After the conclusion of the peace settlements fol-
lowing the First World War, Britain attempted,
for a time successfully, to secure the benefits of
empire in the Middle East while minimising the
costs of control. Its time-honoured way of achiev-
ing this was to maintain old social structures and
unreconstructed traditional rulers. Modernisation
and democratisation was at best half-hearted,
since mass nationalism would have threatened
British dominance.
The Ottoman khedive of Egypt became a king
under British supervision. The Hashemite amirs
of Arabia were transformed into sovereign rulers.
The Arab states were also provided with consti-
tutions; assemblies were ‘elected’ and ministers
were appointed who were supposedly responsible
to the assemblies. British ‘advisers’ made sure that
law and order were maintained and Britain’s
interests preserved. These arrangements proved
unstable and, after the Second World War, pro-
gressively collapsed in Egypt, Iraq and the Sudan.
Although not an Arab state, Iran (Persia) was sub-
jected to a similar pattern of indirect rule after the
war. This merely continued, in this region, the
policy followed before the 1914 war. Britain was
inventive in devising constitutional and inter-
national arrangements that gave it what was nec-
essary to protect its imperial interests without
saddling it with responsibility for the welfare of
the indigenous peoples of the countries it con-
trolled. An exception was Aden, which was
annexed in the nineteenth century and became a
colony ruled outright by Britain; its population,
however, was small. A more ingenious solution
was found for the Sudan, reconquered in 1898,
which became half a colony, a so-called condo-
minium, shared between Egypt and Britain in
1899; in reality, both Egypt and the Sudan were
administered by Britain. Britain did not attempt
to rule over the Arabs living in the sheikhdoms
of the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf, or in the
interior of Arabia. Instead, special treaties were
signed and protectorates proclaimed excluding
any foreign influence other than British. Iraq,
Iran, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were
ostensibly independent countries bound only to
Britain by treaties of alliance ‘freely concluded’
against this general background of its imperial
policy in the Middle East; the position of
Palestine, a large, predominantly Arab land for
which Britain assumed direct responsibility under
the League Mandate, was different. From the
first, Palestine proved a troublesome possession.
Far from providing Britain with a friendly and
secure base in the Middle East, increasing
numbers of troops from Britain’s small army had
to be assigned to Palestine just to try to keep the
peace. In other parts of the Middle East British
policy also ran into constant problems. It was
already too late and too expensive to extend
imperial control by the mixture of force, efficient
administration and paternalism that Britain had so
successfully adopted in the heyday of imperialism.
Taking on the heritage of the Ottoman rulersChapter 38
THE MIDDLE EAST BETWEEN TWO WORLD
WARS, 1919–45