Tag Archives: Picot

McMahon, Sykes, Balfour: Contradictions and Concealments in British Palestine Policy 1915-1917

by WILLIAM M. MATHEW Lecture given to the History Group of The Norfolk Club, 14 April 2016 to mark the centenary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement 1916 Abstract These three war-time initiatives are presented as part of a compressed, uncoordinated, two-year … Continue reading

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Britain’s legacy to the tortured Ottoman Empire

Selfish imperial agreements between Britain and France, combined with the publication of the contradictory Balfour Declaration of 1917, fuelled hostilities in the Middle East This article appeared in The Sunday Telegraph on 2 February 2013 Bad times ahead: Sir Edmund … Continue reading

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Setting the Desert on Fire. Book Review

James Barr, Setting the Desert on Fire: T.E.Lawrence and Britain’s’  Secret  War in Arabia, (London: Bloomsbury 2006) This book does not fit easily into any one category: it is dramatic, a thrilling account of the last struggles of the Ottoman … Continue reading

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The Sykes-Picot Agreement 1916

With the Ottoman Empire drawn into the war the Entente powers assumed that its defeat and dismemberment were inevitable. They negotiated between themselves which portions of the Empire they would take. In 1915 Prime Minister Herbert Asquith appointed the de … Continue reading

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Short biographies by Mary Grey

The War Cabinet (WW1) The creation of the War Cabinet undertook the supreme direction of the war effort. It was composed of David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law, Lord Nathaniel Curzon, Alfred Milner, Arthur Henderson and Sir … Continue reading

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The Balfour Declaration and its Consequences by Avi Shlaim

Occasionally there are topics that have been written about at such length that it helps to clear the air, or to establish the vantage point from which I intend to consider my subject. My aim therefore is to take a … Continue reading

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