In Our Time - Lawrence of Arabia

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss T.E. Lawrence (1888 – 1935), better known as Lawrence of Arabia, a topic drawn from over 1200 suggestions for our Listener Week 2019. Although Lawrence started as an archaeologist in the Middle East, when World War I broke out he joined the British army and became an intelligence officer. His contact with a prominent Arab leader, Sharif Hussein, made him sympathetic to Hussein’s cause and during the Arab Revolt of 1916 he not only served the British but also the interests of Hussein. After the war he was dismayed by the peace settlement and felt that the British had broken an assurance that Sharif Hussein would lead a new Arab kingdom. Lawrence was made famous by the work of Lowell Thomas, whose film of Lawrence drew huge audiences in 1919, which led to his own book Seven Pillars of Wisdom and David Lean’s 1962 film with Peter O'Toole.In previous Listener Weeks, we've discussed Kafka's The Trial, The Voyages of Captain Cook, Garibaldi and the Risorgimento, Moby Dick and The Thirty Years War.With Hussein Omar Lecturer in Modern Global History at University College Dublin Catriona Pennell Associate Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies at the University of ExeterNeil Faulkner Director of Military History Live and Editor of the magazine Military History MattersProducer: Simon Tillotson

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There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello, in 1919, huge audiences saw an American film report on the recent war with the Ottoman Empire on the Middle Eastern Front

and were thrilled by its star, a British officer in Arab clothes. This was T.E. Lawrence, soon known as Lawrence of Arabia, and he became famous, a boy's own figure, an exotic image of the British as they might want to see themselves, adventuring in the Orient,

far from the brutal horrors of the Western Front. We're discussing him today, as this autumn we ask you to suggest a topic for this our listener week, and he made the shortlist from over a thousand ideas. Our thanks to Zachary Veith, June L.K., Keith Hopcraft and Anthony Killeen, for proposing this, and to you all. When we need to discuss Lawrence of Arabia are, Hussein Omar, lecturer in modern global history at the University College Dublin, Katrina Pennell, Associate Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies at the University of

Exeter and Neil Faulkner, a director of military history live and editor of the magazine Military History Matters. Neil Faulkner, what may T. Lawrence stand out as a boy? Well, I don't know that he necessarily stood out particularly from his contemporaries. I think he stands out for us when we look back at the biography, because there was a strange family situation which I think was crucial to understanding the role that he comes to play, and indeed the kind of biography that he has. Although he was brought up in a respectable upper-middle-class family in North Oxford, there was a family secret, which was that his father and his mother were not married.

And so the five boys were illegitimate. And this, of course, is in the context of an English upper-middle class before the First World War, which is very snobbish and very judgmental. So this was something that needed to be kept secret. And I think that he lived in fear of exposure. I think he also had a very difficult sexuality, which he was becoming aware of, of course, presumably when he was a teenager.

And that leads to, I think, a retreat from that difficult reality, those difficult family circumstances into a kind of romantic medieval fantasy world. He becomes obsessed with the Middle Ages, obsessed with Arthurian heroes in Crusader, That becomes his subject at university. He becomes a romantic in the kind of William Morris pre-raphalite kind of sense.

And I think that that is an escape from this quite difficult family situation that he's in. He went to Oxford. He studied archaeology. Was he good at it? I think he probably won't. He lived in Oxford, but he went to university, yes. Yes, he did. He lived in Oxford and he went to university there and became an archaeologist. He was trained in medieval history, but becomes an archaeologist. and then gets shoehorned into his first job after graduation by his academic mentors, which is to work as what we would nowadays call a deputy director on a big excavation in the Middle East.

And that's because he's already got Middle East and experience because his undergraduate dissertation had taken him to the Middle East, where he did his dissertation on Crusader Castles. And he'd done primary research there in the Middle East. Was he good? I think probably by the standards of the time, because they did things in a certain way in that period, and he was probably as good as anybody else at that time.

And his main job, interestingly, and crucially really for the role that he subsequently plays, was managing the Arab workforce, because that's how excavations were done in those days. You had a local workforce. He managed the Arab workforce, and that meant that by the time of the First World War, he was pretty well fluent. in Arabic and very, very knowledgeable about the Middle East.

Did he take to the Arabic community the first time he went there? He seems to be passionate about it. Was it a sudden falling for it or did he grow? I think it arises out of his romanticism. I think this escape into a kind of middle ages that, of course, never really existed. I mean, it's an imagined middle ages. Do you mean the Crusaders, bold, no. All of flawless, willing.

Exactly, all of that kind of thing. And I think he almost sees a kind of reincarnation of people like that, particularly in the Bedouin of the desert. Why particularly the Bedouin? I think because, well, I mean, if we're going to see it through his eyes, if we're going to use his terms, I mean, he talks about the desert being clean and the people of the desert being uncontaminated, uncorrupted. who uses those kinds of words,

which, of course, is an orientalist, as we would see it now, an orientalist perspective on the people of the Middle East, but in particular on the people of the Middle East who are seen to be least affected by modernity, which in a sense he's trying to escape from. Thank you very much. Katrina, what was the state of the Ottoman Empire? That's a big player in this story.

Enormous empire. Hundreds of years. Let's get there in... in the middle of the First World War. Okay, so I would describe the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the First World War as vulnerable, but I think we have to be careful to avoid describing it in some sort of form of inevitable decline.

Certainly the term sick man of Europe had been used from the mid-19th century onwards, but I think it's worth bearing in mind that this was a term that came from the great European powers themselves and it served a particular agenda of the great Europe. European powers. As you say, this was a massive empire. It existed for the best part of 600 years. It had a huge territorial expanse at its height. It got far into Central Europe as Vienna. It had around 30 million subjects from many different faiths and ethnicities.

The traditional historiography goes that by the late 1600s, the Ottoman Empire is in decline. but more recent scholarship highlights that actually what it was going through was a series of crises that led to reform and adaptation. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman Empire had suffered a series of very serious military defeats and it was very aware that militarily it was lagging behind some of the other major European powers, the Habsburg Empire and the Russian Empire in particular. And this triggered perhaps one of the most important series of reforms. periods for the empire, the Tanzimat reforms, which led to a very powerful, centralized and organized state entity coming out of Constantinople, now known as Istanbul.

So I would say on the eve of the First World War, the society and the economy was in some ways quite vibrant. There were certainly more civic engagement, political participation, but this was all overshadowed by a very strong sense of threat, both for. from within the empire itself, from minority groups, particularly in the provinces, who were becoming frustrated with rule from Constantinople and were thinking about ways that they could subvert imperial power. Which minority groups in particular? Well, I'm thinking in particular of those in the Arab Peninsula. The families obviously of Sharif Hussein, but also Ibn Saud and the al-Rashid family.

But there was also significant external threat. and that's from the great European powers themselves who are thinking about how they can maximise Ottoman weakness to their own advantage. And that includes a Suez Canal, it includes... For the British, the Suez Canal was absolutely crucial. I mean, half of British shipping to India was going through the Suez Canal by the eve of the First World War.

And of course, the Suez Canal is strategically very important for India, which is Britain's duel in the imperial crown. but other European powers are very interested in what's going on. So it's interesting to see how the Ottoman Empire ends up siding with Germany at the outbreak of the First World War because Germany is probably one of the only European great powers that hasn't really tried to annex anything. Well, thank you very much.

Hussein Omar, can we talk about the Arab influences here? Now, when we talk about others, we talk about many different tribes and so on, so we have to be careful. Let's start with Sharif Hussein. Who was he? What did he want? Why is he important? So in 1916 at the time of the Arab Revolt,

Sharif Hussein is a 63-year-old man. Sharif is not his name. It's his title. It's the title given to the descendants of the Prophet in the Ottoman Empire. He is from 1909 onward, the custodian of the holy sites of Macan Medina, the crucial pilgrimage site where one of the five pillars of Islam are performed every year.

and the Hajj. And so therefore, he has a hugely important role and is second only to the caliph, i.e., the sultan, in religious authority within the empire. Now, what does Sharif Hussein want? That's an interesting question. We have evidence that Sharif Hussein before the First World War might have wanted to establish a sort of semi-autonomous dynasty within the empire on the model that, for example, Mehmed Ali of Egypt had done about 100 years earlier. But from 1908 onwards, there's a revolution within the Ottoman Empire, a constitutional revolution. There's a huge amount of enthusiasm for it among many of the populations of the Ottoman Empire. But it brings into power what the group called the Committee of Union and Progress,

who eventually deposed the Sultan in 1909. and they begin to centralise the empire, thereby going into Sharif Hussain's territories. Now, can we talk about the Arab revolt and where I'd like Lawrence to come in again because the Arab revolt, when does he start having an influence? He's there, he's joined up at beginning of the First War, being smartly sent to the Middle East because of his knowledge, becomes an intelligence officer, and then gets particularly interested in certain sections of the,

Arab world. Sharif Hussein is sending off his two sons to Damascus, on the one hand, and to Cairo, to try and see what support there might be for a revolt against the empire. What sort of prompts this is the centralizing attempts of the young Turks to extend the Hijaz railway into his territories, but also there's a rumor that he might be deposed, if not assassinated. And so he sends each one, well, his two sons, Faisal, And Abdullah, Abdullah goes to Cairo to sound out the British officials in Cairo

over whether they might potentially support his revolt. And his son Faisal goes to Damascus to talk to some of the secret societies that had sprung up. So the revolt is starting in 1916. Lawrence is there as an intelligent agent. We know he's very sympathetic understanding of certain parts of the Arab culture and the Arab world. Let's start him in action. What does he do? Why is he sent to where he's sent and by whom?

Well, he's sent there because he is an Arabist by the time. Sent to Cairo, initially to Cairo, because he's an Arabist and they need specialists in the Middle East, obviously once the Ottoman Empire comes into the war on the same side as Imperial Germany, and there's a threat to the Suez Canal, which we referred to earlier. But Lawrence, for two years, he's an intelligence officer in Cairo. He's doing a desk job. the revolt breaks out in June 1916

and Lawrence is not involved until October 1916 when he goes for the first time to Arabia so he sets foot in Arabia literally for the first time in October 1916 and it's a fact-finding mission really because the revolt is hanging by a thread of that moment in time and what the British want to know really is

what ought we to do to bolster this revolt, which they see as being quite useful because it ties down Ottoman military strength. And it's on that occasion that Lawrence meets the field commanders. I don't think he meets Hussein on that occasion, but he meets the field commanders who are Hussein's sons, particularly Faisal and Abdullah, as Hussein has referred to them. And he's impressed by Faisal

and reports back to his superiors that Faisal is a man who's worth investing in. And then he goes back on a second occasion, December 1916, and it's on that second occasion that a strong relationship forms between Faisal and Lawrence, and Faisal requests of the British that they attach Lawrence to him permanently as a liaison officer. That's rather unusual. How did he get it through? I think they're very, very keen to carry favour

with the Hashemite leadership of the revolt. So they've no particular reason. to hold on to this junior intelligence officer if one of the Arab field commanders wants him as a liaison officer, why not? That's quite useful. And what does Lawrence think he's doing by being attached to Faisal?

What does he see his function is? Well, this of course is hugely controversial. Great. Yeah, I know. People argue endlessly about Lawrence's motivation and Lawrence's role. And I think we have to distinguish the two things, really. I think, you know, it's not, you know,

you can caricature Lawrence as a kind of agent of British imperialism. And of course, the British are using him for their own purposes. But of course he's not really on message. And he's not on message, I think, because he's not a regular officer. He's not a conventional member of the upper middle class. He's a romantic. He's got this orientalist view of the Arabs. I think it's true to say that Lawrence is genuinely at some level rooting

for the Arabs. I would describe him as a liberal imperialist who imagines that in the framework provided by the British Empire and the Arab revolt, some kind of Arab state might emerge at the end of the First World War. I think he's in it for that. He wants to help create a new nation state, really. Going along with that, Katrina, can I ask you, what would have been a good outcome for Sharif Hussein if the revolt had gone as he'd hoped? Well, I think, Essentially, he had put a lot of store by the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, which was a set of letters that started in July 1915 between himself and Sir Henry McMorne, who was the British High Commissioner in Cairo at the time.

Hussein had tried to get the attention of the British before the First World War, but it wasn't really until, I would say, you know, Gallipoli, the landings at Gallipoli were appearing to be, you know, quite disastrous that the British then began to take seriously the idea of a Muslim ally who could act as some kind of counterweight to the Sultan Caliph, as Hussein has outlined. And so in this series of letters, it's about ten letters. It goes back and forth in quite ambiguous terms about what it is that Hussein wants in return for the revolt. And effectively what Hussein wants is some kind of independent Arab kingdom. The precise geographical boundaries of that territory are not defined and there are a number of moments in the correspondence

when McMorne says, you know what, that's going to have to wait until after the war is over. And Hussein is accepting of that. And I think by the end of the correspondence, he's very aware that he's asking for more than he's necessarily going to get. But at the root of it, he understands that in return for mounting this revolt and in return for putting his allegiances with the British, they are going to get some kind of territory in return. So it's very important for this program.

He thought that the British, that he was helping the British, and they would give him a great deal of what he wanted, what he wanted in the end was to be the King of Arabia, but they would give him a great deal of that. Do you find that, Say no, Ma, do you find that as a, do you find that a plausible supposition on his part? Absolutely. I mean, what happens is he's unsure what kind of kingdom he wants to begin with.

So is it going to be limited to the Hajas, i.e. the province of Northwest Arabia that his family has held this office in for a very long time. But when his son Faisal makes contact with the secret societies in Damascus, they draw up what's called the Damascus Protocol, which provides a kind of blueprint for a much more ambitious version of what that Arab kingdom might look like. And the assurances that he gets suggest that he will get the kingdom after the end of the war.

And Lawrence holds that in his heart. I mean, this matters to Lawrence, this is. something that he thinks he's fighting for. Is that right? I think that's probably right. I think that's right. And that governs a great deal of what he does, not only for the rest of the war, but sort of for the rest of his life in one way and another. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Neil New Faulkner. So he enters into this revolt,

this British intelligence officer, a fairly low rank, as you said earlier on. But he's taken in by the brother, Faisal, the cleverest brother, he thinks, and they have a friendship. What does he do when the revolt starts? Well, I think initially he is indeed a liaison officer and an advisor in the background. And his role throughout is to be a kind of conduit funneling gold, guns, munitions, supplies and so on to the Arab Revolt. He always has that role right up until the end. But it seems pretty clear to me that what is happening increasingly is that he is becoming actually. it is that he is becoming actively a combatant

that he is involved in many of the guerrilla operations, some of which I think he's actually planning. And I think he has a loud voice in the inner councils of the Hashemite Arab leadership of the revolt when decisions are being taken about how to conduct it. Given that he was a junior officer, as you say, given that he was thought to be working for the British,

how did he have such a loud voice in those inner councils? I think because he's won a close personal relationship. He's secured a close personal relationship with Faisal. And I think because the Bedouin culture is very much, it's not particularly concerned necessarily with British military rank. It's concerned with whether or not there is what is considered to be an effective personal relationship established. But I think probably also part of that in relation to Lawrence and Faisal

is that Lawrence was genuinely, on the Arab side, he understood it in his kind of liberal imperialist, orientalist way, he is rooting for the Arabs. And I think that means there's a trust which perhaps wouldn't have existed with other officers. Katrina and the Pennell, what were the British objectives in this part of the world? And were there a sense in which he was contradicting, he was obstructing them in any way? Well, I think it's helpful to think about sort of long-term and short-term objectives. And we've already mentioned the Suez Canal, and that is absolutely pertinent to the British, that they have to protect that that ship shipping route,

that they have to make sure that no one else gets their hands on that shipping route because of its importance to India. The British weren't satisfied just occupying an entire subcontinent. They wanted to dominate the entire route between Britain and that subcontinent. And it became something of an obsession, really, for the British to make sure that they maintain that control. So there were a number of coaling stations that the British, set up in Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus. But they also set up sort of treaties of mutual convenience

with dynasties that occupied parts of Oman and Aden and Bahrain. With the outbreak of the war, the short-term objective was win the war. I mean, you know, it's as simple as that. But there are a number of sort of sub-objectives within that. First of all, making sure that the British Navy had access to oil in the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. the British Navy had been increasingly moving from coal to oil. And the British wanted to make sure that they protected the Anglo-Persian oil pipeline.

So that's one of the reasons why on the 6th of November 1914, a British Indian expeditionary forces landed in southern Iraq in Basra. And then the mission sort of takes on a sort of life of its own and moves up the territory. Was there any sense in which the British objectives were hindered by what Lawrence was doing in Arab revolt. Certainly the British government, by the time of the revolt in 1916, having experienced significant disasters in their campaign in that part of the world. And I'm thinking of not only the amphibious landings at Gallipoli that had ended in effectively a defeat and a retreat in early 1916, but also the siege of Kut, Alamara, in the spring of 1916. The British, I think, were

very inclined to winning the war effort in the Ottoman Empire through local means, that they had realised that an invading foreign army wasn't necessarily going to get them the objectives that they wanted. So in that sense, yes, I think it did tally, absolutely. One thing we are told that he did was to help instigate or develop a guerrilla warfare. Is there any truth in that? Well, I think that is true. And how did that operate? Well, you see, I think what he's doing is he's taking the way of war which is already established in the desert,

which is not very, very different indeed from the kind of warfare that's being fought conventionally in the trenches in Europe. It's much more about ambush and hit and run and raiding and that kind of thing. And he's inflating that into a guerrilla insurgency. Or certainly he's in reinforcing those voices in the Arab High Command who take the view that what we need to do is to mount a guerrilla, war. First and foremost against the railway line, the Hijaz railway, which runs from Damascus down to Medina, and which is the key Ottoman Turkish supply line east of the river Jordan. They've got a garrison of 10,000 men at Medina and a series of pinprick attacks coming unexpectedly, hitting different places at different times, mean that huge numbers of Ottoman soldiers end up

getting tied down, trying to defend 800 miles of railway line from Damascus to Medina. Thank you very much. Hussain, what are the Arabs engaging in this revolt? What did they set out to do? There are multiple objectives. There's the kind of dynastic ambition of the Hashemites. But they're joined by Arabs from other places, from Egypt, from Syria, who are simply concerned with trying to overthrow the Ottomans.

there's a huge debate as to why that develops as a feeling. Because in 1913 and the First Arab Congress in Paris, most Arabs, who were participants in this conference, did not express any separatist sentiment. But by 1915, 1916, there seems to be a growing discontent across the Arab world in very different sorts of places. And those very different participants, the revolt sort of brings them all together.

Was Lawrence known to be very supportive, of this? I think he was. It's interesting. I mean, if you think about the story from the Arab side, Lawrence doesn't loom as largely as he does in our own imaginaries. And that's quite interesting because Lawrence is certainly part of the story. It's not like people are trying to write him out. But he doesn't seem to have the kind of totemic significance that he does in the version of the story as it's told in Anglo-American. American rating. Neil Faulkner, what can you put your finger on and say Lawrence made a difference here that was important? Well, there are probably different ways in which one could answer that. But I think one thing that is worth saying in response to that is what happens in relation to Aqaba. Because... Aqaba being?

Well, Aqaba is the forward-most base which can be supplied by C, that is by the British, who have naval. supremacy where you could potentially base an Arab force in order to carry operations forwards into, up to as far as Damascus. Now it's quite clear that the British didn't particularly want the Arabs to take Aqaba. In particular, the French didn't want the British, didn't want the Arabs to take Aqaba because they had their designs very much on Syria and Lebanon. The idea was that the Arabs were to be bottled up really in Arabia where they could tie down Ottoman and soldiers, but they wouldn't become players in the post-war

struggle for power. I think Lawrence goes off message in a very serious way in May. Literally, actually. Well, he goes absolutely literally off message in the sense that nobody can communicate with him and nobody knows where he's gone. And what he's actually done... For a considerable period. For a considerable period

for two months. He sets off in May 1917. He's the only Brit with a group of about 50 Arab fighters. they go on a 600-mile march through the desert to raise the desert tribes and then to descend into what is nowadays southern Jordan and to take Akaba. Acaba today is a port in southern Jordan.

By taking Akaba as an Arab force, what they've done is they've created a situation where the Arabs can now begin to project military power towards Damascus. Now, that is immediately calling into question and the secret arrangements which have already been made by the British and the French to carve up the Middle East in their interests. Lawrence has gone completely, as I say, off message in doing this.

So what's he doing off message? And disrupted the plans. Well, he's disrupted the plans because he knows what the plans are and he's rooting for the Arabs. He wants the Arabs to be players in the post-war settlement of the Middle East. He tries to put the Arabs into a position where they might be able to challenge the secret Sykes-Speaker agreement. Anglo-French.

Yes, which is the Anglo-French agreement. And Russian originally, yes, indeed. Katrina, those in Britain who are trying to keep up with these affairs in bewilderment about the Middle East. What messages were they getting back about what was happening there? The concentration really was on the fighting

in the Western Front for the most part. And really it wasn't until 1917 that the British government realized that they needed to be explaining better to their populations at home, what was going on in the Ottoman Empire and why that fight was taking place. So you see quite a concerted propaganda effort appearing in 1917 through 1918

where the British are explaining the fighting in the Near East in terms of Britain being the kind of promoter of nationality that they are trying to free the embryonic nations within the Ottoman Empire from the chains of imperial rule. I mean, that message, it's, hard to tell how far it percolated and certainly the British Home Front tended to view the fighting in the Ottoman Empire in a very, as Neil describes, orientalist way in terms of this kind of romantic, chivalrous, mysteriously charming effort that contrasted starkly with the

brutal bloody attrition of the Western Front. And it's really there that you see that the seeds that becomes the flower of the Lawrence of Arabia myth growing. Now, of course, you know, if you do have family members fighting in that part of the world, it becomes very, very important. And I think, you know, for people living in Australia and New Zealand, those battle zones of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War are extremely important. Obviously, the Anzaks, as they were known, formed part of a multinational landing force in April 1915. And it was written about, in, you know, euphoric terms by war correspondents like Ellis, Ashmead Bar. Hartlett and Charles Bean, who, you know, within weeks were describing the Gallipoli landings as the birth of the Australian nation.

You know, and that's as much a myth as the Lawrence of Arabia myth, but it goes to the heart of a very sort of crude Australian nationalism that depicts itself in contrast to Britain. Thank you. Hussein, Hussein Amar, how did the conflict in the Ottoman Empire end or not end in 1918? So I think, as people have argued for Central and Eastern Europe, the war doesn't really end in 1918. 1918 is really the starting point of these extraordinary anti-colonial movements that break out across the region. So in Libya, in Egypt, in Iraq, in Tunisia, in Palestine, in Syria, in Sudan, in Somaliland. and these are all movements that are popular movements, much more popular than the Arab Revolt itself, but which aren't as remembered quite so vividly. And I think part of the reason they're not remembered so vividly is that there isn't a kind of white savior granting these people's a kind of freedom as you have in the case of Lawrence.

So these are actually, in effect, much more important in terms of outcomes. They produce sovereign states in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, etc. Unlike the Arab Kingdom, which never, well, it lasted for a very short time. But they're not, we don't talk about them quite as much. But they, you know, they go on right into the 1930s. Neil Faulkner, how did Lawrence react to the way this was resolved? He went to conferences in up to 1920, didn't he? What was he saying at those conferences?

And how was his voice heard? He's at two particularly important conferences. He's an advisor to Faisal at Versailles in 1919. And then again, he's an advisor to Churchill, when Churchill was colonial secretary in Cairo in 1921. And I think what Lawrence is doing is he's operating in post-war diplomacy in an attempt to get what he considers to be the best possible outcome for the Arabs. Now, I don't think that he had a clear conception of what that would look like, and just to pick up the point that Hussein has just made. I mean, I've already described him as a liberal imperialist,

and I think his conception was that, as he saw it, the more benevolent British Empire would provide the framework for the growing to nationhood of these new Arab states. And yet, of course, in reality, there was a wave of revolt from below where ordinary people were beginning, to create their own future. And those attempts were generally speaking suppressed

by the British Empire with which Lawrence is closely associated in this post-war diplomacy. So it's quite a limited view, I think, that he has of what might happen. There's a famous 1918 map where Lawrence sort of lays out his vision of what the region would look like. And it involves a Kurdish state, an Armenian state, an Arab state. But this is, I mean, to realize that kind of map

would have involved what we now would call ethnic cleansing, right? Because it would necessarily call for the removal of populations into single ethnic states, which of course the Middle East could never be because all of these regions were multi-religious, multilingual, multi-ethnic. Quite early on, really,

just a few years, two or three years after war, Lawrence began to, began his global fame down to an American reporter and cinematographer who made a report on him showed it in Broadway, then in London, and we told hundreds of thousands, million people saw it, and then wanted more of Lawrence,

not of Alan be walking with his army in, and he grew from that. Can you take that on? Yes. I mean, he wasn't a famous man at the end of the First World War. He becomes a famous man because of the Lowell Thomas show in 1919, which changes, actually. It evolves.

I mean, initially, there wasn't that much emphasis on Lawrence, because he... Can you tell listeners what the Lowell Tower show was? Well, it was a weird kind of thing, and we don't do this kind of thing anymore. But it was a sort of, it was described as a travelogue. And I understand that it consisted of a series of what were then called lantern slides, old-fashioned slides, some moving images, a certain amount of music, some dancing, and a very racy commentary on the part of Lowell Thomas himself, the American journalist who becomes a kind of impresario. Now, what seems to happen as the show evolves is that the Lawrence element is ramped up

because audiences respond with more enthusiasm to the Lawrence character than they do to the General Alan B and the traditional British military operations. And that turns Lawrence into what he himself describes as a matinee idol. He becomes an early example of 20th century celebrity culture. And then he moves away into the same.

strange 15, 13, 15 years of being in the ranks in the RAF, in the tank regiment, back in the RAF. And one of you described as a slow mental breakdown. Seven Pillars of Wisdom came out. Some people think great book. You think great book.

And very accurate recording of reporting on what was happening there. Is there anything more than anybody wants to say about those last years? Has he abandoned? the Arab cause? Is that abandon him? Where are we? Well, what I would say is that he's abandoned the attempt to make a difference in 1921, 22, because he's got, as far as he thinks he can, with the Cairo conference,

and I think at the same time as he's involved in that post-war diplomatic effort, he's suffering a kind of mental breakdown. And I think you can read that in the pages of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. and I see him as a kind of permanent convalescent after that. Is he break down because the British should betray the Arab? Yes, I think so. I mean, there are many different facts. We now talk about post-traumatic stress disorder, but that's a kind of portmanteau term anyway.

It covers many different things. But I think specifically in his case, he was riddled with guilt about what he saw as the betrayal of the Arabs by British and French imperialism. Hussein, what happened to the idea of an Arab kingdom? Hussein, Sharif Hussain, declares himself Caliph when the Ottoman Empire is formally abolished, and the Caliphate is formally abolished in 1924. But by that point, he's already been abandoned by his British allies who allow their other allies,

the Ibn Sauds, to enter into Mecca and Medina and rest it from the hands of Sharif Hussein, who dies in the early 30s in Transjordan, the newly established state of Transjordan, Jordan, where his son Abdullah is now king. So it's a very sad story, but that's not really the end of the kind of dream of a united Arab kingdom. That lives on right into the 1960s with the establishment of the United Arab Republic under Nasser, which unites Egypt and Syrian attempts to unite more and more states. What's interesting is that the British conceive of the Arab kingdom as being primarily a religious entity. They understand it as a counterweight to the idea of the Caliphate, but the appeal of the Arab kingdom to many Arabs or to the Arab Republic

subsequently, is precisely the opposite, that it's a secular republic that allows them to escape the caliphate as an institution. And that's why many non-Muslims become very early adherence to the idea of the Arab kingdom and continue to be very important within the ranks of Arab nationalism right into the 60s. Katrina, do you have a panel, do you think that the way that the land was divided up, a lines drawn across a map, was, became an obstruction. to unities which persists? I think it's quite simplistic to just look at where borders are drawn

and to extrapolate from there or, you know, a century's worth of problems. I think it's worth bearing in mind that there are several different iterations of the perceived future of the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire as the war is unfolding. Neil's already mentioned the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which is often held up as, you know, the strong. draw man of everything that is wrong with the Middle East today. And I think we have to be really careful there because Sites-Picot Agreement was drawn up but two years before the end of the war. And many things changed from that agreement to the final settlement, not least the fact that

in Sites Pico, France was originally going to have significant portions of Iraq that then ended up under British control. And also, as we've mentioned already, Russia was part of Sites Pico and then drops out of the war and thus out of that agreement. I think it's worth bearing in mind that all defeated parties in the First World War are subjected to some kind of reorganisation and dismemberment. The Ottoman Empire is not unique in that sense. What is interesting about the peace process and the Ottoman Empire is what a protracted affair it is. You know, it starts in 1919, but it doesn't end until 1923 with the Treaty of Lassan. On the whole, the European powers, I think, are able to draw the lines that most meet their interests.

interest and advantage, but there are moments where there is resistance to that. The 1920 Treaty of Severa is resisted by a Turkish nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kamal, who was obviously a key officer at Gallipoli, at Kanakale, who is then able to expand the original Anatolian heartland that's outlined in the Treaty of Severa to the eventual Turkish Republic that we know today that was defined in the Treaty of Lassan. But the Europeans, I think, on the most part in the Arab lands were able to draw the lines where they wanted them to be. Briefly.

We should be careful about the lines drawn in the sand because this often allows to talk about the Middle East as being made up of uniquely artificial states. And the idea of the artificial state has often been used to justify a lot of violence and repression within those states. So the RAF bombings in Iraq, etc. Faisal himself, when he becomes king of Iraq,

talks about the Iraqi people needing to be made claiming that they're an artificial entity. But that's a political statement that allows a certain specific kind of government within those states, which is often very violent and repressive. And I would also add to that that, you know, it's not necessarily where the lines that are drawn that necessarily causes the problems. It's how those states are then managed, you know, both by the British and the French, the divide and rule tactics, the colonial oppression, the violence,

the manipulation of particular minority groups that are preference over others. So I think to reduce it all down to lines is overly simplistic. Finally, Neil, we all know about, well, I suppose we all know, about Lawrence of Arabian, Peter O'Toole, the revival of the global myth, if you want, mentioned if you want, of Lawrence of Arabia. Do you think that had any truth in it as far as your concern as a military historian? Well, I mean, what I would say about the movie is,

as a piece of cinema, it is magnificent. It's also of its time. It's riddled with sort of orientalist stereotypes. Does it tell an essential truth about Lawrence? I think it does. I think it's, when I watch the film, it's almost like a Greek tragedy playing out where this hero goes into an exotic location

to do deeds of daring, do, full of idealism and enthusiasm, and is slowly destroyed by the contradictions of, war and wartime diplomacy and the portrayal of the people that he is fighting with. And in that sense, it works for me as a piece of drama in the old-fashioned Greek manner. So I think the film is great. Does it help us to understand the modern Middle East? No, not really.

Well, you can't say better than that for the end of the programme. Thank you very much. Thank you, Katrina Pendle, Hussain O'Marr and Neil Faulkner. Next week, it's The History of Coffee from its origins. in Ethiopia to the coffee houses at the 18th century and it's linked to slavery as it became a global commodity. Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. I think for me what I find hard is that I've worked so hard to move away from just focusing on Lawrence. You know,

my sort of early introduction to this history and this part of the world as a British school child, through those ideas of Lawrence of Arabia and I feel like I've made a concerted effort to not understand that history through the prism of one white man so yeah for me that that's really important why did you not want I mean I can understand why you didn't want but will you tell listeners why you didn't want to

because for me it is everything that's problematic about the way that British people tell themselves stories about British imperial history and it's I mean I think you use the term white colonial saviour. It's a rather romantic idea. It's this idea of chivalry, this idea of the mysterious East, which is just hugely, hugely problematic.

And, you know, I think we have a duty to tell a much more complex and varied and multi-perspective story than just the experience of one white man. I agree, but it isn't forbidden to tell the story of one person, isn't it? I'm not saying it's forbidden, but for me, I find it more interesting to hear the stories of other people. I mean, I think it's worth doing in order to dismantle, right? I mean, because it's obviously speaking to a concern that people have, and so we should build on that concern to ask different sorts of questions and to redirect the way in which we think about this figure.

From my perspective, he simply doesn't loom very largely in the Arab imaginary or in the Arabophone imaginary. But is that because he doesn't or because they don't want him to? No, I think it's just because he doesn't, because actually the much more momentous events are happening outside the Arab Revolt. The Arab Revolt is very important. But also, I mean, the film is quite important. I mean, the later film is quite important.

But it's seen as a kind of, you know, as something kind of exotic in distancing. It's not, it's not, it's not, people don't watch it and see themselves in it. In Egypt, it's important because Amrashirif is in it. and, you know, he is Egypt's greatest celebrity. And so that kind of has a different meaning. But it's not that people see themselves in the story when it's told in that way. And it's not, I don't think it's a question of denial.

It's just that the more momentous events are happening elsewhere. Yeah, no, I go with that completely. I go with what both Katrina and Hussein are saying. And it seems to me that we need to separate out two things, which is that there is a cultural phenomenon and it is the Lawrence of Arabia legend and it's constantly evolving and one investigates that with one set

of, if you like, academic spectacles on and there's a whole other issue which one examines with a different set of academic spectacles which is the history of the Middle East since the time of the First World War and the connection between the two is a very, very limited one and I think probably the former, the legend,

has not contributed to a high level of popular understanding of what's really gone on in the Middle East over the last century, so it's not terribly helpful in that sense. And we should separate out those two things, the cultural phenomenon and the real history of the Middle East. You can say that, though, about, I think, a number of cultural outputs that have come from the first world. I'm thinking of Peter Weir's 1981 Gallipoli,

just going back to the earlier point about the Anzac legend and the idea of Australian birth on the battlefields of Canakali Gallipoli. But it is interesting the way cinema in particular, as well as novels and fiction, has contributed to certain ideas being implanted in the public imaginary that have retained such pertinence and such strength, even when there are vast numbers of very interesting scholarly books that challenge some of the ideas within them.

Why do you think that is, though? That's what's interesting as well, isn't it? It's interesting that they have such a standing strength. I mean, let's agree with everything you say. It isn't accurate. It didn't happen like that. It wasn't very significant, as you say. Orrance wasn't in the greatest scheme of things.

But why has it got such? It's just to do with the Brits wanting their own heroes and thinking, well, not just the British, isn't it? It's all over the way. I think at the heart of it is actually the claim that freedom in the colonial world comes from the colonises. Right? So that's something that people like to hear.

It's a comfortable story. There's a version of it that gets told. with Woodrow Wilson, right? That the anti-colonial movements that happen in Egypt, Iraq, etc., are inspired by Wilson's words in the same way. And so those together have been very persistent because then freedom is a gift to the colonised.

But I'm sorry. This is the right man on the white horse riding in and saving the natives. And Hussein's work on those popular movements that were there in the Middle East, in the sort of, you know, the end of the First World War into the early 1920s, that is actually for most of the kind of general popular audience in the English-speaking world.

That's hidden history. That's a history of Middle Eastern people, people in the region actually creating their own history, rather than having it imposed upon them by people coming in from the outside. And as well, these cultural ideas often have sustaining power for as long as they serve a particular purpose. And I think in the case of the Lawrence myth, It's serving a particular purpose that makes colonial history palatable.

It makes it comfortable. It makes it relatively easy to understand. I think in the case of Peter Wears Gallipoli, it's serving a particular purpose about Australian conservative politics and relationship to the military that still has a sustaining power to this day. Is there no way in which, I mean, I'm interested in the individual against the rest, as it were. There's no way to balance it, is there? I think there is.

I think, you know, there are some fantastic examples of historical biography that allow the individual to be used as a prism through which more complex ideas and structures in this context about empire can be understood. I think if we just obsess around the individual, though, without that additional context, that's when it becomes very reductive and unlimited. And it might be worth saying as well. I mean, it occurs to me that Lawrence is able to play quite a significant role in the revolt for the reasons that I've indicated in a way that would not have been true in relation to any genuinely popular mass movement. Why is he able to play that role? He's able to play that role because this is a very reactionary social group, actually.

These are tribal leaders from Arabia. they are not progressive in any sense at all. They are not the same as the middle-class nationalists in Damascus and Beirut and places like that. I mean, if Lawrence had been put in, inserted into a real popular movement for self-imantipation, he couldn't have played the role that he does. So he's anomalous partly because he is this weird romantic who identifies with a certain type of Arab. or what he imagines a certain type of Arab to be like. I think that's right.

I mean, I'm a little bit more cautious about sort of saying some movements are more real than others, but it's certainly of a kind of scale that makes it possible for him to participate in that way. If you think about the hundreds of thousands of people that take to the streets in Egypt or Iraq within a few years of that, it's simply not a movement that can be controlled by any one individual. It doesn't have any top-down I mean, there is no leadership. These are leaderless popular movements. And I think perhaps, I wouldn't say necessarily

that this one is reactionary, but it's definitely a movement with a leader and with a leadership, and it's a planned movement. Whereas these other uprisings, which are much, much larger, are quite spontaneous, actually. Well, thank you all very much indeed.

Thank you. Thank you. Here's the man. Does everyone want to your coffee? Coffee? Coffee, coffee? Cup of tea, please. Cup of tea would be very nice. Coffee, please.

If we're doing coffee next week, I'd better start now. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson.