates enormous eruptions and famously Enver Pasha sitting in Constantinople reads it out loud as soon as he hears about it from the Russians and his main target is to show how far the Sharif of Mecca has been duped exactly by this time the chief of Mecca has risen up the whole Arab world is the is behind him and he's saying look you've been you've been a complete sucker these guys are doing this behind your back you've been had and so he does it and exactly and that's that that's exactly what happens
• 54:00 - 54:30 and and that takes so in fact Lawrence is one of Lawrence of Arabia is one of the people who ends up papering that over James well that's very very elegant of you because the next episode is going to be all about the man in the middle of all of this Lawrence of Arabia T.E Lawrence and his experience of dealing and then finding out that the Arabs that he believes in have been double crossed but we'll come to that in a future podcast in the meantime just to finish the legacy of of this agreement which so
• 54:30 - 55:00 many people have looked back on and seen as a classic piece of a British French Imperial treachery what are the repercussions of this agreement made between these these two sets of people sitting in a room in London in 1950 and 16. I think there's two things one is very immediate and that is that Britain realizes it hasn't got what it wanted and that is the background to the Balfour Declaration so the Balfour Declaration comes out of the failings of
• 55:00 - 55:30 the Sykes Pico agreement to guarantee British interests that's the first thing but more broadly Sykes Pico comes to be seen in the Middle East as this shorthand for Imperial in you know interference and there was a British Council did a survey about this a few years ago they asked people here and in France about Sykes Pico and they asked people in turkey and I think Lebanon and Egypt about it had you heard of Sykes Pico and
• 55:30 - 56:00 here the numbers something like one out of ten and if you go to Egypt and these countries are not directly affected by this in everyone knows you know it's six and a half seven out of ten so there's a much higher level this again is something we found throughout the series that there's so many of these Imperial decisions that are barely known about in England that feature if at all glancingly in our curriculums and yet people around the world trace the disasters around them to these Imperial decisions and in this case also it
• 56:00 - 56:30 leaves you know the Kurds and the druze minorities like this split between between two different light sides of a border classic sort of Imperial mismanagement and and with terrible repercussions for hundreds of thousands of people exactly and and Don as you as you said you know in a very very short amount of time by two people who didn't exactly know what they were doing James that is a fantastic and and fantastically uh learned look at this crucial thing I've I've often heard of
• 56:30 - 57:00 and and read about psych speaker but I've never heard it explained so clearly and so fully as by you here and and it just doesn't just utterly jaw drops baffling the how a few people uh making bad decisions uh in a room in London can affect hundreds of thousands of people across the globe to this day to this moment now so thank you so much really grateful thank you very much that is all from Empire uh but as I said Lawrence of
• 57:00 - 57:30 Arabian next up until then it's goodbye from me Anita Anand goodbye for me William drimple [Music]