© The Author(s) 2019 31
A. O’Sullivan, The Baghdad Set,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15183-6_2
CHAPTER 2
Prelude to Conflict and the Embassy Siege
Safe transit, and not ‘imperialism’ is ... the motive in the Arab world.
I think this one of the most important points for an understanding of
the Middle East.
—Freya StarkThe profundity of Freya Stark’s axiomatic view of Britain’s western Asian
priorities lies in its simplicity. For the British, Mesopotamia was never
about imperial possession or expansion; it was about securing Britain’s
passage to the East. The British did not govern Iraq; they manipulated it,
drawing on administrative, fiscal, and juridical methods and structures
evolved and perfected by the Ottoman Turks.^1 In principle, the British
plan was simply to find a compromise between the Middle Eastern wish
for independence and their own wish to maintain partial control.^2 No
Freya Stark, East Is West (London: John Murray, 1945), xix. Similarly, in an
article in The Times of 3 February 1940, Stark wrote: ‘Just because our interest
is in safe transit, circumstances have made it our business to strengthen and not
to weaken the communities through which our commerce passes, and our true
role is one of mutual advantage with all trading countries that lie between the
Mediterranean and the far Asiatic lands.’ ‘The Middle East: I. Political and
Strategic Position’, Bulletin of International News 17, no. 3 (10 February
1940): 152.