Lawrence in Arabia

War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

By Scott Anderson

In war, language itself often becomes a weapon, and that was certainly true in the Middle Eastern theater of World War I. For example, while the Allied powers tended to use “the Ottoman Empire” and “Turkey” interchangeably, they displayed a marked preference for the latter designation as the war went on, undoubtedly to help fortify the notion that the non-Turkish populations of the Ottoman Empire were somehow “captive peoples” in need of liberation.

Similarly, while early-war Allied documents often noted that Palestine and Lebanon were provinces of Ottoman Syria, that distinction tended to disappear as the British and French made plans to seize those territories in the postwar era. On a more subtle level, all the Western powers, including the Ottoman Empire’s/Turkey’s chief ally in the war, Germany, continued to refer to the city of “Constantinople” (its name under a Christian empire overthrown by the Muslim Ottomans in 1453) rather than the locally preferred “Istanbul.”

As many Middle East historians rightly point out, the use of these Western-preferred labels—Turkey rather than the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople instead of Istanbul-is indicative of a Eurocentric perspective that, in its most pernicious form, serves to validate the European (read imperialist) view of history.

This poses a dilemma for historians focusing on the Western role in that war theater-as I do in this book-since the bulk of their research will naturally be drawn from Western sources. In such a situation, it would seem a writer must choose between clarity and political sensitivity; since I feel many readers would find it confusing if, for example, I consistently referred to “Istanbul” when virtually all cited material refers to “Constantinople,” I have opted for clarity.

(Anderson 2013, Author’s Note)

History is often the tale of small moments – chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence – that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings that triggers a hurricane,

(Anderson 2013, 62)

Adding to Yale’s frustration in this area was the peculiarly British approach to avoiding confrontation, its officials quick to cede ground when necessary, graciously inert when it wasn’t. The American special agent had an early taste of this when, shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, he learned that the British had imprisoned Zaki Bey, the city’s former Ottoman military governor and the man who had been instrumental in securing Yale’s escape from Palestine. In high dudgeon, Yale stormed into the offices of the relevant British officials and told them of the many favors Zaki Bey had performed for the expatriate community in Jerusalem. He also mentioned that Zaki Bey was a close friend of the former U. S. consul to Palestine, Otis Glazebrook, who in turn was close friends with Woodrow Wilson. “I told them if Zaki Bey was not released on parole, I would take the matter up with Washington and have it brought to the President’s attention.”