Lawrence of Arabia

For 400 years, the Ottoman Empire had held sway across the Middle East. However, as World War I approached, and the empire of the Turks, who were allied with the Germans, was fraying at the edges, regarded as the sick man of Europe.

The Turkish empire was not well-policed, and visitors to Palestine in the Holy Land, travelled in convoys escorted by troops and police. It was an increasingly lawless region in which the Turks had slight control.

Since the crusades, Europeans had been there,recorded what they had seen, and made maps. It was part of the known world. So, the war fought there during World War 1 was being fought in a landscape familiar to Europeans.

This fascination was embodied in the story of T.E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia, an archaeologist and orientalist who took up the Arab cause during World War 1.

As a student and young archaeologist , Lawrence was fascinated by the Crusades, visiting the region and its historic medieval fortresses and crusader castles, including the most famous, Krak des Chevaliers in today’s Syria.

When World War I broke out, Lawrence enlisted. As he could speak Arabic, he was offered a post in the intelligence service based in Cairo.

Lawrence was described as a liberal

Imperialist believing that Britain had a civilizing mission. He once wrote, “The British people only accept a global empire on the grounds as it uplifts people who are in need of uplifting, education, and improvement.” Lawrence was also aware that the Middle East was in a region in which Britain had strategic interests. It lies on the direct route to India. To control India,Britain had to also control the Middle East and the Mediterranean.Lawrence understood this imperial grand strategy

Lawrence soon found himself on the front lines of an old-style war fought on horseback across the Middle East, but particularly in Jordan and what was then Palestine.

The Ottoman Empire had governed the Middle East for centuries,and as it collapsed after Turkey’s defeat in World War I, the Arab world found itself embroiled in nationalistic struggles against victorious European powers, France, and England, looking to flex their colonial muscles.

Britain’s aims, like the other great powers, was to fight an imperial war in so far as when the war was ended, there’d be a share out of conquered territory in Asia and Africa.

The British were very keen on securing Palestine, and Iraq as part of the strategic system which defended India. The French, looking back to the crusades, believed they had a historic right to Syria.

Lawrence approved of this, but in his Middle East he saw independent states: ruled by Arab princes, his former brothers-in-arms against the Turks. As Arab princes, they would govern. But standing behind them, advising them, he saw British officials. It was called unofficial empire.

Lawrence, in his role as a chief strategist and soldier on the ground, played a key role in drawing up these plans for a settlement.

After the war, Lawrence lived a duel life – remaining in the forces but indulging his love of motorbikes during the week and a higher-society social life in London at the weekend. In many ways,Lawrence was the ultimate orientalist- explorer, artist, empirebuilder, spy.

Lawrence died young in the early 1930s, at the age of just 46, soon after a motorcycle accident.

Churchill saw him as a key to running Britain’s emerging, and ultimately world-beating intelligence services as World War II approached.Ironically, it was a war that would ultimately change Imperial Britain’s vision of the Middle East forever.

 

Destination: England  / Scotland  / Wales / Middle East and North Africa