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LAWRENCE IN ARABIA - REVIEW
[ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]
A natural leader with glorious irreverence and a tortured sexuality.
But Scott Anderson's book also explores how TE Lawrence contributed
to the making of the modern Middle East
Christopher de Bellaigue The Guardian, Friday 14 March 2014 08.30 GMT
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/14/lawrence-arabia-modern-middle-e
ast-review
Stature and pathos … Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of
Arabia. Photograph: Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images
Over the next four years of commemoration, as our opinions of the
first world war alter subtly under the influence of new facts, one
reputation seems unassailable. The nimble and humane approach that TE
Lawrence took to war in the Middle East is a cherished contrast to the
dunderheaded monomania that we have come to associate with the generals
of the western front. Lawrence embodies the committed "easterner", not
only because he viewed the Ottoman empire's Arab provinces as a vital
theatre of war, or even because he identified so strongly with their
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of
the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson Buy the book
Tell us what you think:Star-rate and review this book
inhabitants, but because he calls to mind something other than Flanders
mud - the light and dust of the Levant.
His reputation in the territories where he did his work is more
complicated. Even now he is loathed by Turkish patriots because in
1916 he instigated a revolt that cost them their Arab possessions
and boxed them into Asia Minor. Many modern Arabs regard Lawrence
as well-intentioned but thwarted, and perhaps even complicit in his
own thwarting, for while he was the representative of an empire that
had promised them independence, all they actually got was a stunted,
truncated and imperially supervised condominium with a Jewish homeland
- Israel in embryo - sticking out of its belly.
The ironic subtitle of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's account of
his role in the Arab revolt, is "A Triumph". Its climactic passages of
abasement and lost honour show that in Lawrence's estimation even the
Arabs' victorious entry into Damascus, in September 1917, was spoiled
by the impending British betrayal. He hated his part in the deception.
Lawrence "of Arabia" has been done almost to death by biographers,
military historians and filmmakers. They have been drawn to his
genius as a leader and the ill-fitting components of that genius
- his misgivings as an imperialist, his tortured sexuality, and
that compound of arrogance and self-effacement ("backing into the
limelight", as someone put it, allegedly Churchill) that has kept
his soul satisfyingly open to interpretation.
In his new book, Scott Anderson expands and contextualises the familiar
Lawrence story - as his title, Lawrence in Arabia, suggests.
Rather than depict a hero in isolation, he puts Lawrence alongside
three spooks who rubbed shoulders with him in the Middle East: Aaron
Aaronsohn, a Jewish colonist in Palestine, who spied for Britain
as a way of furthering Zionism; Carl Prufer, a German diplomat who
dreamed of fomenting jihad against the British; and William Yale, a
well-connected oil man (his great-great-uncle founded Yale University)
who became, in August 1917, the state department's "special agent"
for the Middle East.
Anderson's supporting characters are colourful, even if none approaches
Lawrence in stature and pathos. Prufer was a brilliant linguist and
an energetic lothario - his many girlfriends included Minna "Fanny"
Weizmann, whose brother Chaim was Europe's most prominent Zionist and
went on to become Israel's first president. His vision of the Middle
East was, however, narrowed by the usual ethnic blinkers (cowardly
Arabs, docile Jews), and he ended the war scheming irrelevantly.
Yale at least finished up on the winning side, but America had yet
to become involved in the Middle East, and he contributed little.
Mercenary, priggish and inept, even he was shocked when the US
government called him to the 1919 peace conference at Versailles
"as an expert on Arabian affairs".
By far the most intriguing - and significant - of Anderson's trio is
Aaronsohn. "A towering man given to portliness … brilliant
and arrogant, passionate and combative", in 1915 this celebrated
agronomist was trusted enough by the Ottomans to be placed in charge
of a campaign to suppress a plague of locusts. But 1915 was also
the year of the Armenian genocide; Aaronsohn feared that the Jewish
colonists of Palestine would be next. By 1917 he had overcome British
suspicions to establish a spy ring, including his sister, Sarah,
that passed on information about the Turks in Palestine. In October
of that year, Sarah was captured by the Ottomans, whom she defied,
first by withstanding brutal treatment, then by killing herself. Her
brother was in London conferring with Chaim Weizmann at the time. No
longer were the Aaronsohns interested solely in self-defence; the
new goal, as articulated by Weizmann, was a Jewish Palestine "under
British protection".
Anderson is a bleak but fair-minded historian, alive to the cynicism
and prejudice that decided actions on all sides. He shows, for example,
how the British war effort was hampered by an ill-advised contempt
for Ottoman abilities - evidenced during the disastrous Gallipoli
campaign when the allies landed on the very shoreline where the Turks
were strongest.
Aaronsohn and his fellow agents felt a similar revulsion for their Arab
neighbours in Palestine. The agents' dishonest depiction of the Turks'
evacuation of the port city of Jaffa in 1917 as a vicious anti-Jewish
pogrom was "one of the most consequential disinformation campaigns"
of the war, for it was accepted unquestioningly in the west and
hardened the opinion of world Jewry in favour of Zionism.
Crucial to the Zionist effort was broadening its appeal to western
policymakers, prominent among whom was a breed of well-heeled British
romantics who floated around the Middle East offering solutions of
breathtaking (and often contradictory) simplicity to problems that
even now are considered intractable. The Yorkshire landowner Sir
Mark Sykes was the nonpareil of these meddlesome amateurs; in 1916
he carved up the Middle East in a secret deal with France, only to
propose an alliance of Jews, Arabs and Armenians that would freeze
the French out. Sykes's Christian faith was cheered by the idea of
a Jewish return to the Holy Land; he adopted Zionism and became an
ally of Aaronsohn. It was Sykes who announced the British cabinet's
decision to endorse a "Jewish national home" with the immortal words -
to its future first president - "Dr Weizmann, it's a boy!"
Not far away, ducking behind Turkish lines to blow up railway tracks
and stiffen Arab morale, TE Lawrence did not hide his dismay at the
moral and political "hole" Sykes was digging for him. Lawrence loved
the fractious, headstrong and thoroughly unhousetrained Arab tribes,
and was proud of having championed their commander in the field,
Emir Faisal, a scion of the Hashemites, the hereditary custodians
of Mecca. Whatever the exploits of Faisal and his men in trouncing
the Turks, however, after the war they would be unable to resist
the Anglo-French desire for overall control of the region - as well
as the political acumen of the Zionists, as the Jewish state edged
closer to realisation.
Lawrence was among the first to predict that it would not all be plain
sailing for the Jews in their new home, telling Yale in 1917 that
"if a Jewish state is to be created in Palestine, it will have to be
done by force of arms amid an overwhelmingly hostile population". As
for Faisal, he was kicked out of Syria by the French in 1920 and the
Iraqi monarchy he later founded under British auspices lasted until
1958, when it was overthrown in a republican revolution. Nowadays,
Hashemite power survives only in the tiny state of Jordan. For all
his heartfelt Arabism, Lawrence himself was a failed kingmaker.
So why does his finely grained character continue to impress on
our vision of the Middle East - and on Anderson's intelligent and
original, if somewhat unevenly written, group portrait? One reason
is his glorious irreverence, disappearing into the desert to avoid
unwelcome orders, exulting in his ignorance of the protocols of the
commissariat. Also, he was right in many things, recognising before the
Gallipoli debacle what subsequent military historians have tended to
confirm: that the port of Alexandretta, on Turkey's exposed underside,
would have been a preferable launch pad for an assault.
Needless to say, his recommendations to that effect were not acted on.
And yet for all Lawrence's outsider status and unconventional views,
Britain's military machine in the Middle East contained enough
sound men for him to thrive - and to emerge from the war one of the
most admired men in Britain. In his well-constructed demolition of
Britain's "amateurs", Anderson neglects the paradox that Lawrence,
an archaeologist who never received a day's military training, a
scholar and an aesthete amid the blood and guts, was the greatest
amateur of them all.
[ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]
A natural leader with glorious irreverence and a tortured sexuality.
But Scott Anderson's book also explores how TE Lawrence contributed
to the making of the modern Middle East
Christopher de Bellaigue The Guardian, Friday 14 March 2014 08.30 GMT
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/14/lawrence-arabia-modern-middle-e
ast-review
Stature and pathos … Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of
Arabia. Photograph: Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images
Over the next four years of commemoration, as our opinions of the
first world war alter subtly under the influence of new facts, one
reputation seems unassailable. The nimble and humane approach that TE
Lawrence took to war in the Middle East is a cherished contrast to the
dunderheaded monomania that we have come to associate with the generals
of the western front. Lawrence embodies the committed "easterner", not
only because he viewed the Ottoman empire's Arab provinces as a vital
theatre of war, or even because he identified so strongly with their
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of
the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson Buy the book
Tell us what you think:Star-rate and review this book
inhabitants, but because he calls to mind something other than Flanders
mud - the light and dust of the Levant.
His reputation in the territories where he did his work is more
complicated. Even now he is loathed by Turkish patriots because in
1916 he instigated a revolt that cost them their Arab possessions
and boxed them into Asia Minor. Many modern Arabs regard Lawrence
as well-intentioned but thwarted, and perhaps even complicit in his
own thwarting, for while he was the representative of an empire that
had promised them independence, all they actually got was a stunted,
truncated and imperially supervised condominium with a Jewish homeland
- Israel in embryo - sticking out of its belly.
The ironic subtitle of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's account of
his role in the Arab revolt, is "A Triumph". Its climactic passages of
abasement and lost honour show that in Lawrence's estimation even the
Arabs' victorious entry into Damascus, in September 1917, was spoiled
by the impending British betrayal. He hated his part in the deception.
Lawrence "of Arabia" has been done almost to death by biographers,
military historians and filmmakers. They have been drawn to his
genius as a leader and the ill-fitting components of that genius
- his misgivings as an imperialist, his tortured sexuality, and
that compound of arrogance and self-effacement ("backing into the
limelight", as someone put it, allegedly Churchill) that has kept
his soul satisfyingly open to interpretation.
In his new book, Scott Anderson expands and contextualises the familiar
Lawrence story - as his title, Lawrence in Arabia, suggests.
Rather than depict a hero in isolation, he puts Lawrence alongside
three spooks who rubbed shoulders with him in the Middle East: Aaron
Aaronsohn, a Jewish colonist in Palestine, who spied for Britain
as a way of furthering Zionism; Carl Prufer, a German diplomat who
dreamed of fomenting jihad against the British; and William Yale, a
well-connected oil man (his great-great-uncle founded Yale University)
who became, in August 1917, the state department's "special agent"
for the Middle East.
Anderson's supporting characters are colourful, even if none approaches
Lawrence in stature and pathos. Prufer was a brilliant linguist and
an energetic lothario - his many girlfriends included Minna "Fanny"
Weizmann, whose brother Chaim was Europe's most prominent Zionist and
went on to become Israel's first president. His vision of the Middle
East was, however, narrowed by the usual ethnic blinkers (cowardly
Arabs, docile Jews), and he ended the war scheming irrelevantly.
Yale at least finished up on the winning side, but America had yet
to become involved in the Middle East, and he contributed little.
Mercenary, priggish and inept, even he was shocked when the US
government called him to the 1919 peace conference at Versailles
"as an expert on Arabian affairs".
By far the most intriguing - and significant - of Anderson's trio is
Aaronsohn. "A towering man given to portliness … brilliant
and arrogant, passionate and combative", in 1915 this celebrated
agronomist was trusted enough by the Ottomans to be placed in charge
of a campaign to suppress a plague of locusts. But 1915 was also
the year of the Armenian genocide; Aaronsohn feared that the Jewish
colonists of Palestine would be next. By 1917 he had overcome British
suspicions to establish a spy ring, including his sister, Sarah,
that passed on information about the Turks in Palestine. In October
of that year, Sarah was captured by the Ottomans, whom she defied,
first by withstanding brutal treatment, then by killing herself. Her
brother was in London conferring with Chaim Weizmann at the time. No
longer were the Aaronsohns interested solely in self-defence; the
new goal, as articulated by Weizmann, was a Jewish Palestine "under
British protection".
Anderson is a bleak but fair-minded historian, alive to the cynicism
and prejudice that decided actions on all sides. He shows, for example,
how the British war effort was hampered by an ill-advised contempt
for Ottoman abilities - evidenced during the disastrous Gallipoli
campaign when the allies landed on the very shoreline where the Turks
were strongest.
Aaronsohn and his fellow agents felt a similar revulsion for their Arab
neighbours in Palestine. The agents' dishonest depiction of the Turks'
evacuation of the port city of Jaffa in 1917 as a vicious anti-Jewish
pogrom was "one of the most consequential disinformation campaigns"
of the war, for it was accepted unquestioningly in the west and
hardened the opinion of world Jewry in favour of Zionism.
Crucial to the Zionist effort was broadening its appeal to western
policymakers, prominent among whom was a breed of well-heeled British
romantics who floated around the Middle East offering solutions of
breathtaking (and often contradictory) simplicity to problems that
even now are considered intractable. The Yorkshire landowner Sir
Mark Sykes was the nonpareil of these meddlesome amateurs; in 1916
he carved up the Middle East in a secret deal with France, only to
propose an alliance of Jews, Arabs and Armenians that would freeze
the French out. Sykes's Christian faith was cheered by the idea of
a Jewish return to the Holy Land; he adopted Zionism and became an
ally of Aaronsohn. It was Sykes who announced the British cabinet's
decision to endorse a "Jewish national home" with the immortal words -
to its future first president - "Dr Weizmann, it's a boy!"
Not far away, ducking behind Turkish lines to blow up railway tracks
and stiffen Arab morale, TE Lawrence did not hide his dismay at the
moral and political "hole" Sykes was digging for him. Lawrence loved
the fractious, headstrong and thoroughly unhousetrained Arab tribes,
and was proud of having championed their commander in the field,
Emir Faisal, a scion of the Hashemites, the hereditary custodians
of Mecca. Whatever the exploits of Faisal and his men in trouncing
the Turks, however, after the war they would be unable to resist
the Anglo-French desire for overall control of the region - as well
as the political acumen of the Zionists, as the Jewish state edged
closer to realisation.
Lawrence was among the first to predict that it would not all be plain
sailing for the Jews in their new home, telling Yale in 1917 that
"if a Jewish state is to be created in Palestine, it will have to be
done by force of arms amid an overwhelmingly hostile population". As
for Faisal, he was kicked out of Syria by the French in 1920 and the
Iraqi monarchy he later founded under British auspices lasted until
1958, when it was overthrown in a republican revolution. Nowadays,
Hashemite power survives only in the tiny state of Jordan. For all
his heartfelt Arabism, Lawrence himself was a failed kingmaker.
So why does his finely grained character continue to impress on
our vision of the Middle East - and on Anderson's intelligent and
original, if somewhat unevenly written, group portrait? One reason
is his glorious irreverence, disappearing into the desert to avoid
unwelcome orders, exulting in his ignorance of the protocols of the
commissariat. Also, he was right in many things, recognising before the
Gallipoli debacle what subsequent military historians have tended to
confirm: that the port of Alexandretta, on Turkey's exposed underside,
would have been a preferable launch pad for an assault.
Needless to say, his recommendations to that effect were not acted on.
And yet for all Lawrence's outsider status and unconventional views,
Britain's military machine in the Middle East contained enough
sound men for him to thrive - and to emerge from the war one of the
most admired men in Britain. In his well-constructed demolition of
Britain's "amateurs", Anderson neglects the paradox that Lawrence,
an archaeologist who never received a day's military training, a
scholar and an aesthete amid the blood and guts, was the greatest
amateur of them all.