Britain in the Islamic World: Imperial and Post-Imperial Connections [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-030-24508-5, 978-3-030-24509-2

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvi
Front Matter ....Pages 1-2
A History of Violence? Islam, English Orientalism, and the Bombay Riot of 1851 (Andrew D. Magnusson)....Pages 3-26
Instruments of Acquisition and Reflections of Desire: English Nautical Charts and Islamic Shores, 1650–1700 (Alistair Maeer)....Pages 27-55
‘Far from the Orthodox Road’: Conceptualizing the Shiʿa in the Nineteenth-Century Official Mind (Conor Meleady)....Pages 57-85
Front Matter ....Pages 87-88
Allies and Adversaries: Anglo-Ottoman Boundary Negotiation in the Middle East, 1906–1914 (James Tallon)....Pages 89-105
‘A Test of Support’: British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire, 1913–1914 (Justin Quinn Olmstead)....Pages 107-123
‘A Considerable Effect’: Winston Churchill and Wilfrid S. Blunt’s Legacy (Warren Dockter)....Pages 125-146
Front Matter ....Pages 147-148
‘Britain, India, and the Somaliland Campaigns of 1901–04’ (Derek Blakeley)....Pages 149-168
Legislating Gender in Mandate Palestine: Colonial Laws on Midwifery, Employment, and Marriage (Elizabeth Brownson)....Pages 169-193
Front Matter ....Pages 195-196
‘What Britain Has Done for Islam’: British Propaganda to the Islamic World During World War II, 1939–1942 (Stefanie Wichhart)....Pages 197-223
British Encounters with the ‘Islamic World’ 1921–1989 (Pippa Catterall)....Pages 225-250
Back Matter ....Pages 251-254

Citation preview

BRITAIN AND THE WORLD

Britain in the Islamic World Imperial and Post-Imperial Connections

edited by

Justin Quinn Olmstead

Britain and the World Series Editors Martin Farr School of Historical Studies Newcastle University Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK Michelle D. Brock Department of History Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA, USA Eric G. E. Zuelow Department of History University of New England Biddeford, ME, USA

Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history. The editors invite book proposals from historians of all ranks on the ways in which Britain has interacted with other societies from the sixteenth century to the present. The series is sponsored by the Britain and the World society. Britain and the World is made up of people from around the world who share a common interest in Britain, its history, and its impact on the wider world. The society serves to link the various intellectual communities around the world that study Britain and its international influence from the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the impact of Britain on the world through this book series, an annual conference, and the Britain and the World journal with Edinburgh University Press. Martin Farr ([email protected]) is the Chair of the British Scholar Society and General Editor for the Britain and the World book series. Michelle D. Brock ([email protected]) is Series Editor for titles focusing on the pre-1800 period and Eric G. E. Zuelow (ezuelow@une. edu) is Series Editor for titles covering the post-1800 period. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14795

Justin Quinn Olmstead Editor

Britain in the Islamic World Imperial and Post-Imperial Connections

Editor Justin Quinn Olmstead Department of History and Geography, College of Liberal Arts University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, OK, USA

Britain and the World ISBN 978-3-030-24508-5 ISBN 978-3-030-24509-2  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

The early and rapid expansion of the Islamic religion from 612 to 750 CE saw the growth of its influence advance from Mecca in the Arabian Peninsula, to the Indus River in the east and the Franco-Spanish border in the west. It encompassed Persia (Iran), the Northern Tier of Africa along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Asia Minor, and India. With such far-ranging boundaries, Islam and the ensuing Caliphate became the dominant force in the Mediterranean region and would remain so through the year 1000. Fighting between Muslims and the Christian Franks along the Pyrenees as well as fighting elsewhere in the Mediterranean world would last for a quarter century before culminating in the crusades. English scholar Robert of Ketton provided the first Latin translation of the Qur’an in 1143 and within forty-five years Richard the Lionhearted of England took the first English army to fight against Islam in what would become the third of nine crusades by Christian European armies. Not all of the interactions between the Europeans and Muslims were violent. Despite religious prejudices, Europeans studied, borrowed, and traded with the Islamic world during the two centuries it fought to reclaim Jerusalem. The armies that traveled to fight in Palestine may not have given the people of the British Isles their first encounter with Islam and Muslims during the crusades, but the ferocity of the battles and the religious hatred left a distinct impression of the region and those who inhabited it on the individuals who returned to the British Isles. This contact left an indelible mark on Europe and the British Isles in the form of new foods, v

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household goods, and ideas which led to the development of trade with the Islamic world. The initial impact of Islam and the Middle East on Europe and Britain is well-trod. What this book intends to do is capture the role of Britain, as a nation and the British people, in the Islamic world. To do so, the chapters that follow offer several new perspectives on Britain’s relationship with Muslim societies by examining social, political, diplomatic, and military issues that arose over the centuries of British involvement in the region. Indeed, by 1857, the British Empire itself could be debatably conceived to be the Islamic world. Decisions made by individual traders and high governmental officials are examined in an attempt to understand how Great Britain impacted the Islamic world. Decisions and actions are also examined to understand how events in the Islamic world influenced British decisions within the empire and for protection of the empire. The phrase Britain in the Islamic World might give the impression that one nation is comparable to an entire religion that encapsulates a large portion of the globe. It is not. The attempt here is to provide some analysis to the impact Britain, its people, and its empire had on the region and to examine Islam’s impact on Britain. The phrase “Islamic World” is intentionally vague but it should not be mistaken for lack of understanding of what it means to be a Muslim in Egypt, Iran, India, or anywhere else. It is merely a signifier for a region in the world that encompasses many nationalities and covers multiple continents. It should not be mistaken for lack of understanding of the role national identity plays in determining the actions, reactions, and experiences of individual Muslim’s in different regions of the world. The book is organized thematically to allow readers to gain an understanding of how Britain’s involvement in the Islamic world developed and transformed over time. Its goal is to contribute to the understanding of British influence on the Islamic world and the Islamic worlds influence on Britain. The focus is meant to provide readers a view of the numerous ways Britain and Muslims have influenced each other over time. In this context, it is essential to recognize that influence is not always positive. With chapters that range in subject from the British view of Muslims and Islam in general in the twelfth century, to British policy toward the Ottoman Empire, to colonial legislation of midwifery and the limitation of health care to Palestinians, to British management of their encounter with Islam, this volume provides a view of how Britain as a nation and as a people interacted with the Islamic world.

PREFACE  

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British involvement can be separated into three phases: Discovery, Colonization and Decolonization, and post-Empire. Because perceptions of Islam influenced British decisions, this book begins by examining how the image of Islam in the eighth and ninth centuries influenced British rule as far east as India. It also analyzes the role of trade in developing this image of Islam in the British public and governmental mind. It will address British and Ottoman problems that led to Britain expanding its imperial hold on the region and tackle the tricky issues of colonial rule and how the British Government used religion as a means to control the Muslim populations. Because British imperial rule left a lasting effect on the Islamic world, this book will also address the developments that have led to many contemporary issues. However, it does not discuss present-day matters. The hope is that with an understanding of the past, readers can make sense of the events of the present. The British view of Islam was, and is, ever-evolving, as Andrew Magnusson and Alistair Maeer note in the opening two chapters. This evolving view is due in large part to the myriad of ways that the British people interacted with Muslims from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. Conor Meleady further develops this view by demonstrating how the incorporation of the Shi’a minority into the British system fueled the Sunni-Shi’a divide. The importance of the connections of individual Britons and Muslims driving much of the conversation is not lost on the other authors. Elizabeth Brownson and Warren Dockter both make a case for understanding how policy targeted at minority groups create hardships and fostered a sense of rebellion in contradiction to the desired outcome of a benign Britain. Derek Blakeley turns the tables slightly with his focus on the influence of a small group of determined people far from the corridors of power in London. The infamous “Mad Mullah’s” brand of Islam was, to the British, foreign to Somalis and therefore dangerous to Somali society. In this case, the influence of Mullah Muhammad Abdullah Hassan was felt by the tribes in British Somaliland, and the rest of the British Empire, particularly India as resources were gathered to fight what were considered fanatical forces. Stefanie Wichhart delves into British attempts at creating messages directed at influencing its subjects in the Islamic world, as well as those Muslims living outside the empire, are an important if not overlooked piece of interaction between groups. Juliette Desplat also tackles this theme as she explores how British occupation shaped of national identity in Egypt and Iraq. Justin Quinn Olmstead

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and James Tallon suggest that the British treatment of the Ottoman Empire during the era of the First World War helped define the end of the Ottoman era and the nature of modern Turkey. By 1919, the British Empire would consist of more Muslim subjects than any other as the empire expanded to include not just India and Malaya but the Middle East too. Britain’s hold on its empire was weakening and, as Pippa Catterall points out, policymakers attempt to manage their encounters with Islam as a religion and the Muslim subject is an existential crisis that many Britons are still coming to grips with. These chapters, organized in chronological order, explore the breadth of the British involvement in the Islamic world. Each one aiming to provide a diversity of ideas that critically investigate the role Britain the country, and its citizens had in the development of the Islamic world, is unique precisely because of the different approaches taken by the authors. Where the timeline of the chapters overlaps, we hope that the reader will understand that events, people, and ideas do not stand alone—they are intertwined. This book does not purport to be the final word on Britain’s role in the Islamic world. What it hopes to do is provide readers with a fresh view of how the encounters between the British people and Muslims shaped the world and their relationship in it. By understanding the trajectory events took, how people learned of and thought of each other over time, it is possible to formulate an appreciation of just how vital interaction is to be accepting. Winfield, KS, USA January 2019

Justin Quinn Olmstead

Contents

Introduction to Part I A History of Violence? Islam, English Orientalism, and the Bombay Riot of 1851 3 Andrew D. Magnusson Instruments of Acquisition and Reflections of Desire: English Nautical Charts and Islamic Shores, 1650–1700 27 Alistair Maeer ‘Far from the Orthodox Road’: Conceptualizing the Shiʿa in the Nineteenth-Century Official Mind 57 Conor Meleady Introduction to Part II Allies and Adversaries: Anglo-Ottoman Boundary Negotiation in the Middle East, 1906–1914 89 James Tallon ‘A Test of Support’: British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire, 1913–1914 107 Justin Quinn Olmstead ix

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‘A Considerable Effect’: Winston Churchill and Wilfrid S. Blunt’s Legacy 125 Warren Dockter Introduction to Part III ‘Britain, India, and the Somaliland Campaigns of 1901–04’ 149 Derek Blakeley Legislating Gender in Mandate Palestine: Colonial Laws on Midwifery, Employment, and Marriage 169 Elizabeth Brownson Introduction to Part IV ‘What Britain Has Done for Islam’: British Propaganda to the Islamic World During World War II, 1939–1942 197 Stefanie Wichhart British Encounters with the ‘Islamic World’ 1921–1989 225 Pippa Catterall Index 251

Notes

on

Contributors

Derek Blakeley, Ph.D.  is an Assistant Professor of History at McNeese State University. The focus of his research is on the domestic political career of Lord Curzon after his return from India in 1905 and debates over imperial policy in that era. He is also researching the raising and role of the Imperial Service Troops of India from their origin in the 1880s through the First World War. He holds his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. Elizabeth Brownson  is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where she has been a faculty member since 2012 and teaches all periods of Middle Eastern history and world history. Brownson completed her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her undergraduate studies at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Her research focuses on Palestinian women’s status in Muslim Family Law since the British Mandate period and MFL reform today. Brownson is the author of two articles in the Journal of Palestine Studies and a chapter in a forthcoming book, Middle Eastern Societies, 1918–1939: Challenges, Changes and Transitions. Brownson received a Fulbright-Hays fellowship to complete her dissertation, Gender, Muslim Family Law, and Contesting Patriarchy in Mandate Palestine, 1925–1939. She is currently revising it for publication. Pippa Catterall is Professor of History and Policy at the University of Westminster. She also teaches public policy and politics for the Hansard Society. She is the founding editor of National Identities as well as of xi

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the new e-journal launching in 2019, Silk Road: A Journal of Eurasian Development. Her many publications on British and imperial history include Labour and the Free Churches 1918–1939: Radicalism, Righteousness and Religion (London: Bloomsbury, 2016) and her current work focuses on the relationship between religion and the British constitution. Warren Dockter is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and gained his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham in July 2012. He has taught at the University of Exeter and the University of Worcester and was an Archives By-Fellow at Churchill College and Junior Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge. He joined the Department of International Relations at Aberystwyth University in 2016 and is the author of Churchill and the Islamic World (2015) as well as the editor of Churchill at the Telegraph (2015). Alistair Maeer is an Associate Professor of History at Texas Wesleyan University. His research and publications address maritime, cartographic, and British history from 1400 to 1800. He is currently working on a monograph that parallels the evolution of English charting with the growth of empire. Andrew D. Magnusson  is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History & Geography at the University of Central Oklahoma. He earned a Ph.D. in Islamic History at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Dr. Magnusson’s research interests include Zoroastrianism, the history of violence, and religious accommodation in the pre-modern Middle East. His work on the Islamization of sacred space in Iran recently appeared in an edited volume, Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History (2017). He is also the author of a chapter on ethnic and religious minorities in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Arab Culture (2015). Conor Meleady  is a D.Phil. candidate in History at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, where his doctoral research concerns the meanings and significance of ideas of Islamic orthodoxy, heterodoxy and reform in British colonial discourses. Justin Quinn Olmstead, Ph.D.  is currently Associate Professor of History and Director of History Education at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma. His edited book Reconsidering Peace and Patriotism During the First World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) provides a unique view of the peace movement during the war. Dr. Olmstead’s

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second book, The United States’ Entry into the First World War: The Role of British and German Diplomacy (Boydell & Brewer, 2018), reasserts the importance of diplomats and diplomacy on the complicated situation which led to American entry into the war. He has contributed a chapter on the impact of military drones on foreign affairs in The Political Economy of Robots, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) edited by Dr. Ryan Kiggins. Currently, he is on the executive committee of the Midwest World History Association and is the Treasurer and Director of Membership for the international organization, Britain and the World as well as being active in a number of other professional organizations. His current research includes the leadership of, and relationship between, President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Churchill, the diplomacy of alliances, and how great powers adapt. He presents on television, podcasts, and at national and international conferences on the First World War, British history, and Diplomacy, including invited lectures at The National Archives of the UK and the Institute for Historical Research. Dr. Olmstead gained his Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield, England and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. James Tallon, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of History at Lewis University in Romeoville, IL, near Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. His research interests focus on conflict and state-building in the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey. He also has interest in the same issues in Southeastern Europe and North Africa. He has published two book chapters entitled: “Ottoman Anti-Insurrectionary Operations in Yemen and Albania, 1910–1912: The End of Ottomanism and the Beginning of an Age of Violence” and “The Albanian Vilayets of the Ottoman Empire: Between the Young Turks (or CUP) and Balkan Players, 1909–1912” and several articles, most recently “Albania’s Long World War I, 1912–1925” in Studia Historyczne. His current project deals with state-building, violence, and resistance in Ottoman Albania and Arabia. He is also editing a volume on the Ottoman Military and society. Stefanie Wichhart, Ph.D.  is an Associate Professor of History at Niagara University near Buffalo, NY. A historian of the British Empire in the Middle East, she is completing a book manuscript titled Britain, Egypt, and Iraq During World War II: The Decline of Imperial Power. She has published articles on Britain’s Kurdish policy and Allied propaganda campaigns in Iraq during the Second World War in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History and Journal of Contemporary History.

List of Figures

Instruments of Acquisition and Reflections of Desire: English Nautical Charts and Islamic Shores, 1650–1700 Image 1 Image 2

Image 3 Image 4 Image 5 Image 6 Image 7 Image 8

Augustine Fitzhugh, “Chart of Moha (1683), Bibliotèchque nationale de France (BNF),” Paris, Cartes et Plans, 32 S.H. Portefeuille 211, div. 3 piece 1 Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 131 (The appearance and manner of the town and rode of Mocha as they lie upon the coast of Arabia in the Red Sea in the latitude of 12 degrees and 30 minutes. In an extremely hot climate and little or no rain all year long: The ship Scepter, shoals, soundings) 34 Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 113 Gamboroon (Gambarone) 37 John Thornton, “Chart of the Persian Gulf, 1699,” BNF, Paris, Cartes et Plans, S.H. Portefeuille, 209, div. 2 piece 5 38 Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 71 Carwar, Malabar Coast (1670) 41 Andrew Welch, “Chart of Guzarat, (1677),” BL Add MS 39178-A and Andrew Welch, “Chart of the Malabar Coast, (1677),” BL Add MS 39178-B 42 Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 111 Calicut, Malabar Coast 44 Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 128v Anjenga, Malabar Coast 45

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LIST OF FIGURES

Image 9

John Thornton, “Chart of Malabar Coast, (1696),” BL Add MS Eg. 741 Image 10 John Thornton, close-up of the coast south of Bombay on “Chart of the Coast of Malabar, (1696)” and John Thornton, close-up of the coast south of Calicut on “Chart of the Coast of Malabar, (1696)”

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Introduction to Part I

Interest in the Islamic World and the Middle East, in particular, has seen a revival in recent years. One area getting much attention is the role Britain played in the creation of the modern Middle East. Lost amid the discussion of Sykes-Picot, T. E. Lawrence, and the rise of ISIS is the long and varied history of British involvement with Islam and its practitioners. This 1300-year association provides a variety of details about the relationship that developed between the peoples and governments of Britain and the different countries that make up the Islamic World. Pertinent to the discussion is how these two sets of people came to appreciate and disparage each other’s culture, beliefs, and individual worth. A focus on the period that England, and consequently Britain, as a nation, had its first encounters with the Islamic World provides readers with a better understanding of how the British view of Islam has changed over the years. Andrew Magnusson focuses on the myths of Islamic barbarity and inferiority that grew out of the initial contacts made between the English and Muslims. By taking a broad approach to the subject, Magnusson provides the readers with a greater understanding of the intricacies inherent in the British conception of Muslims as others. He points out that early scholarship set the tone for much of the exclusion of Muslims and the framing of the religion as violent which eventually exacerbated the tensions between British and Muslims. As such, the people of the Islamic World came to be seen as inferior because they were seen as the antithesis to everything the British believed Britain represented.

2  Introduction to Part I

Because trade was so central to the development of Britain as a nation, it had expanded into the eastern Mediterranean Sea, primarily present-day Turkey and Syria. The importance of trade within the Mediterranean Sea becomes clear when one realizes that during the seventeenth century, English trade with this region was more significant than the combined trade with India and America. The English maritime community, most of them civilian traders, made the most dramatic inroads and gained an appreciation for the Islamic World. As Alistair Maeer notes, it was in many ways the seventeenth-century English merchants and mariners that provide a window into the encounters with the Islamic Mediterranean. Muslim traders had dominated the Mediterranean for centuries, and as such, they initially had no issue with private English merchants. The rapid expansion of British trade had an adverse effect on Muslim merchants that led to occasional skirmishes and eventually to the gradual development of the realities of English trade that led to imperial ventures in the region. As with the sailors and traders that frequently encountered the Islamic World, individual travelers did too. Conon Meleady examines the role literature produced by various travelers and diplomats played in determining how the British would conceptualize the Shi’a minority in Islam. This focus on the Shi’a–British connection offers an alternative perspective on where India stood within the British Empire in terms of Islam and the sectarian fighting within it.

A History of Violence? Islam, English Orientalism, and the Bombay Riot of 1851 Andrew D. Magnusson

In 1978, Edward Said’s book Orientalism dropped like a bombshell in the field of Middle Eastern Studies and transformed the discipline of history. Said argued that Orientalists—European scholars who studied Islam— used their scholarship to justify the colonization of the Middle East. When British and French Orientalists described Muslims as exotic, barbaric, lazy, or superstitious, they wittingly or unwittingly endorsed the notion that Muslims needed the civilizing influence of the West. These scholars, many of whom doubled as colonial administrators, imagined the East as the mirror image, opposite and inferior, of themselves.1 One of the tropes that Said and others identified in nineteenth-century British Orientalism is the notion that Islam is a violent religion. Of course, that notion persists in some circles at present. Whence this idea? Although there has been a considerable amount of scholarship devoted to the relationship of Islam and violence, and to English perceptions of Islam, none has yet tackled this specific question.

A. D. Magnusson (B) Department of History and Geography, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_1

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A number of excellent studies of Islam in medieval European thought have appeared in the last two decades. John Tolan’s Saracens and Thomas Burman’s Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom build on the earlier work of Norman Daniel and R. W. Southern.2 These authors range across Europe seeking evidence of Latin perceptions of Islam. Yet the broad geographical scope of their work makes it difficult to trace the development of specifically English tropes. While there are several excellent monographs that are geographically rooted, like Matthew Dimmock’s work on Muhammad in early modern England or Humberto Garcia’s study of Islamic republicanism in the English Enlightenment, it is difficult to perceive change over time in works that treat a single era.3 In other words, there is not yet a reliable study of English perceptions of Islam as they evolved over the longue durée. Of course, asserting the importance of place is not to ascribe any essential identity or anachronistic meaning to a given locale. This study focuses geographically on England while recognizing that before the modern period it did not necessarily comprise a united kingdom, that its population was ethnically heterogeneous, and that the realm sometimes extended to places like Normandy or Sicily that are no longer considered English. Likewise, authors who hailed from this greater England are treated as English, even if, like Robert of Ketton or Edward Gibbon, they wrote from elsewhere.

The Myth of Religious Violence In The Myth of Religious Violence, William Cavanaugh argues that the conception of religion as a set of private beliefs rather than a comprehensive way of life evident in public acts developed in Western Europe between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. During this period, which stretches from the Protestant Reformation to the Enlightenment, the state began to usurp the power of the church. Monarchs increasingly relegated religion to the private realm, insisting that ecclesiastical authority had transgressed the natural boundary between religion and politics. Clerics, they argued, had fused two distinct spheres that were supposed to be separate, and rulers sought to restore the proper order of things. In reality, the goal was to consolidate the power of the state by excluding religion from the public sphere. The Enlightenment furthered this thinking and enshrined it in law.4 One prerogative that the state claimed was violence. As Cavanaugh notes, the highest test of devotion is the willingness to kill or die for something. That willingness deserves the same scrutiny whether perpetrated in

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the name of Jesus or nationalism. Yet the state claimed exception by inventing the myth of religious violence. If national unity did not transcend all other loyalties, governments warned, sectarians would descend into killing each other as they had in previous centuries. Thus, the state used the specter of religious violence to declare a monopoly on violence. Western Europeans then used that monopoly to colonize other parts of the world. Insisting that the separation of religion and state was a universal value and a mark of civilization, they demanded that other societies conform, forcing them into submission if they resisted. Ironically, colonizers did so under the guise of making peace and, in the case of North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, ending the supposedly violent reign of Islam.5 This study will apply Cavanaugh’s thesis to the study of Islam in England. The myth of the violent Muslim developed in the early modern period, between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Although it existed earlier, the myth spread in reaction to the Ottoman conquests of the sixteenth century. A century later the myth became a maxim of nascent English Orientalism. The myth eventually traveled to India, where it took root in local communities and contributed to the Bombay Riot of 1851. By examining learned English attitudes toward Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Islam as they developed over the longue durée, it becomes clear that English writers constructed Muslims as violent before colonizing them, but generally not before the sixteenth century. In the medieval period, English authors deemed Muslims to be idolatrous, heretical, or lascivious, but seldom violent—even during the Crusades. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Southeastern Europe changed that. The alleged threat to Christian unity posed by cruel Turks became a useful tool for criticizing Protestants in the age of Reformation. Most Orientalists nurtured the myth of Islamic violence, and the Enlightenment did little to challenge it. Ultimately, English perceptions of Islam informed not only the colonizer but also the colonized, which had serious repercussions for Britain’s attempt to govern religiously diverse populations in places like India. In 1851, the myth of religious violence fueled intercommunal tensions between Muslims and Parsis in Bombay, which British officials struggled to control. The image of the violent Muslim became a self-fulfilling prophecy at the dawn of empire in India.

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Saracens and Crusaders Anglo-Saxon pilgrims encountered Muslims, or “Saracens” as they called them, in the Umayyad caliphate on the road to Jerusalem. That term was a corruption of the word “Syrians,” which early Christian writers incorrectly associated with the biblical figure of Sarah through Ishmael.6 Thereafter, Saracens became the most common word for Muslims in Latin sources, including pilgrims’ memoirs. A monk from England named Willibald (circa 700–787) twice visited Jerusalem in the eighth century. Willibald says little about the Saracens he met on pilgrimage, but he does lambast the Umayyad authorities as pagans after he was detained for traveling without a permit. They later caught him smuggling contraband as well.7 Considering the circumstances, his invective does not seem surprising, although it does imply that Willibald did not recognize Muslims as believers. The Venerable Bede (673/674–735) treats Muslims with the same contempt. A Christian cleric from Northumbria, Bede was the greatest historian of his generation in Britannia. Like Willibald, he called Muslims “Saracens.” His Ecclesiastical History, written in 731, briefly described the raids in Gaul by Arabo-Berber Muslims from Andalus. These barbarians swarmed into the region, but God punished them on account of their perfidy and heavenly signs preceded their defeat. John Tolan stresses that in the Bede’s writing Muslims seem no different than other pagan hordes that menaced European Christians at the time, including Vikings and Magyars.8 By the time of the Crusades, however, Muslims had become the enemies of God. William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum (History of the English Kings) describes Pope Urban II’s call to crusade at Clermont in 1095. William (circa 1090–1142) claims to preserve merely the gist of the speech, so these are in that sense his words. The Pope called on his audience to “devote a little exertion to the Turks” because “they claim as theirs the Lord’s sepulcher” and exact money from Christian pilgrims to enter Jerusalem.9 The worst he accuses Muslims of is occupying a holy site and charging the pilgrims who visit it. Pope Urban does distinguish between Fatimid Saracens and Seljuk Turks but does not characterize either as particularly violent. In fact, after noting their conquests in Asia and Africa, he accuses the Turks of cowardice in battle. The Pope reassures his audience that Turks do not engage in hand-to-hand combat but instead fire poisoned arrows and flee. People from the East, he claims, have less blood in their veins because of the heat of the sun in that place—hence their aversion to close combat—but they also have more sense and therefore

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resort to poison. Franks, on the other hand, are superior warriors because they come from moderate climes where people have some brains and some bravery.10 In the age of Crusade, William perceived Muslims as less violent than their Christian antagonists. In addition to fighting Muslims, Latin Christians sought to convert them by better understanding their faith. Peter the Venerable commissioned the first Latin translation of the Qur’an in the twelfth century. Robert of Ketton (flourished 1141–1157), an Englishman who had traveled to Iberia to study astronomy in the Arabic library at Leon, completed the project. The final product was both erudite and hostile to Islam. According to Thomas Burman, the translation of the Qur’anic text is impeccable. The chapter headings, by contrast, are quite polemical. It is possible that they were completed by another hand. They tell the Christian audience what to make of the content by lambasting its alleged author, Muhammad. The most common words used to describe him are stultissimus (“very stupid”) and mendax (“liar”).11 Marginal notes suggest that Muslims believe in an afterlife of physical pleasures while Christians believe in spiritual rewards.12 One comment also suggests that Muhammad spread his faith by the sword, an early example of this claim in Latin.13 It is but one of many criticisms. Roger Bacon (circa 1214–1292) was unique among his contemporaries for approaching Islam from the perspective of philosophy rather than dogma, attempting to demonstrate rationally the superiority of Christianity. This unique approach to Islam did not necessarily yield different conclusions, though. Bacon also identified Muslims with lasciviousness, albeit on the basis of astrology rather than the Qur’an. According to his protoscientific logic, Muslims were prurient because they were devotees of Venus, goddess of love.14 That planet exerted its influence on them in the same way that Jupiter, the king of the heaven, drew Christians into his spiritual orbit. Consequently, Bacon accused Muslims of seeking an afterlife of earthly delights. Although he disliked their theology, Bacon did not perceive Muslims as particularly violent. In fact, he considered so-called Tatars (Mongols) a greater threat to Christendom. They were under the influence of Mars, god of war. In the thirteenth century, Mongols had conquered most of Asia and penetrated as far as Eastern Europe. Initial hopes that they would convert to Christianity had proved vain, but Bacon believed that their conquests heralded the coming of the Antichrist.15 Therefore, the end of the world, including Islam’s demise, was imminent. An admirer of Islamic philosophers like Avicenna (Ibn Sina), he interpreted the writings of Albumazar

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(Abu Masar) to prophesy the disappearance of Islam 693 years after the coming of Muhammad—that is, possibly within Bacon’s lifetime.16 Thus, there was no reason to fear Muslims. Muhammad is depicted as a heretic in chançons de geste, medieval romances or chivalric literature. As Christians criticized the excesses of their own clergy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Muhammad and Islam became useful foils. For instance, Piers Plowman by William Langland (circa 1325–1390) describes Muhammad as a Christian cleric. After failing in his ambition to become Pope, Muhammad began teaching his own doctrine. He trained a dove to peck grain out of his ear, claiming that it whispered divine messages to him. In this manner, he deceived the people of Syria. This story appears in Piers Plowman immediately after a complaint that Christian clergy do not follow their own preaching, which indicates its intent. According to Galen Johnson, Langland used to story “to convince his audience that when the clergy misuse their office, they are making an essentially Muhammadan move—a move of deceit.”17 Ironically, a Muslim prophet had become the archetype of Christian heresy. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville also uses Islam to criticize clerical abuses. This source purports to be an account of the wanderings of an English knight across Asia in the fourteenth century. There is some question about the identity of the author, John Mandeville (flourished 1357), and whether he plagiarized portions of his travelogue from other sources, but most of the linguistic and historical evidence indicates that he was English.18 Mandeville allegedly traveled to Egypt and visited the Mamluk sultan. This Muslim ruler reproved Latin Christians for not being more faithful to the teaching of Jesus. The poor example of their priests encouraged their flocks to indulge in all manner of wickedness. On holy days, Christians preferred to drink in the tavern rather than worship God. They were unfaithful to their wives and prostituted their daughters. Consequently, God had entrusted the holy sites of Palestine to Muslim custodians. A Crusade would eventually succeed, for the sultan insisted that Islamic prophecy foretold it, but not until Christians repented. Mandeville laments, “It seemed to me then a cause for great shame that Saracens, who have neither a correct faith nor perfect law, should in this way reprove us for our failings, keeping their false law better than we do that of Jesus Christ.”19 Clearly, Mandeville’s intent was to shame Christians rather than flattering Muslims. In contrast to his relatively informed portrayal of Muslims, Mandeville presented a garbled biography of Muhammad that repeated many medieval

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Christian tropes about the Prophet. He also added new ones. Muhammad was supposedly epileptic, but convinced his wife that his fits were angelic visitations. Moreover, the prince of Khorasan had made him governor of Arabia, and Muhammad married the princess after her husband’s death. Muhammad was allegedly fond of the preaching of a hermit in Sinai. It is unclear if this detail reflects the apologetic story that a Christian monk recognized the future prophet’s destiny, or polemical claims that Islam was a cheap imitation of Christianity inspired by a heretical priest. In any case, Mandeville says that the Prophet performed his first miracle when he stooped to enter the hermit’s cell and the low doorway became a great gate. Muhammad’s devotion to the hermit so troubled Muslims that they murdered the priest and pinned the crime on their drunken prophet.20 While this tale could imply that the Prophet had a violent nature, Mandeville portrayed him as a charlatan and dupe.

Turkes and Protestants English authors began more consistently associating Islam with violence in the early modern period. By the sixteenth century, the zeal for Crusades had waned and a new Muslim threat to Latin Christendom was on the horizon. Ottoman Turks had effectively destroyed the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople in 1453, captured Jerusalem in 1517, and besieged Vienna in 1529. Their successes on the battlefield encouraged English authors to conflate Islam with violence. Indeed, the nomenclature used to describe Muslims changed with the rise of the Ottoman Empire. In English, “Turke” gradually replaced “Saracen” as the default designation, although both occupied the same rhetorical space in the first half of the sixteenth century.21 National identity was still nascent in Western Europe, so Turke functioned simultaneously as a political, ethnic, and religious marker. This shift occurred at the same time that the writing of vernacular languages like English became more common, and the invention of the printing press allowed information to disseminate more quickly. It is not surprising, then, that a London-based printer, Wynkyn de Worde (died 1534/1535), was among the first to associate Islam with violence in vernacular English. His 1519 text, A Lytell Treatyse on the Turke’s Law Called Alcoran, is actually a reprint of Mandeville’s biography of Muhammad with a short, preliminary treatise on Islam attached. In the preface, de Worde alleged that Turkes kill anyone who will not convert to their religion, a practice which he decried as contrary “to the law of our Lord.”

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Christians do not succumb to such brutality because they are well taught, he averred. Muslim preachers brandish a naked sword during their sermons, or they hang one in a prominent place to frighten their audience; Christian preachers, by contrast, display the cross.22 De Worde’s is perhaps the first sustained, substantial example of the myth of Islamic violence by an English author. Its appearance in the sixteenth century suggests that Cavanaugh was correct to ascribe the myth’s origin to the early modern period. The idea that Muslims were violent appeared alongside the familiar idea that they were sexually deviant. As Ottoman conquests continued in Europe, some Protestants saw Turkes as the scourge of God upon a wayward Church. Other reformers welcomed their arrival because it temporarily shifted the attention of monarchs and popes away from them. This supposed affinity led supporters of England’s king, like Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), to accuse Protestants of being a fifth column. He feared that Ottomans would ally with reformers, and true Christians “would find none so cruel Turkes as [Protestants].”23 In addition to cruelty, More’s criticism of Islam and Lutheranism focused on sexual promiscuity. Both Muhammad and Luther were false prophets whose pleasant preaching lured the feebleminded into lewdness. They—and at this point in More’s text the distinction between Muslims and Lutherans is unclear, perhaps intentionally—preach high virtues but succumb to beastly voluptuousness by taking harlots under the name of wives.24 The association of Islam with lust persisted in the Reformation. The supposed cruelty of Muslims acquired a new racial connotation, however, in England’s late sixteenth-century rivalry with Spain. When Isabel of Castile married Ferdinand of Aragon and united their forces against Granada, their combined power drove the last “Moorish” (Muslim) ruler out of Iberia. Over centuries of contact, though, numerous AraboBerber customs had become an inextricable part of Spanish culture.25 After attempting to purge their society of Jewish and Muslim influences through conversion and expulsion, these monarchs launched the Inquisition to affirm their Catholic identity and to eliminate any vestige of unbelief from their kingdom. Spanish aristocrats prided themselves on being Catholics of long standing with pure blood (limpieza de sangre) as distinguished from conversos —Jews forced to convert to Catholicism—and Muslims. By the seventeenth century, English propagandists began spreading the Black Legend to counter Spanish influence in the Low Countries and to compete with Spanish colonization in the Americas. The Black Legend

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consisted of stories about Spanish brutality designed to discredit Spaniards and tar the reputation of Roman Catholicism more generally. It circulated in pamphlets printed by Protestants in Dutch, French, and English. The color of these tales was not merely a reference to their scurrilous nature. The Black Legend accused Spaniards of being “Moorish” or Muslim in blood and custom. According to Barbara Fuchs, “It is important to recover the essentializing blackness of this cultural mythology: critics typically read it metaphorically, with black as a figure for Spain’s cruelty and greed in the New World, yet it often refers in unambiguous terms to Spain’s racial difference, its intrinsic Moorishness.”26 In other words, the Black Legend portrayed Spaniards not only as violent but also as racially Muslim. Hence, Spaniards in the New World behaved as cruelly as Turks did in the Old.27

Mohammedans and Deists In seventeenth-century England, deists and other radical Protestants sought a non-sectarian alternative to the Trinitarian Anglican creed. They engaged in the comparative study of religion in search of a monotheism that all Protestants could share.28 Henry Stubbe (1632–1676) argued that Islam was uncorrupted by Trinitarian doctrine. Stubbe had studied at Oxford under Edward Pococke Sr., the first holder of the university’s newly established chair of Arabic, where he read medieval Arabic texts in translation. Pococke exposed his students to works about Islam written by Arab Christians. These Arabic sources were generally more reliable than Greek or Latin Christian texts because their authors had actually lived among Muslims.29 Stubbe wrote The Rise and Progress of Mahometanism in approximately 1671 to defend Islam from theological critiques. According to Nabil Matar, Stubbe’s is the first well-informed biography of Muhammad in English.30 Stubbe specifically sought to refute the notion that Islam was a violent religion. Evidently, that idea was already common in England.31 Stubbe argued that while Muhammad extirpated idolatry from Arabia, he did not force its inhabitants to convert to Islam. The Prophet’s goal was to destroy an old religion, not spread a new one. Subsequent rulers expanded the Islamic empire by force of arms, but Stubbe admitted that such was also the practice of the Christian monarchs of his own day.32 He insisted that in waging war or enslaving captives, Muslims followed Islamic law which mirrored Jewish law. Therefore, if Muslims deserved censure for their belliger-

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ence, so did other believers. Stubbe’s sympathetic treatment of Muhammad did not find favor with contemporaries and remained unpublished.33 More widely circulated was the myth of religious violence peddled by one of Stubbe’s former classmates from Oxford. Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724), an Anglican priest and another of Pococke’s students, sought to use the Prophet’s example to demonize radical Protestants, whom he loathed as deists and non-conformists. In 1697, he published a book called The True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet. The subtitle betrays its polemical intent and anticipated audience: “With a Discourse Annex’d, for the Vindicating of Christianity from this Charge; Offered to the Consideration of the Deists of the Present Age.” In fact, the annexed discourse was a wholly separate work, published a year earlier, now appended to a treatise on Muhammad’s life. Prideaux identified seven characteristics of religious imposture. The last was violence, by which “all objection against it [imposture] is silenced with the sword at their throats. This was the method which Mahomet took to establish that false religion, which he invented. For he prosecuted with war all those who would not submit thereto, and made it no less than death for any to gain-say it, or as much as raise the least dispute against any of the doctrines of it.”34 Had Muhammad not used violence to propagate Islam, Prideaux assumes, reasonable humans would have rejected it. Prideaux believed that war was an Arab virtue to which Muhammad was predisposed. “For the first part of his Life he led a very wicked and licentious Course, much delighting in Rapin, Plunder, and Bloodshed, according to the usage of the Arabs, who mostly followed this kind of Life, being almost continually in Arms one Tribe against another, to plunder and take from each other all they could.”35 The author claims that there is scarcely a chapter in the Qur’an that does not lay down some law of war for the promotion of conquest. “Mahometism [dictates] War, Bloodshed, and Violence in matters of Religion, as one of its chiefest Virtues.”36 Prideaux accused deists of being equally destructive. They were perpetrating a schism among English Christians that could only lead to the ruin of Western Christendom, just as the rise of Islam led to the ruin of the Eastern Church. Simon Ockley (circa 1679–1729), an admirer of Prideaux, was the first to use Islamic sources to reconstruct Islamic history in English. An Anglican priest and the Sir Thomas Adams Chair of Arabic at Cambridge, Ockley found in the Bodleian Library at Oxford an Arabic text attributed to alWaqidi, one of the earliest biographers of the Prophet. Armed with this new

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source, which scholars now believe is a much later forgery, Ockley wrote a history of the caliphate to the reign of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705). The History of the Saracens appeared in two volumes, 1708 and 1718. The book’s subtitle advertises it as an account of “[Muslims’] most remarkable battles, sieges, revolts.” The prevalence of these martial themes is noteworthy but perhaps not nefarious. As Ockley noted in the introduction to the second volume, all empires begin by force of arms, leaving little room for other concerns. After an initial period of expansion, however, most empires turn inward to pursue internal enemies and write history. Consequently, Ockley insisted, his second volume was less focused on conquest.37 Ockley did make assumptions about the violent nature of Islam. For example, after describing the so-called Wars of Apostasy (632–634) waged by the first caliph Abu Bakr, Ockley casually remarked, “The next business, therefore, that the caliph had to do, pursuant to the tenor of his religion, was to make war upon his neighbors for the propagation of the truth (for so they call their superstition), and compel them either to become Muhammadans or tributaries. For their Prophet Muhammad had given them a commission of a very large, nay, unlimited extent, to fight, viz., till all the people were of his religion.”38 To be fair, Ockley concedes that the Crusades channeled comparable impulses among Christian Europeans. Ockley began his narration of Islamic history with the first caliph, Abu Bakr, rather than Muhammad because he so admired Prideaux’s biography of the Prophet.39 Nevertheless, after Ockley’s death an anonymous biographical sketch called “The Life of Mahomet” was added to the third edition of The History of the Saracens, published in 1757. Roger Long (1680–1770), master of Pembroke College at Cambridge, intended this new edition to raise money for the support of Ockley’s indigent daughter, Anne, her father having spent the end of his life in debtor’s prison. The introduction to the fourth edition of The History of the Saracens (1847) ascribes to Long the anonymous “Life of Mahomet.” Yet A. J. Arberry attributed it to Leonard Chappelow (1692–1798), Ockley’s successor as Adams Chair of Arabic at Cambridge.40 The latter seems more likely as Long was an astronomer, not an Arabist. The “Life of Mahomet” describes Arabs as intrinsically violent. “They were always a warlike people; seldom being at peace either with one another or their neighbours…. For two hundred years, little else was cared for but war, except what concerned the interpretation of the Koran, and the sects and divisions among themselves which arose therefrom, and daily multi-

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plied.”41 The implication is that Arabs infused Islam with their belligerent nature. Chappelow derisively notes the difference between what he perceives as the pacific revelations that Muhammad had received at Mecca and the aggressive ones of Medina. “Gabriel now brings him messages from heaven to the effect, that whereas, other prophets had come with miracles and been rejected, he was to take different measures and propagate [Islam] by the sword. And accordingly, a year after his arrival at Medina, he began what was called the holy war.”42 If Islam wasn’t inherently violent, it became so in Medina. The “Life of Mahomet” dismisses as duplicitous or opportunistic Muhammad’s decisions on subsequent occasions to forgo violence, presumably because such behavior does not fit Chappelow’s thesis. They were supposedly feints and machinations, which concealed the Prophet’s true purpose. After the revelation of the so-called Sword Verse of the Qur’an (9:5), which urged Muhammad to no longer treaty with his idolatrous enemies but to fight them until they paid tax or joined his confederation, Chappelow reported, “Thus we find the impostor, who at first pretended only to persuade, as soon as he thought himself sufficiently strong to compel men into his religion, declaring it not only lawful, but necessary to make converts by force of arms.”43 The Prophet, the author supposed, could not long delay his violent intent. Ockley’s work had a profound effect on Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776–1788). Gibbon did not read Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, but believed that in Ockley he had found a reliable introduction to the early history of Islam.44 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a classic Enlightenment text. The Enlightenment was a Western European intellectual movement that championed the ideas of human reason over divine revelation, the individual rights of citizens, constitutional limits on the power of monarchy, and the separation of church and state. Thus, it is not surprising that Gibbon’s discussion of violence is preceded by a discourse on human rights and proper government. “In the state of nature, every man has a right to defend, by force of arms, his person and his possessions; to repel, or even to prevent, the violence of his enemies, and to extend his hostilities to a reasonable measure of satisfaction and retaliation.” The Meccans denied Muhammad that right by opposing his peaceable preaching with the threat of death. Yet when Muhammad became sovereign at Medina, “he was invested with the just prerogative of forming alliances, and of waging offensive or defensive war.” Gibbon is unsurprised, then,

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that later verses of the Qur’an are more aggressive. “The imperfection of human rights was supplied and armed by the plenitude of divine power: the prophet of Medina assumed, in his new revelations, a fiercer and more sanguinary tone, which proves that his former moderation was the effect of weakness: the means of persuasion had been tried, the season of forbearance was elapsed, and he was now commanded to propagate his religion by the sword.”45 Gibbon reinterpreted the violence of the Qur’an according to Enlightenment values. He believed that Muhammad’s preaching was tainted by his accumulation of political power. Thus, his assessment of the Prophet becomes progressively harsher. Enlightenment thinkers like Gibbon feared that the accumulation of political power by religious figures would lead to unchecked violence. This idea underlies the myth of religious violence.

Depicting the Myth of Religious Violence Cavanaugh’s thesis that the myth of religious violence originated in the early modern era is confirmed by pictorial evidence. Visual critiques of the Prophet that were more theologically themed in medieval manuscripts become increasingly martial with the rise of the Ottomans and the advent of printing in the sixteenth century. Most Muslims, for a variety of reasons, have preferred not to depict Muhammad.46 Some extend the prohibition to the Biblical prophets, or all humans, or even animals. Others portray the Prophet’s form but veil his face. Since Muslims do not adhere to a single, universal standard regarding the depiction of living things, there are some exceptions to this general rule. However, it is unlikely that English artists who depicted the Prophet had a Muslim model from which to work. That fact makes their art another barometer of English attitudes toward Islam. One of the earliest English illustrations of Muhammad appeared in the mid-thirteenth century. The English cleric Matthew Paris (circa 1200–1259) wrote at St. Albans his Chronica Majora, a history from Creation to 1188. It depicts Muhammad standing on a pig because the text reports that he was ignominiously gored to death.47 The Prophet holds a banner above his head that on the left side reads: “Be polygamous. It is written: Be fruitful and multiply.” The implication is that Muhammad twisted Genesis’ divine injunction to procreate in order to satisfy his lust. The right side of the banner amplifies this claim: “Do not have contempt for the present pleasures for the sake of future ones.”48 Matthew clearly imagines Islam as a hedonistic religion.

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It is in association with Mandeville’s Travels that the myth of Islamic violence becomes evident. An illustrated manuscript of the Travels from 1415 depicts Muhammad holding a halberd despite the fact that Mandeville does not mention Muhammad’s conquests.49 More explicit is Wynkyn de Worde’s 1519 Lytell Treatyse on the Turke’s Law Called Alcoran, a reprint of Mandeville’s biography of the Prophet. It depicts a Turk menacingly brandishing a sword before a rapt audience in what appears to be a church. He wears a fez but is otherwise dressed like a Christian prelate. Members of the audience are also Christian, judging by their garb. This image appears next to a woodcut depicting the Antichrist preaching to a crowd. The juxtaposition of these two images in de Worde’s work—the Muhammadan Antichrist and the armed Turk—demonstrates that theologically themed stereotypes from the medieval period retained influential even as violent ones emerged in the early modern era. One year after being published in English, Humphrey Prideaux’s Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Muhammad was translated into French as La Vie de Mahomet (1698). The Amsterdam-based publisher, George Gallet, commissioned a series of images to accompany the text.50 In nearly everyone, the Prophet and his followers are armed. The art on the title page is most striking. It depicts Muhammad brandishing a sword in his right hand and a crescent moon in the other. A scroll covered in pseudo-Arabic script—presumably the Qur’an—is draped over his left arm. Standing on a globe, he tramples underfoot a cross and tablets representing the Ten Commandments. The Prophet, dressed as a Turk with a large turban, has round, effeminate breasts. A mask hangs from his belt, a sign of duplicity.51 Muslim cavalry menace in the background, while a Christian priest and Turkish scribe take dictation from him and converse with bystanders. A few pages later the Prophet is depicted on horseback hacking to death one combatant while riding roughshod over another’s corpse. The caption reads: “Muhammad triumphant over his neighbors.” Behind him, soldiers in Turkish dress raise spears to pursue a fleeing army. This image appears in the section of the book dedicated to the Prophet’s youth and marriage to Khadija, before he received revelations or engaged in combat. Yet there is a striking visual emphasis on violence. The 1847 edition of Ockley’s The History of the Saracens was the first to include a portrait of Muhammad. The publisher, Henry Bohn, added it more than a century after Ockley’s death. Subsequent editions also carried the image. It presents the Prophet in much the same fashion as La Vie de Mahomet. Muhammad wears a long, flowing, white gown and beard. His

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open black robe reveals a dagger tucked into his sash. He holds the Qur’an, now bound in the form of a book, in his left hand. His right hand is outstretched dramatically, gesticulating as if in the midst of preaching. The Prophet’s face is turned slightly away from the audience, with his turban casting a distorting shadow across the right half of his visage. Although his eyes gaze heavenward, the angle of his face also points them awkwardly toward each other, making Muhammad appear to be cross-eyed. The artwork is admittedly clumsy, particularly around the face, but not intentionally bad. On Muhammad’s right, three men in turbans converse animatedly with unsheathed scimitars. On his left, a lone figure with his back to the scene lifts his sword as a rallying cry. An innumerable but undifferentiated host, bearing spears, stands behind them. The Ka‘ba presides over the scene from the background; its ceremonial black covering (kiswa) partially raised to reveal the structure underneath. This image sparked a riot in Bombay on 17 October 1851.

Bombay Riot of 1851 The ostensible spark for the Bombay Riot of 1851 was the decision of a local Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) newspaper to reproduce this image. It appeared in the first illustrated periodical in the Gujarati language, The Illustrated Mirror of Knowledge (Chitra Dnyan Durpun), which began circulating one year earlier. Each week the Parsi editor published the portrait and biography of an important historical figure. The 23 September 1851, edition featured the Prophet Muhammad. The editor reprinted the anonymous “Life of Mahomet” and accompanying picture from the 1847 edition of Ockley’s History of the Saracens. A review in London’s The Critic had called that edition of Ockley’s book “by far the most accurate and copious history of the extraordinary man [Muhammad] who prescribed the religion of half the world.”52 Since Parsis in Bombay were closely allied with and in many cases educated by the British, they may have felt that reprinting the “Life of Mahomet” was a tribute to the Prophet. Many of Bombay’s Muslims, however, did not. As already noted, the anonymous “Life of Mahomet” is a polemical text that endorses the myth of religious violence. More provocative, though, was the grotesque image that accompanied it. The editor reproduced the image from the 1847 edition of Ockley’s History of the Saracens despite the fact that most Muslims choose not to depict the Prophet. Not only had the Parsi publisher broken that taboo, but the result was a hideous reproduction

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of the original. Even a hostile contemporary Parsi observer admitted that the Prophet’s visage “was much disfigured by there being a pencil shade over one of its eyes, so it appeared as if Mohamed was totally one eyed.”53 The poor quality may not have been intentional; lithography was relatively new to India in 1851, and Parsis pioneered its use in Bombay.54 Regardless, the editor had poorly reproduced an already inflammatory image. Although the article appeared in late September, violence did not erupt until 17 October, which suggests that there were aggravating factors. In the interim, someone posted the loathsome image on the door of Bombay’s main mosque with a lewd message scrawled across it.55 The Telegraph & Courier, another Parsi-owned publication in Bombay, confirms that this vulgar jest exacerbated the situation. Just hours before the trouble began on 17 October, The Telegraph & Courier noted that Muslims had been “in a state of excitement” for three days, which presumably establishes a timeline for the prank.56 The leader of Bombay’s main mosque, Mohamed Ibrahim Muckba, called for a general consultative assembly to discuss the incident, and more than 5000 Muslims gathered that Friday for prayer. Muckba counseled patience, urging his congregants not to cause a disturbance over the image. One worshipper stood and defied Muckba, boldly proclaiming his desire to defend the community’s honor. Muckba assured him that there was no need to fight; they had already sought redress from the British authorities and justice would be done. A few dissenters stormed out of the mosque in response. Approximately 250–300 more people left shortly thereafter, bearing flags and accompanied by a band to celebrate a recent convert’s admittance to the community. When an alarm was heard outside, Muckba ordered the doors of the mosque to be closed in order to prevent others from joining those who had departed.57 According to Parsi accounts, Muslim rioters wielding both conventional and makeshift weapons—swords, knives, clubs, and sticks—assaulted Parsis on the street near the mosque. About twenty Indian police officers and a British constable, alerted that there might be trouble, were already positioned nearby. When the police tried to intervene, the rioters turned on them. Several officers were injured; one nearly lost his life. The rioters slowly made their way to the bazaar chanting, “Din! Din! (Religion! Religion!).”58 They vandalized Parsi homes and looted businesses. Eventually British troops arrived to re-establish order, and they arrested eighty-five Muslims. One Parsi died in the violence.

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The first day of the riot was the bloodiest and most destructive, but smaller skirmishes continued through November. A group of Parsis sought revenge the very next week. As Muslims exited the mosque on 24 October, women on adjacent rooftops pelted them with stones and tiles. The police implicated forty-two Parsis in the attack. Some Parsis accused the British authorities of not doing enough to protect them and, on 24 November, one group began patrolling the streets. By the end of the day, twelve Parsis and five or six Muslims had been assaulted. That same day, the British authorities summoned the leaders of both communities for mediation. The Parsi newspaper editor who had published the image offered a half-hearted apology for giving offense where none was intended, and Muckba rode through the streets in the carriage of Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, a prominent Parsi, to demonstrate their reconciliation. The Bombay Riot of 1851 was over.59 The notion that Muslims are inherently violent dominated Parsi interpretations of this event. Conspiring Muslims had supposedly launched a premeditated assault on the Parsi community, planned weeks in advance.60 One Parsi writer described it as a jihad.61 Another alleged—in a manner eerily reminiscent of the very imagery that had provoked the incident— that Muslims “swore with their Koran in one hand, and a naked sword in the other, to vindicate the sanctity of their Prophet, and to revenge the insult offered to their Religion.”62 An alarmist article in the Telegraph & Courier on 31 October claimed that Muslims were contemplating a “general slaughter” or even the utter extermination of Parsis.63 The myth of religious violence had become a self-fulfilling prophecy in India. Unlike other riots in Bombay’s history, the Riot of 1851 has not been properly studied.64 As a result, we know very little about who rioted or why. Jesse Palsetia has suggested that there may have been underlying socioeconomic factors—which is certainly hinted at in the sources—but he does not offer a more nuanced explanation of the events.65 Since Parsis dominated the press, scholars have tended to follow their interpretation of events. Consequently, we are left to some degree with tropes about the penchant of Muslims for violence, which the British used to justify their formal colonization of India in 1857.66

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Conclusions The myth of religious violence was a product of the early modern period. In England, the association of Islam with violence became common after the sixteenth century. Tropes about Muhammad spreading Islam by the sword do appear earlier but infrequently and secondarily. Criticism of Muhammad and the Qur’an in medieval England was mostly theological. English authors who wrote in Latin tended to focus on the Prophet’s supposed lasciviousness or heresy. However, as the Ottoman Empire began to expand into Southeastern Europe, imputations of violence became more common. This coincided with the Protestant Reformation and the advent of print technology. A similar shift occurred visually at the same time. The earliest English drawings of Muhammad from the thirteenth century depict him as a false prophet. Violent images, on the other hand, become more common in conjunction with Ottoman victories in sixteenth-century Europe. This shift corresponded to the rise of the myth of religious violence in Western Europe. William Cavanaugh argues that as states like England became increasingly secular, they claimed a monopoly on violence. Monarchs sought to delegitimize rival centers of power, particularly religious institutions, by insisting that their violence was unrestrained or irrational. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Orientalists applied this myth to Islam. They lent it an aura of scholarly credibility by citing Arabic and Islamic sources as evidence. Enlightenment thinkers treated Muhammad as a politician and not a prophet, which perpetuated the notion that there is some qualitative difference between religious and secular violence—another feature of the myth. The idea that Muslims are violent then traveled with English colonizers to India, where it made inroads among Anglophone communities like the Parsis of Bombay. The reproduction of Orientalist tropes and images exacerbated intercommunal tensions there, and the myth of religious violence became a self-fulfilling prophecy that in some ways remains with us today. Acknowledgments My thanks to the students in History 4910-Islam and the Enlightenment for helping me to think through these issues.

Notes 1. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), passim.

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2. John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur’¯ an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1960); and R.W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). 3. Matthew Dimmock, Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad in Early Modern English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Humberto Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); and Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977). 4. William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), Chapter 2. 5. Cavanaugh, Chapter 4. 6. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, p. 287. 7. Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 300–800 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), pp. 200–202. 8. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, pp. 74–75. 9. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, trans. R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 599–601. 10. William of Malmesbury, pp. 601–3. 11. Burman, Reading the Qur’¯ an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560, p. 60. 12. Burman, p. 75. 13. Dimmock, Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad in Early Modern English Culture, p. 55. 14. Mark Abate, ‘The Reorientation of Roger Bacon: Muslims, Mongols, and the Man Who Knew Everything,’ in East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), p. 552. 15. Abate, p. 555. 16. Roger Bacon, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, trans. Robert Belle Burke, vol. 2 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), p. 808. 17. Galen Johnson, ‘Muhammad and Ideology in Medieval Christian Literature,’ Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 11, no. 3 (2000): 340. 18. John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, trans. C.W.R.D. Moseley, Penguin Classics edition (London: Penguin Classics, 2005), p. 11. 19. Mandeville, p. 108. 20. Mandeville, pp. 108–10.

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21. Matthew Dimmock, ‘“Machomet Dyd Before as Luther Doth Nowe”: Islam, the Ottomans, and the English Reformations,’ Reformation 9 (2004): 101. 22. Wynkyn de Worde, Treatyse of the Turkes Lawe Called Alcaron (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1977), p. 1. 23. Matthew Dimmock, ‘“Machomet Dyd Before as Luther Doth Nowe”: Islam, the Ottomans, and the English Reformation,’ Reformation 9 (2004): 111. 24. Dimmock, ‘“Machomet Dyd Before as Luther Doth Nowe”: Islam, the Ottomans, and the English Reformations,’ p. 111. 25. Barbara Fuchs, Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), Chapter 5. 26. Fuchs, p. 119. 27. Linda Bradley Salamon, ‘Blackening “the Turk” in Roger Ascham’s A Report of Germany,’ in Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, ed. Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan (University of Chicago, 2008), p. 291. 28. Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840, pp. 5–6. 29. Henry Stubbe, Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall & Progress of Mahometanism, ed. Nabil Matar (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 37. 30. Stubbe, pp. 17, 31. 31. Stubbe, p. 177. 32. Stubbe, p. 180. 33. Stubbe, p. 35; see also Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840, Chapter 1. 34. Humphrey Prideaux, The True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet; with a Discourse Attached for the Vindicating of Christianity from This Charge; Offered for the Consideration of the Deists of the Present Age, 2nd ed. (London: William Rogers, 1697), pp. 130–31. 35. Prideaux, pp. 140–41. 36. Prideaux, pp. vi–viii. 37. Simon Ockley, The History of the Saracens; Comprising the Lives of Mohammed and His Successors, to the Death of Abdalmelik, the Eleventh Caliph, with an Account of Their Most Remarkable Battles, Sieges, Revolts, &c. Collected from Authentic Sources, Especially Arabic MSS., 4th ed. (London: Henry Bohn, 1847), pp. xix–xxi. 38. Ockley, pp. 91–92. 39. P.M. Holt, ‘The Treatment of Arab History by Prideaux, Ockley, and Sale,’ in Historians of the Middle East, ed. Bernard Lewis and P.M. Holt (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 295.

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40. A.J. Arberry, Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars (London: George Allen, 1960), p. 29. 41. Ockley, The History of the Saracens, p. xvii. 42. Ockley, p. 32. 43. Ockley, p. 58. 44. Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 155. 45. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 5 (London: Elecbook, 1999), p. 230. 46. Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 72–98. 47. Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Berkeley: University of California, 1987), p. 100. 48. Michelina Di Cesare, ‘The Prophet in the Book: Images of Muhammad in Western Medieval Book Culture,’ in Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe, ed. Avinoam Shalem (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 14–16. 49. Dimmock, Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad in Early Modern English Culture, p. 47. 50. Humphrey Prideaux, La Vie de Mahomet Où l’on Découvre Amplement La Verité de l’imposture Enrichie de Figures En Taille-Douces (Amsterdam: George Gallet, 1698). 51. Alberto Saviello, ‘Muhammad’s Multiple Faces: Printed Images of the Prophet in Western Europe,’ in Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe, ed. Avinoam Shalem (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 117–21. 52. Critic 5:120 (17 April 1847): 299. 53. Anonymous, ed., The Mahomedan Riots of Bombay in the Year 1851 (Bombay: Bombay Summachar Press, 1856), pp. 2–3; original emphasis. 54. Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 27. 55. Teresa Albuquerque, Urbs Prima in Indis: An Epoch in the History of Bombay, 1840–1865 (New Delhi: Promilla, 1985), p. 44. 56. Quoted in The Mahomedan Riots of Bombay in the Year 1851, p. 3. 57. Deposition of Meah Sheik Ahmed Rassoolkhar in Anonymous, The Mahomedan Riots of Bombay in the Year 1851. My thanks to Simin Patel for this reference. 58. Jehangir R.P. Mody, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy: The First Indian Knight and Baronet (1783–1859) (Bombay: Jehangir R.P. Mody, 1959), p. 96. 59. My summary of the Muslim-Parsi Riot of 1851 derives mostly from the anonymous and highly partisan The Mahomedan Riots of Bombay in the Year 1851. This work was compiled by “a Parsee” from contemporaneous accounts of the incident in a Parsi newspaper, Telegraph & Courier. 60. Jesse S. Palsetia, The Parsis of India: Preservation of Identity in Bombay City (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001), pp. 188–89.

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61. Mody, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, p. 96. 62. The Mahomedan Riots of Bombay in the Year 1851, p. 4; compare Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 5, p. 181. 63. Mahomedan Riots, p. 27. 64. Jim Masselos, The City in Action: Bombay Struggles for Power (New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007); and Jesse S. Palsetia, ‘Mad Dogs and Parsis: The Bombay Dog Riots of 1832,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 11, no. 1 (2001): 13–30. 65. Palsetia, The Parsis of India, p. 188. 66. Barbara Metcalf, ‘Too Little and Too Much: Reflections on Muslims in the History of India,’ The Journal of Asian Studies 54, no. 4 (1995): 951–67.

Bibliography Abate, Mark. ‘The Reorientation of Roger Bacon: Muslims, Mongols, and the Man Who Knew Everything.’ In East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World, edited by Albrecht Classen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Albuquerque, Teresa. Urbs Prima in Indis: An Epoch in the History of Bombay, 1840–1865. New Delhi: Promilla, 1985. Anonymous, ed. The Mahomedan Riots of Bombay in the Year 1851. Bombay: Bombay Summachar Press, 1856. Arberry, A.J. Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars. London: George Allen, 1960. Bacon, Roger. The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon. Translated by Robert Belle Burke. Vol. 2. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962. Burman, Thomas E. Reading the Qur’¯ an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Daniel, Norman. Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1960. Di Cesare, Michelina. ‘The Prophet in the Book: Images of Muhammad in Western Medieval Book Culture.’ In Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe, edited by Avinoam Shalem, pp. 9–32. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Dietz, Maribel. Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 300–800. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. Dimmock, Matthew. ‘“Machomet Dyd Before as Luther Doth Nowe”: Islam, the Ottomans, and the English Reformations.’ Reformation 9 (2004): 99–130.

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———. Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad in Early Modern English Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Fuchs, Barbara. Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Garcia, Humberto. Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 5. London: Elecbook, 1999. Grabar, Oleg. The Formation of Islamic Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Green, Nile. Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Holt, P.M. ‘The Treatment of Arab History by Prideaux, Ockley, and Sale.’ In Historians of the Middle East, edited by Bernard Lewis and P.M. Holt, pp. 290–302. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. Johnson, Galen. ‘Muhammad and Ideology in Medieval Christian Literature.’ Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 11, no. 3 (2000): 333–46. Kidambi, Prashant. The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. Lewis, Bernard. Islam and the West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Lewis, Suzanne. The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora. Berkeley: University of California, 1987. Mandeville, John. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. Translated by C.W.R.D. Moseley. Penguin Classics edition. London: Penguin Classics, 2005. Masselos, Jim. The City in Action: Bombay Struggles for Power. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Metcalf, Barbara. ‘Too Little and Too Much: Reflections on Muslims in the History of India.’ The Journal of Asian Studies 54, no. 4 (1995): 951–67. Metlitzki, Dorothee. The Matter of Araby in Medieval England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977. Mody, Jehangir R.P. Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy: The First Indian Knight and Baronet (1783–1859). Bombay: Jehangir R.P. Mody, 1959. Ockley, Simon. The History of the Saracens; Comprising the Lives of Mohammed and His Successors, to the Death of Abdalmelik, the Eleventh Caliph, with an Account of Their Most Remarkable Battles, Sieges, Revolts, &c. Collected from Authentic Sources, Especially Arabic MSS. 4th ed. London: Henry Bohn, 1847. Palsetia, Jesse S. ‘Mad Dogs and Parsis: The Bombay Dog Riots of 1832.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 11, no. 1 (2001): 13–30. ———. The Parsis of India: Preservation of Identity in Bombay City. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001.

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Prideaux, Humphrey. The True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet; with a Discourse Attached for the Vindicating of Christianity from This Charge; Offered for the Consideration of the Deists of the Present Age. 2nd ed. London: William Rogers, 1697. ———. La Vie de Mahomet Où l’on Découvre Amplement La Verité de l’imposture Enrichie de Figures En Taille-Douces. Amsterdam: George Gallet, 1698. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Salamon, Linda Bradley. ‘Blackening “the Turk” in Roger Ascham’s A Report of Germany.’ In Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, edited by Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan, pp. 270–92. University of Chicago, 2008. Saviello, Alberto. ‘Muhammad’s Multiple Faces: Printed Images of the Prophet in Western Europe.’ In Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe, edited by Avinoam Shalem, pp. 87–143. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013. Southern, R.W. Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Stubbe, Henry. Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall & Progress of Mahometanism. Edited by Nabil Matar. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Tolan, John. Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. William of Malmesbury. Gesta Regum Anglorum. Translated by R.A.B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Worde, Wynkyn de. Treatyse of the Turkes Lawe Called Alcaron. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1977.

Instruments of Acquisition and Reflections of Desire: English Nautical Charts and Islamic Shores, 1650–1700 Alistair Maeer

In the late seventeenth century, English maritime activity along Islamic shores played a vital role in the growth of English maritime prowess and empire. In the English geographic imagination of the period, the Islamic World began at the Straits of Gibraltar, stretched along the southern shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, continued along the Northeastern shores of Africa, out through the Red Sea, across India, and into the Spice Islands of the Banda Sea. The Islamic World, then, was vast, profitable, and necessary in the race for empire, as the exploits of the Levant Company and the infamous East India Company (EIC) have consistently revealed. To access these distant shores, English merchants and mariners were required to embrace nautical cartography as a means to envision and acquire the fabled wealth of the Orient—a fact little appreciated and studied by historians today. The English maritime community, including ministers, merchants, and in particular its mariners, therefore helped to define the realities of English trade to the Islamic World by utilizing, expanding, and disseminating their geographic knowledge.

A. Maeer (B) Texas Wesleyan University, Fort Worth, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_2

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The broadest array of surviving English nautical cartography of the late seventeenth century exists in the charts of the Thames School; when considered in combination with the illustrated mariner’s journal of Edward Barlow, a multifaceted record of English mercantile interests along late seventeenth-century Islamic shores begins to emerge. Spanning the globe, the 556 surviving charts of the Thames School provide both a long-term and nearly institutionalized reflection of the changing English perceptions of the maritime world from 1590 to 1740. Collectively, surviving Thames School charts display the ideas of the center while Edward Barlow’s images reveal an individual agent’s cartographic observations of that maritime world. Barlow, an English mariner who rose from below decks and eventually became a Captain of an East Indiaman at the close of the seventeenth century, sailed nearly the entire breadth of the English maritime world and sketched most of the ports of call he visited. It was common practice for mariners to sketch coastal profiles, bird’s-eye views, and even charts as guides and correctives for their own future voyages or to sell to mapmakers. Barlow’s extensive journal includes well over two hundred cartographic images of his voyages across the globe, including twenty-one images in his manuscript that depict Islamic shores (1659–1703). Such surviving English cartographic sources, be they charts or coastal views, are as much embodiments of merchant and even ministerial interests as they are artistic and navigational artifacts, and as such, they offer unrivalled insights into English conceptions and conventions of the period. Ultimately, the distinctiveness of late seventeenth-century English charts and cartographic imagery visualizes English activity along Islamic shores as incessant commercial pragmatism amidst an emergent and aspirational imperialism. By the end of the sixteenth century, English merchants and navigators instigated the emergence of a modern maritime community replete with the financial and technical wherewithal to encompass the globe. However, it was not until the dawn of the seventeenth century that the English developed their own domestic nautical cartographic tradition, the Thames School. From 1590 to 1740, the Thames School comprised a collection of copyists and cartographers who transferred and updated mainly manuscript charts through an extensive master–apprentice relationship facilitated by the Drapers’ Company.1 Embracing the medieval portolan style of marine charting, the Thames School is defined by both the location of most of the chart makers working along the river Thames and the general stylistic similarities of the 41 men associated with it. As the Thames School matured, so did its style and focus. At first, oceanic charts were drawn on the plane

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projection in colored inks on vellum, with networks of interlocking rhumb lines and compass roses in the portolan style. By the last decades of the seventeenth century, the school gradually shifted into the production of hundreds of pilotage charts for smaller coastal areas, began to use paper as well as vellum, and started to abandon the traditional portolan style. It is no coincidence that the dates of the Thames School match the emergence of England’s maritime empire. Consequently, as artifacts of the center, Thames School charts inherently embody an array of English interests— both the commercial origins of England’s expansion and its imperial turn. Specifically, Thames School charts evolved from a functionalism that highlighted mercantilism to one that began to exude imperialism. Yet, unlike the institutionalization of Portuguese, Spanish, or Dutch charting, neither Thames School charts nor its cartographers were a product of corporate or crown oversight. For the English, the institutionalization of nautical knowledge only arose at the end of the eighteenth century under the auspices of the Board of Admiralty, Hydrographic Office.2 Throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth century, charts continued to be privately copied and occasionally updated by incorporating the surveys and findings of sailors like Edward Barlow, Thomas Kempthorne, and John Narborough, until Alexander Dalrymple formalized the process and the Hydrographic Office was reorganized in 1808. Fortuitously, there are corresponding sketches by Edward Barlow of nearly all of the coastlines and port towns depicted on Thames School charts of the Islamic World. Barlow, a child of England’s Interregnum and a sailor of England’s expansion, was born on 6 March 1642, in Prestwick, a small hamlet near the modern-day city of Manchester, and died off Mozambique in 1705. Nothing about his circumstances as a poor country youth suggests that he would go onto chronicle well over forty years upon the world’s seas in his richly illustrated mariner’s journal. Alongside his vivid written account of his travels, Edward Barlow’s illustrations depict the geographical, sociocultural, and politico-economic realities of crisscrossing the globe at the end of the seventeenth century. Barlow’s journal, then, offers the modern reader an unparalleled window into the past. His imagery-laden journal is rife with the descriptions and drawings of a common sailor’s experiences: fighting the Dutch both from the gun deck and in the marketplace, bouts of wrestling greedy officers and corporate policies for fair pay and advancement, all while trying to see strange sights and make something of himself in the late seventeenth century. Spanning the Baltic, Mediterranean, North, Caribbean, Red, Arabian, and China Seas, as well as numerous other

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ports of call throughout the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, his illustrations and commentary reflect the breadth of English realities and interests. In effect, Edward Barlow’s illustrations depict the nascence of English global aspirations as they emerged out of the commercial successes and expansionism of the late seventeenth century and gradually began to morph into imperial ambition. Moreover, as a contemporary purveyor of visual imagery, his commentary and renderings are first-hand evidence of how an Englishmen stylized Islamic shores as commercial opportunities amid situational imperial aspirations. As a practicing mariner, merchant, and even mapmaker, Edward Barlow captained his crews and cargos using charts and did so inherently as an English agent negotiating the realities of the Islamic World. His use and fashioning of charts as instruments of acquisition embody and reflect his and England’s desire for commerce and aspirational empire. His observations are then ideal counterpoints to further appreciate the overriding commercial concerns of seventeenth-century English interests abroad. Ultimately, like Thames School charts infer, Barlow’s depiction of Islamic shores highlights how the preservation of pragmatic trade trumped all other concerns. As Barlow’s voyages followed well-established English trade routes, it is no wonder that his extensive visual record mirrors surviving English cartographic material. While England’s and Barlow’s encounters with Barbary pirates of the North African coast have been previously studied, a more accurate view of English interactions with Islamic shores necessitates widening the scope to include images of ports on the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and along Indian subcontinent.3 However, as the English EIC controlled access to and supplied ships with charts to all manner of Islamic shores, looking at surviving cartographic materials from across its sphere of influence aptly provides a cross section to analyze English interests with the Islamic World. It was commonplace that EIC ships carried Thames School charts throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as evidenced by the capture of seventeen English charts, sixteen signed by John Thornton, when the East Indiaman Canterbury was captured by two French ships in 1703 off Malacca.4 Accordingly, by comparing surviving Thames School charts of Mocha in the Red Sea, Gambaroon (Bandar Abbas in Iran) in the Persian Gulf, as well as numerous ports along the Malabar Coast, to Edward Barlow’s corresponding charts, an overriding mercantile concern consistently overshadows any imperial turn in the English maritime cartographic record of this period.

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While stories of Barbary pirates, captivity narratives, and exoticism commonly characterize our understanding of English interactions with the Islamic World in the late seventeenth century, an all too common and more mundane relationship was equally present: lucrative commercial interactions that only tentatively morphed into the perils of imperial aspirations. England’s attempts to stave off raids and secure stable trades consistently informed its incessant negotiations, threats, and eventually failed imperial overtures throughout the Islamic World at this time, whether in the aborted holding of Tangiers or the tentative footholds of Bombay and Madras. These facts ought to inform our memory as much as the more captivating and nefarious exploits and horrors of corsairs and colonialism.5 Indeed, an analysis of historical cartographic sources reveals a steady backdrop of commercial pragmatism and cautious imperial interests. Remarkably, no studies examine the surviving cartographic imagery of English interactions along any Islamic shores. On the most basic level, English nautical cartography documents the changes in England’s navigational knowledge of distant shores. Yet, this does not preclude the fact that English charting also expresses the ideas surrounding the charts’ use. Encompassing the globe, the charts are representational discourses of England’s maritime endeavors. In all, English charts along Islamic shores reveal three inherently interrelated themes: functionalism, mercantilism, and tepid imperialism. In effect, the consistently pragmatic and expedient mercantile rendering of English charting defined the overriding commercial sentiment of English interests along Islamic shores before imperial overtures arose. Accordingly, this study will juxtapose surviving Thames School charts and port-views by Edward Barlow to demonstrate consistent commercialism amid a slowly dawning English imperial interaction with Islamic shores. Firstly, a comparison of pilotage charts of Mocha (Moha) in the Red Sea and Bandar Abbas (Gambaroon) in the Persian Gulf establishes the inherently and ongoing mercantile renderings of English encounters with the Islamic World. Secondly, various Thames School charts and analogous port-views of the Malabar Coast broaden the predominantly commercial depiction of Islamic shores. Lastly, the emergence of situational imperialism becomes evident, despite a persistent commercial stake in Islamic shores, by comparing the changing depictions of the Malabar Coast over a thirty-year period. Collectively, therefore, a more nuanced and pragmatic understanding of English interactions with the Islamic World comes into view once we incorporate analysis of the surviving cartographic record (Image 1).

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Image 1 Augustine Fitzhugh, “Chart of Moha (1683), Bibliotèchque nationale de France (BNF),” Paris, Cartes et Plans, S.H. Portefeuille 211, div. 3 piece 1

Augustine Fitzhugh’s 1683 pilotage chart of Moha (Mocha) depicts England’s inherently commercial interests in the Red Sea.6 Fitzhugh began his apprenticeship in 1675 to one of the most important Thames School cartographers, John Thornton, and either never finished it or left the Drapers’ Company.7 Nonetheless, he worked and began signing his own charts between 1683 and 1697—nine of his charts survive. This 1683 pilotage chart of Mocha along the modern-day Yemeni Coast in the Red Sea comfortably combines cartographic and textual information, conveying a highly functional instrument. Navigation to this port was amply demonstrated by profiles for both fair and cloudy days—Fitzhugh portrays the unique mirage effect of the mist from the Red Sea on a cloudy day by drawing Mocha in

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a larger scale. In addition, shoals and soundings are carefully marked and visual cues are labeled from multiple vantage points upon entering the port. Mocha was an important port in the early years of the coffee trade; the EIC established their factory in Mocha in 1682 and abandoned it in 1726. Strikingly, nothing in this chart points to anything but how to reach this “chief town of trade.” The table and textual inset perfunctorily list the relevant information without fanfare; even the location of “moorish churches” and the “Chief Mosque” is merely noted.8 In sum, Fitzhugh’s descriptive inset of Mocha helps locate its readers to the realities of navigating into the harbor and relies upon a corresponding table that aligns the sailor to the visual cues along the coastline; there are no overt or implied sentiments other than orderly trade. Accordingly, this 1683 chart depicts the initial establishment of EIC activity in Mocha, but does so unencumbered by imperial aspirations, and embodies functionalism. In effect, the chart’s singular nature bespeaks the EIC’s paramount concern, commerce (Image 2). While there is no way to know if Edward Barlow used a copy of the aforementioned chart, it is highly likely that he used a similar chart (maybe even a copy of the same chart). We do know he used nautical charts and even began making his own in light of his extensive maritime experiences. The rationale for his sailing to Mocha was to conduct, protect, and preserve important existing trading relations from disruptions, and therefore, his descriptions of Mocha reinforce the supremacy of trade in English activities abroad. According to Barlow’s narrative, in 1697, the Governor General of Bombay, Sir John Gayer, ordered the Scepter to escort the annual Mocha fleet back to Surat—she sailed on 13 April. En route, after battling contrary winds for nearly two months, the Scepter’s Captain died, leaving Edward Barlow, the Chief Mate, in command. Upon the Scepter’s arrival in Mocha on 18 June, Barlow notes how they were initially suspected of being pirates, but were able to quickly allay any fears. The following day, the local governor met with Barlow to drink coffee, discuss trading opportunities, as well as affirm the need for the Scepter to help escort the annual fleet to Surat. After concluding this orderly and polite meeting, Barlow then rented a house for the duration of his stay to oversee the loading of his ship. Barlow encapsulates his nearly two months’ stay by recording his observations of the people, trades, and environs of Mocha. The inhabitants were generally poor, wore thin cotton garments with turbans in the “Turkish style,” were of a swarthy complexion, and were a rather civil and

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Image 2 Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 131 (The appearance and manner of the town and rode of Mocha as they lie upon the coast of Arabia in the Red Sea in the latitude of 12 degrees and 30 minutes. In an extremely hot climate and little or no rain all year long: The ship Scepter, shoals, soundings)

sociable people. Sadly, swarms of two-inch-long Egyptian locusts often plague Mocha, darkening the sky upon a swarm’s approach. He describes how Mocha was “a great place of trade,” primarily selling coffee, dyewoods, and ivory. Moreover, there were plenty of excellent provisions for sale, from beef and lamb to green grapes, limes, lemons, and even apparently pineapples, peaches, and mangos. Alas, the water was brackish and pricey. Pork was obviously unavailable, they being a “Mahometan race.”9 He notes the absence of wine, the little rain, and how the Moors dine—food laid out on a carpet, no table, and they drank sherbet (sugar, lemons, and water). Finally, there was a great trade in ferrying pilgrims to Jeddah on the Hajj —

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upon their departure the Scepter helped escort nearly 700 aboard a Moorish ship.10 On 11 August, having met with the Moorish and Dutch captains, the 17 ships left Mocha and arrived in Surat on 8 September.11 Barlow goes on to note how well the Moorish captains acquitted themselves and how thankful they were for his efforts at protecting them from the pirate Captain Kidd. He even drew a separate profile of the Scepter afterward and noted with pride how it was “the emblem of the ship Scepter that was convoy to the Moors’ ships from Mocha to Surat in the year 1698.”12 In all, and in nearly 4000 words pertaining to Mocha, Barlow never spoke an ill or unkind word; he merely catalogued the commercial realities of trade to the Red Sea. These facts, coupled with the accompanying images, help to frame his chart of Mocha and moderate any possessive or authoritative elements in it. Barlow’s bird’s-eye view of Mocha, complete with shoals, soundings, and visual cues, mirrors his rich narrative. Upon aligning his chart to his journal entries, the various “moors’ ships” become apparent; likewise, the Dutch ships are duly noted. Perhaps the most obvious image is an enlarged broadside of the Scepter, with the EIC pennant flapping in the breeze, astride the entrance to Mocha, shepherding a collection of smaller and seemingly dependent ships—including the two Dutch East Indiamen. The town sits at the base of distant mountains; individual buildings are made plain, whether the battlements along the peninsula, the mole, or the three spires arranged across the town. Taken as a whole, the apparent emphasis upon the Scepter suggests a growing English presence, and thus Barlow introduces an imperial turn. Nonetheless, any English influence was dependent upon local recognition and support, as aptly noted in his accompanying text. At the same time, Barlow highlights the utility of the image as a navigational and commercial document, despite asserting English authority, as he labels the illustration, “The appearance and manner of the town and road of Mocha as they lie in upon the coast of Arabia in the Red Sea in the latitude of 12 degrees and 30 minutes. In an extremely hot climate and little or no rain all year long.” The principal commercial nature of English interests is made plain by Barlow’s corresponding textual descriptions. Here, then, the totality of the evidence must be addressed, lest we be overawed by the assumption of an aspirational imperial turn. Framing Barlow’s imagery alongside his narrative highlights the mercantile realities of his expansive maritime world. Providing his reader with mutually informed words and images, Barlow situates his discourse and adds greater nuance to his observations. The Scepter was depicted in Mocha because Barlow himself was in Mocha; the imagery clearly acts to prove his presence as a part of a greater

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English presence. The image is agency incarnate, as he and England were both increasingly influential. However, wedding his lengthy narrative to his pilotage chart easily points to the larger and overriding commercial nature of his and English interests abroad, clearly overshadowing, although not entirely negating, imperialism overtures. Another set of charts that compliment one another is Barlow’s 1686 pilotage chart of Gambaroon (Bandar Abbas), in modern-day Iran, and John Thornton’s 1699 chart of the Persian Gulf, which highlights the principal ports of Gambaroon and Basra in modern-day Iraq. Though Barlow’s manuscript is missing the folio that chronicles his voyage to Gambaroon, his chart and the descriptions of the nearby islands of Hormuz, Lark, and Qeshm survive. On 12 January 1686, Barlow recounts how, sailing as Chief Mate on board the Kent, he oversaw the loading of some 130–140 tons of pepper and cardamoms for Gambaroon along the Malabar Coast. Upon returning to Surat, Barlow inserts his pilotage chart of Gambaroon as an afterthought and then proceeds to list the highlights of the nearby islands. Hormuz produces “excellent white salt” readily sold in Bengal and “red earth, which is a pure deep red paint or color” and which, like the salt, can be acquired for “little more than [the] labor to dig it and carry.” Moreover, the red earth is sold across the entire region and regularly sells in England for “eighteen and twenty shillings the hundredweight, and was worth five pounds the hundred presently after the Great Fire in London.”13 Barlow then notes how the Island of Lark provides “good sheep,” while Qeshm offers “all manner of good provision, only bread corn is not much upon it, it lying in a very hot place; but there is an excellent grape, which they make their plums or raisins, which have no stones in them like other raisins, they being of a pale whitish color and but small fruit.”14 Nowhere in his surviving narrative does he imply anything other than a pragmatic mercantile eye for profit. Arguably, his commentary mirrors the tone of his later voyage to Mocha and his accompanying chart of Gambaroon reflects a similar functionalism (Image 3). Largely defined by traversing visual cues, Barlow’s chart of Gambaroon guides one’s entrance into the port by carefully noting the coastal profiles of the islands of Hormuz, Lark, and Qeshm, as well as nearby mountains, including mount Kuh-e Genu. Barlow carefully plots well over two-dozen soundings, three shallows, five tree lines, and the local, English, and Dutch trading posts. A solitary East Indiaman lies anchored before the English trading outpost, but local and European ships ply the harbor, including two Dutch ships and two dhows. Barlow’s rendering highlights a bustling

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Image 3

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Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 113 Gamboroon (Gambarone)

port town complete with ships coming and going. It is unfortunate that his description of his time in Gambaroon is missing, especially considering his comments about the nearby islands. If the suggestions of activity coupled with the tantalizing opportunities of Qeshm and Hormuz are any indication, Barlow’s Gambaroon must have been an impressive entrepot. As such, and recognizing the very real presence of the Dutch, one can infer that Barlow continued his wary apprehension of the possibilities of Dutch aggression and the need to protect English interests. However, Barlow

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Image 4 John Thornton, “Chart of the Persian Gulf, 1699,” BNF, Paris, Cartes et Plans, S.H. Portefeuille, 209, div. 2 piece 5

also constantly mentioned the need and ease of negotiating with locals throughout the purview of his EIC voyages, and so one must be cautious in attaching imperial aspirations to English interests too casually. Ultimately, overtures of projecting influence or empire can be better understood as situational and dependent upon pragmatic assessments of whether or not trade would be adversely affected, alongside the scale and extent of English activity. Obviously, a competitive commerce informs Barlow’s chart, but it remains an intentionally functional navigational instrument devoid of demonstrative displays of dominion or imperiled trade in the Persian Gulf (Image 4). John Thornton’s 1699 manuscript chart of the Persian Gulf primarily focuses on the Iranian coastline from the Straits of Hormuz to Basra upon

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the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. As one of the most important and influential Thames School chartmakers in late seventeenthcentury England, Thornton’s work is reflective of English interests and attitudes. Thornton helped oversee the publication of the first series of successful English maritime atlases, The English Pilot, and was appointed the official hydrographer to the EIC and the Hudson’s Bay Company. Copies of his 1699 chart of the Persian Gulf formed part of the standard set of charts that English mariners possessed from the late seventeenth century well into the eighteenth century, as it was included in The English Pilot. Though Basra seems to be the primary port of call on this chart, as an inset provides particulars for anchoring and hiring a pilot to Basra, Gambaroon is also clearly represented. In fact, the EIC’s trading post in Gambaroon is made plain with a St. George’s cross flying overhead and, like Barlow’s earlier chart, the local and Dutch trading posts form part of the same profile. Among the hundreds of navigational hazards crisply presented throughout the chart, the islands of Qeshm, Lark, and Hormuz are duly noted with over a dozen soundings and two sandbanks. As a chart of the entire Gulf, the passage through the Straits of Hormuz provides the frame of reference to locate Gambaroon, as the first islands once through the passage to the north orientate one’s entrance. (Gambaroon is located WSW of the decorative compass rose and lies behind the largest island that comes into view upon entering the Persian Gulf, Qeshm.) Unlike Barlow’s harbor view, no mountainous profiles guide the sailor into Gambaroon, and only a handful of structures are made plain in port—one of which appears to be a domed mosque off to the west. Further down the coast, three profiles are provided for safe anchorage at Carack Island (modern-day Kharg)—the only inscription on the chart mentions here the necessity for hiring a local pilot in Carack so as to safely reach Basra. The only national affiliations or inferences on the chart are three flags: a solitary English flag flying in Basra, and English and Dutch flags proclaiming two rival trading stations in Gambaroon. While the dueling English flag flies higher and appears bigger than the Dutch flag, the totality of the chart depicts a clean, vibrant, and uncluttered, even restrained, navigational chart indicative of the pragmatic character of seventeenth-century English maritime charting. In effect, the chart is an exceptionally functional navigational instrument unencumbered by overt imperial aspirations. Any appreciation of early modern English empire reveals a situational application and awareness of the territorial opportunities of commerce and empire. As a result, historians have been grappling with the evolution of

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the English and British overseas empire ever since Henry VII sanctioned John Cabot’s voyages in 1497. Where claims were possible, claims were made, but in light of stiff competition from locals and Europeans it is clear that English activities along Islamic shores rarely proclaimed inherently imperial overtures. Rather, subtle manifestations and shifts of interests emerged as local politics allowed for greater investments and collaborations. In effect, a defensive imperialism slowly emerged as England and its EIC cultivated alliances whenever possible by primarily conducting favorable trade, negotiating the construction of strategic forts, and only carefully acquiring dominion over lands in the Islamic World so as not to jeopardize its commercial remit. Edward Barlow’s descriptions and renderings of ports along the western coast of India illustrate the contingent vicissitudes of English interactions along Islamic shores. Barlow sailed to the east ten times between 1670 and 1706, serving below decks as an able-seaman in 1670 on his first voyage to the Malabar Coast and then as a Captain on his final voyage to Mocha in 1706. Barlow recorded visiting nine ports of call stretching the length of the west Indian coast on his first voyage past the Cape of Good Hope in 1670. Upon arriving in strange new lands, and after spending nearly 6 months at sea, Barlow promptly detailed the economic and cultural idiosyncrasies of each port he visited, whether Bombay, Surat, Goa, Carware, Belopotan, Cannanore, Pannai, Tannanore, or Calicut. In each port-view or pilotage chart, Barlow carefully drew soundings, shallows, and visual cues to ensure safe passage and anchorage. He also detailed the various trading vessels present, be they English, Dutch, Armenian, or local prows or Arabian dhows. The only outright display of possession in any of the images from Barlow’s first trip along the western coast of India is in Bombay, where a royal flag of union proclaims its status as a colony. His accompanying journal entries continue to add depth to his charts by listing the commodities available and describing local trading conditions— including the rich trades to Arabia and the Red Sea along this thriving commercial corridor.15 Busy commerce, English factories, and a wary eye toward potentially unscrupulous locals and Dutch traders define his narrative of his first foray to India. Yet, despite his various apprehensions and disparaging remarks concerning the locals, Barlow does not make any outward remarks of territorial dominion—though he qualifies his remarks by noting “they love the English better than do the Dutch, and so most of these country peoples.”16 By the time of his fourth voyage in 1685 and his seventh voyage in 1696, Barlow exudes a cautious imperial turn as he

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Image 5

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Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 71 Carwar, Malabar Coast (1670)

notes the attempts to and need for fortifications to secure English interests (Image 5). Two pilotage charts by Andrew Welch offer great insight into the opportunism of English attitudes along the Islamic shores of the Malabar Coast. Welch, born in 1635, apprenticed between 1649 and 1669 under Nicholas Comberford—one of the most influential mid-century English cartographers. Upon ending his apprenticeship, Welch immediately began accepting his own apprentices, one of whom, William Hack (fl.1671–1708), became the most prolific member of the Thames School, with over three hundred and twenty extant charts. Six charts signed by Andrew Welch survive: three depict the Atlantic world and three the Asiatic trades of Islamic shores. It is clear upon a close examination of his two 1677 charts of the western coast of India that they are in fact a matched pair designed to preserve safe commerce.17 The two pilotage charts extend south from Gujarat past Calicut to Cranganore.18 Moreover, these charts mirror growing

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Image 6 Andrew Welch, “Chart of Guzarat, (1677),” BL Add MS 39178-A and Andrew Welch, “Chart of the Malabar Coast, (1677),” BL Add MS 39178-B

imperial English sentiments in light of ongoing successful commerce— foreshadowing military prowess and aspirational dominion (Image 6). As a set, the two charts continually make reference to navigational and commercial hazards in such a manner as to infer imperial desire. The first chart, recognizable by the prominence of the name Guzarat (Gujarat), includes coastal profiles and a long narrative of navigational information for the user along the western coast of India, the Malabar Coast. The chart effectively fuses sailing directions with the graphic benefits of a maritime map. Beautifully rendered, the coasts of the chart are situated upon a grid pattern, unlike their traditional layout from rhumb lines like its

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accompanying chart. Shoals and soundings envelope the approaches to Surat and visual cues abound; in effect, safe passage is paramount and made plain. However, despite the large amount of navigational and commercial information, the chart also notably includes an English East Indiaman. The inclusion of an English ship sailing toward the Surat river is important. Though common for other cartographic traditions, Thames School charts rarely depict ships or other illustrative addendums (chorography).19 Dismissing its importance and value would therefore be shortsighted. Its proud carriage symbolizes not only the importance of the trades along the Malabar Coast—pepper, indigo, and calicos—but also proclaims English control of trade in and around Gujarat.20 At no point on this chart are the Dutch noted, unlike the accompanying chart which reveals a strong Dutch presence. The second chart, “A draught of the Coast of Malabar,” completes the suggestive overtures of the Gujarat chart. All along the Malabar Coast, tiny English flags dot the shoreline in juxtaposition to larger Dutch flags. The ship’s inclusion amid an endangered coastline is an authoritative gesture. Collectively, these 1677 Welch charts display orderly commercial interests alongside a Dutch menace. Furthermore, the charts’ symbolism creates an underlying motif or attitude of English territoriality for the perseverance of safe trade. Unlike the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, English activity along the west Indian coast was well established and constituted the center of the EIC’s operational sphere of influence. Only Fort St. George in Madras on the eastern coast of the Indian subcontinent boasted a similarly developed English presence. Even so, in light of the royal colony of Bombay, the Mughal entrepot of Surat, as well as the dozens of trading posts in Malabar where English Indiaman ladened pepper, calicos, and cardamoms, the western coast of India played an inordinate role in the EIC’s imagination and attention. During the 1680s, when Sir Josiah Childs dominated the affairs of the EIC as its Governor, England’s territorial intentions in Asia changed. Childs, a leading English economist and royal insider, advocated an aggressive policy to force recalcitrant Mughal leaders of western India to bend to English imperial designs. However, Childs’s imperial bent reaped few gains and Barlow even commented on how Sir Childs “had done more harm for the EIC than all his estate could make amends.”21 Regardless of the inability to defeat the Mughal Empire, the EIC embraced expansionism so long as it did not adversely affect the conduct of orderly trade. Ultimately, the company embraced “a policy of regulating expenditures to likely benefits,” which kept them inclined to protect favorable local

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Image 7

Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 111 Calicut, Malabar Coast

relations, including thwarting aggressive Dutch interference, rather than overt attempts of weakening the Mughal Empire.22 Thames School charts and Edward Barlow’s pilotage charts and harbor views not only allude to this change but in fact parallel English situational imperialism in India alongside the continuingly dominant mercantilism as evidenced elsewhere, namely in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf (Image 7).

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Image 8

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Edward Barlow, NMM JOD 4, f. 128v Anjenga, Malabar Coast

Barlow’s stint along the Malabar Coast in 1685 marked his first voyage to the East since Childs’s failed imperial ventures threatened to endanger English trades throughout the east. Beyond his indictment of Childs’s illconceived efforts, Barlow explains how he sailed back and forth procuring pepper, cardamoms, and even witnessing a local play in Tellicheri wherein the participants showed “many ingenious and admirable tricks… [and] some … did spit fire out of their mouths.”23 As before, Barlow notes the vibrant intercontinental trades, even describing how his ship eventually received orders to sail back to Tellicheri to re-laden and sail to Gambaroon (Bandar Abbas) in modern-day Iran. However, despite noting the persistent presence of stiff European competition and lucrative trades across the region, Barlow continues to highlight orderly trade over all else—taking the time to note the need to quell pirates to maintain good relations throughout the region for English, Dutch, and French alike (Image 8).24 Perhaps the most notable imperial shift in Barlow’s voyages east occurred in 1697 where he recounts how the Queen of Attingal “invited the EIC to

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Image 9 741

John Thornton, “Chart of Malabar Coast, (1696),” BL Add MS Eg.

settle a trade … and gave them leave to build a fort.”25 Interestingly, Barlow makes note of the likely disquiet that the locals may feel about a pronounced English presence—questioning “how long they will be willing to live in peace with the Company and the fort they built” and then noting how they can become quite “malicious and revengeful.”26 Barlow’s port-view of Fort Anjengo is possibly the earliest depiction of the fort, as construction began in January 1696 and it was finally completed in 1699 despite being attacked by pirates in June 1696 and then by rebellious locals in 1697.27 The fort was the first English signaling station for English ships along the southern Malabar Coast and remained in use by the company until the dawn of the nineteenth century. One of the more prolific Thamesmen, John Thornton, entered his apprenticeship under John Burston in 1656 and was freed in 1665 and produced charts from 1667 until 1701. The vast majority of his work covers Asiatic waters, though he did make charts encompassing the globe. Thornton is important to the general history of English nautical cartography, as well, since he was the only Thames School cartographer to successfully transition from manuscript to printed charts. John Thornton’s 1696 pilotage chart of the entirety of the west Indian coast illustrates in detail English activities and anxieties from Ghogha in Gujarat to Cape Comorin at the southern tip of India.28 Measuring well over ten feet, its authorial intent reiterates commerce and aspirational empire in the face of extensive Dutch competition (Images 9 and 10). Despite its obvious functionality, Thornton’s chart clearly expresses English attitudes and interests. His pilotage chart of the Malabar Coast includes numerous profiles, anchorages, navigational notations, soundings, and shoals for safe navigation. (Profiles only appear for ports north of Calicut, the farthest reach of English influence.) Unlike Welch’s 1677 pilotage charts of the same region, Thornton’s chart boldly proclaims Bombay as

Image 10 John Thornton, close-up of the coast south of Bombay on “Chart of the Coast of Malabar, (1696)” and John Thornton, close-up of the coast south of Calicut on “Chart of the Coast of Malabar, (1696)”

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English by marking it with a huge Union Jack—coincidently Bombay was the EIC’s first independent territorial possession in Asia. In addition, the EIC shifted its governance of the west Indian trades from Surat to Bombay in 1687; the chart then declares the ever-growing importance of Bombay by 1696. Moreover, seven St. George’s Crosses fly from Surat in the north to Calicut in the south. Meanwhile, ten Dutch flags also fly along the Malabar Coast, eight of which are drawn quite large. The placement of these flags gives clues to the commercial and imperial rivalries at play during this time. Nestled between the demonstrative English possession of Bombay and a notable English presence in Dabull (near Murud), as noted by a sizable St. George’s Cross, two small Dutch flags in Choule (near Khanderi Island) appear meek in contrast. The same allusions to English influence appear in and around Surat and Goa. Further south along the coast, English control becomes suspect. A series of Dutch flags flank a small St. George’s Cross in Calicut. South from Cochin, Dutch flags dot the Malabar Coast unopposed. Anxieties about the preservation of trade and the orderly management of commerce were paramount concerns to EIC. This chart, along with numerous other pilotage charts by Thornton and other Thames School chartmakers, plots not only the coasts of Asia with an ever-increasing accuracy but also the mind-set of the EIC. Though no way exhaustive, these charts are visual records of the pragmatic attitudes and realities of English trade in the Red Sea and beyond. A comparison of Barlow’s and Fitzhugh’s Moha charts reveals the similarities of the profiles and pilotages into the Mocha road, as well as the predominantly commercial interest in English activities in the Red Sea. Such similarities are repeated across various surviving English cartographic materials of the Islamic World and mirror Gerald Maclean’s and Nabil Matar’s findings. The cartographic depictions of the trades to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and all along the northern Malabar Coast maintain a commercial bent during the late seventeenth century until well into the eighteenth century. Though not discussed here, Barlow’s narrative of North African shores also prioritizes commercial over imperial concerns. He notes threats to peaceable English trade by Barbary pirates and projects the real need to protect English interests, but he fails short of lamenting the loss of Tanigers or advocating other imperial ventures. Rather, he drums the necessity of armed, but peaceable, negotiations all along the North African coast. However, a gradual, but increasingly situational imperial turn emerged and developed as well. Eventually, St. George’s Crosses begin to dot the Malabar Coast alongside an occasional English East Indiaman firing its

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broadside toward a Dutch threat, or an iconographic proclamation of English dominion appears along Persian or Mughal shores. And while Barlow is a part of this imperial turn, his descriptions of commercial interactions remain his primary concern despite a growing awareness of imperial interests and opportunities. Between the allure of pirates, empire, and exoticism, it is all too easy to fall afoul of the complexities of English interactions with an increasingly bounded early modern world—a world encompassed by English commercial expansionism well before the heights of empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The English merchants and their mariners sought peaceable trade from the beginning of their activities along Islamic shores. Faced with stiff competition throughout the seventeenth century, which occasionally broke out into armed conflict, English interests primarily focused on commerce, not empire. Unlike charts of other regions of the globe, namely the Americas, early English cartographic images of Islamic shores mitigated any imperial inclinations or aspirations amid an overriding navigational and commercial focus. Nonetheless, the changing nature of England’s trades and the increasing imperialism of the eighteenth century did gradually become apparent in English cartography. While English charts did not compromise their functionality as navigational documents to excessive iconography, they did reproduce the interests, concerns, and even threats to English trades. As a result, imperial designs for the protection of endangered English trades eventually developed and appeared on the charts. Still, the surviving charts of English trades echo the overwhelming desire for orderly trade throughout the late seventeenth century.

Notes 1. The first known identification of the Thames School was the work of Ernesto Camarero (1959), who singled out five chart makers who signed their charts with “At the Signe of the Platt.” The four major scholars who have dealt with the Thames School of English nautical cartography are Jeannette Black, Tony Campbell, Thomas R. Smith, and Sarah Tyacke. Campbell and Smith both persuasively argued that there was a discrete English cartographic movement and Campbell discovered the association of cartographers in the Drapers’ records. Black contextualizes ten Thames School charts to highlight ministerial cartographic use. Tyacke includes the Thames School and its precursors within the literature of exploration and discovery, but does not connect their efforts to London’s central role in an emerging maritime empire dependent upon trade nor to the developments

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

of the late seventeenth century. Ultimately, thirty-seven chartmakers are recorded as Masters and Apprentices in the ledgers of the Drapers’ Company and 556 charts are currently known to have survived. Born out of an initial connection with English commerce to the Baltic, members of the Thames School continued to produce nautical charts reflecting England’s commercial and imperial global interests until the early eighteenth century—Alistair Maeer, ‘The Baltic and the Birth of a Modern English Maritime Community: The Muscovy Company and Nautical Cartography, 1553–1665,’ The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies 4 (2012). Alistair Maeer, ‘Marine Charting by Great Britain, 1650–1800,’ in History of Cartography, Vol. 4 Cartography in the European Enlightenment, eds. J. Brian Harley, David Woodward, and Matthew Edney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (forthcoming). For the sake of this study, charts of North African Islamic shores will be excluded so as to inoculate it from the uniquely storied English history with the Barbary pirates. Moreover, there are no surviving Thames School pilotage charts of the Barbary coast—largely because navigating the Mediterranean was an age-old practice still reliant upon written sailing directions. The transition to visually informed navigation was historically slow and more apt to occur for navigations to distant shores. Monique de la Ronciere, ‘Manuscript Charts by John Thornton, Hydrographer of the East India Company (1669–1701),’ Imago Mundi 19 (1965): 47. Among this collection of English East India charts is a 1699 chart of the Persian Gulf that aligns with Barlow’s 1686 voyage to Gambaroon (Bandar Abbas in modern Iraq) as well as an extensive chart of the Malabar coast from 1699 which is a copy of another chart held in the British Library that also corresponds to over a dozen pilotage charts spanning Barlow’s numerous voyages to the East Indies from 1670 to 1697. Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar, Britain and the Islamic World, 1558–1713 (Oxford University Press, 2011). MacLean and Matar highlight as much in their book by effectively arguing that Britons across the Islamic world ultimately “all sailed in search of wages, wealth, and resources … [as they] preferred to anglicize rather than Christianize their Muslim customers (237).” Augustine Fitzhugh, ‘Chart of Moha (1683),’ Bibliotèchque nationale de France (BNF), Paris, Cartes et Plans, S.H. Portefeuille 211, div. 3 piece 1. Campbell, p. 101. There is no record of Quarterage payments for Fitzhugh. John Thornton is important to the general history of English nautical cartography, as well, since he was the only Thames School cartographer to successfully transition from manuscript to printed charts. The table inset reads: “Table of the most remarkable and principle places about Moha | This town of Moha is the chief town of trade for shipping in

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9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

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all Arabia Felix, it is situated about 15 leagues within the straights of Babermandell in or near the latitude if 15d:23m: whereas the compass barieth about 12d:30m | west it is onward and of small strength and governed by the Turks the (Kafhars) Bashaws hath his residence at Sinam some 12 | days journey from thence. Northeasterly if you are bound for the road with any great shipping come no nearer then 11 | or 12 fathoms until you have brought the highest steeple: G:S:E:B:E by the compass then shall you have the other: s make F: and G: both in one which is a very good mark to go with all till you have brought the woods: B: or the hill O | both in one and you may anchor in 9, 8, or 7 fathom water as you please about 2 miles and a halfe from the | town, But if your ship be of a small draught you may go in nearer unto this mark(*) and there ride in | 5, 4, or 3 fathom water where the shipps of India Commonly Ride…| Note that the windes of the most violence were from the N:N:E the time that we road heare | also those marks which are set down and counted with letters are according to there true | Distamce by this scale and bearing each from the other by the meridian compass | With out Respect of variation … |.” Barlow, vol. 2, pp. 481, 483. Barlow, vol. 2, pp. 478–84. Four days later, Captain Kidd’s Adventure Galley sailed toward them close enough for Barlow to fire at the pirate and for Kidd to fire multiple times at one of the Moors’ ships, “striking him in the hull and through his sails, but seeing us make … towards him, he (Kidd) presently sailed from us.” Within two day and after having sent a letter to the company describing the events, the Scepter was sent to Bombay—upon arrival, the General confirmed Barlow’s command until he reached England. After a few more trading forays, the Scepter eventually reached London on 28 July 1698. Sadly, Barlow’s provisional command was overlooked and he spent the remainder of his career angling for command—a command he never received within the bounds of his journal, which ends in 1703. He eventually received the illfated command of the EIC ship Liampo, which sank somewhere off the coast of Mozambique while again sailing to Mocha in 1706. NMM, JOD 6, f 133. Barlow, vol. 2, p. 379. Barlow, vol. 2, p. 379. Barlow, pp. 186–200. Ibid., p. 192. Campbell, p. 94; Moreover, as an apprentice William Hack likely helped pen the chart which includes Gujarat. (Thomas Smith also realized this, see his research papers at the Kenneth Spencer Library, Kansas.) Andrew Welch, ‘Chart of Guzarat, (1677),’ BL Add MS 39178-A; ‘Chart of the Malabar Coast, (1677), BL Add MS 39178-B.

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19. Alistair Maeer, ‘Cartography of Commerce: The Thames School of English Nautical Cartography.’ Unpublished dissertation, University of TexasArlington, 2006. 20. Bombay was gifted to Charles II as part of his wedding settlement in 1661 and the EIC did not take it over until 1688. Even with its fine harbor, it failed to thrive as a trading center until 1687. 21. Barlow, vol. 2, p. 374. 22. Anthony Pagden, ‘The Struggle for Legitimacy,’ in The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1 Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. N. Canny (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 38. “In the seventeenth century the British were no match for Mughal forces and the EIC, and the English, were forced to seek peace and a return to sanctioned trading rights by local rulers” (Marshall, p. 280). 23. Barlow, pp. 374–75. 24. Barlow, p. 380. 25. Barlow, pp. 467–68. 26. Barlow, pp. 467–68. 27. Leena More, English East India Company and the Local Rulers in Kerala: A Case Study of Attingal and Travancore (2003), pp. 75–81 28. John Thornton, ‘Chart of Malabar Coast, (1696),’ BL Add MS Eg. 741.

Bibliography Primary Sources Barlow, Edward, mss., Journal of His Life at Sea in East and West Indiamen, 1659–1703. Barlow, Edward, trans. Basil Lubbock. Barlow’s Journal of His Life at Sea in King’s Ships, East & West Indiamen & Other Merchantmen from 1659–1703. Hurst & Blackett, 1934. Fitzhugh, Augustine, ‘Chart of Moha (1683),’ BNF, Paris, Cartes et Plans, S.H. Portefeuille 211, div. 3 piece 1. Thornton, John, ‘Chart of Malabar Coast, (1696),’ BL Add MS Eg. 741. ———, ‘Chart of the Persian Gulf, (1699),’ Paris, BNF, Cartes et Plans, S.H. Portefeuille, 209, div. 2 piece 5. Welch, Andrew, ‘Chart of Guzarat, (1677),’ BL Add MS 39178-A. ———, ‘Chart of the Malabar Coast, (1677),’ BL Add MS 39178-B.

Secondary Sources Andrews, J.H. The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2001.

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Andrews, Kenneth. Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Basset, D.K. ‘Early English Trade and Settlement in Asia, 1602–1660.’ In Britain and the Netherlands, edited by J.S. Bromley and E.H. Lossmann. London: Macmillan Press, 1968. ———. The British in Southeast Asia During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Hull: University of Hull, 1990. Black, Jeremy. The British Seaborne Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Blake, John. The Sea Chart: The Illustrated History of Nautical Maps and Navigational Charts. London: Conway Maritime Press, 2004. Buisseret, David. Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992. ———. The Mapmakers’ Quest: Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Camarero, Ernesto. ‘La Escuel cartografica inglesa “At the Signe of the Platt.”’ Publicationses de la Real Sociedad Geografica, ser. B, no. 399. Madrid, 1959. Campbell, Tony. ‘The Drapers’ Company and Its School of Seventeenth Century Chart-Makers.’ In My Head Is a Map, edited by Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke. London: Francis Edwards and Carta Press, 1973. Chaudhuri, K.N. The East India Company: A Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company, 1600–1640. London: F. Cass, 1965. Cook, Andrew S. ‘More Manuscript Charts by John Thornton for the Oriental Navigation.’ Imago et Mensura Mundi. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1985. Cosgrove, D., ed. Mappings. London: Reaktion Books, 1999. ———. ‘Mapping New Worlds: Culture and Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice.’ Imago Mundi 44 (1992). Cotton, E. The East-Indiamen. London: Batchworth Press, 1949. Davis, Ralph. The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Newton Abbot, 1962. Delano-Smith, Catherine, and Roger J.P. Kain. English Maps: A History. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1999. Earle, Peter. Sailors: English Merchant Seamen 1650–1775. London: Methuen, 1998. Farrington, Anthony. Catalogue of East India Company Ships’ Journals and Logs, 1600–1834. London: British Library, 1999. Gardner, B. The East India Company. London: Hart-Davis, 1971. Harley, J.B. ‘The Map and the Development If the History of Cartography.’ In The History of Cartography, Vol. I, edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987. Hope, R. A New History of British Shipping. London: J. Murray Press, 1990.

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Hornstein, S. The Restoration Navy and English Foreign Trade, 1674–1688. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1991. Lawson, P. The East India Company. London: Longman, 1993. Loades, David. England’s Maritime Empire: Seapower, Commerce, and Policy, 1490–1690. London: Longman, 2000. MacLean, Gerald, and Nabil Matar. Britain and the Islamic World, 1558–1713. Oxford University Press, 2011. Maeer, Alistair. ‘The Baltic and the Birth of a Modern English Maritime Community: The Muscovy Company and Nautical Cartography, 1553–1665.’ The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies 4 (2012). ———. ‘Marine Charting by Great Britain, 1650–1800.’ In History of Cartography, Vol. 4 Cartography in the European Enlightenment, edited by J. Brian Harley, David Woodward, and Matthew Edney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Marshall, Peter. ‘The English in Asia to 1700.’ In The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1 Oxford History of the British Empire, edited by N. Canny. Oxford University Press, 1998. Minchinton, W.E., eds., The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Methuen, 1969. More, Leena. English East India Company and the Local Rulers in Kerala: A Case Study of Attingal and Travancore. Tellicherry: IRISH, 2003. Ormrod, David. The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pagden, Anthony. ‘The Struggle for Legitimacy.’ In The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1 Oxford History of the British Empire, edited by N. Canny. Oxford University Press, 1998. Robinson, A.H.W. Marine Cartography. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1962. Ronciere, Monique de la. ‘Manuscript Charts by John Thornton, Hydrographer of the East India Company (1669–1701).’ Imago Mundi 19 (1965). Smith, Thomas R. “Manuscripts and Printed Sea Charts in Seventeenth Century London.” In The Compleat Plattmaker, edited by Norman Thrower. Berkley: University of California Press, 1978. Steensgaard, N. The Asian Trade Revolution in the Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Taylor, E.G.R. Later Tudor and Stuart Geography. London: Octagon Books, 1934. Tyacke, Sarah. ‘Anglo-Dutch Cartographic Collaboration.’ In The Map Book, edited by Peter Barber. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. ———. Before Empire: The English World Picture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. London: Hakluyt Society, c/o Map Library, British Library, 2001.

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———. ‘English Charting of the River Amazon c1595–c1630.’ Imago Mundi 32, no. 2 (1980). ———. ‘Thames School.’ In Oxford Companion to World Exploration, edited by David Buisseret. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Waters, David. The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Stuart Times. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958. Zahedieh, Nuala. ‘Overseas Expansion and Trade in the Seventeenth Century.’ In The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1 Oxford History of the British Empire, edited by N. Canny. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

‘Far from the Orthodox Road’: Conceptualizing the Shia in the Nineteenth-Century Official Mind Conor Meleady

In his seminal 1882 publication The Future of Islam, the poet, traveller, imperial dissident, and Arabist Wilfrid Scawen Blunt cast his eye across the vast span of Britain’s Muslim empire to assess the potential that existed within Islam for reform. Representing the mode of thought which had come to dominate British minds vexed with the question of the role of Islam and Britain’s Muslim subjects in the pursuit of Britain’s imperial mission, Blunt argued that a regeneration of Islam was destined to emerge from ‘those regions of Islam where Arab thought is strongest’.1 Locating the ‘essence’ of Islam in the law2 and in the authority of the first four Arab caliphs, or Rashidun,3 Blunt urged Britain to ‘take Islam by the hand’4 and help restore the caliphate to its Arabian motherland with the aim of facilitating a movement of intellectual revival analogous to that which had transformed Western Christianity in the sixteenth century.5 Yet before deciding upon the origin of this prospective reform, Blunt surveyed the sectarian landscape of the ‘Muslim World’,6 identifying a variety of ancient and contemporary Islamic movements and trends with the aim of identifying Islam’s underlying essence or spirit. In attempting to map what

C. Meleady (B) St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_3

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Benjamin D. Hopkins has termed ‘an Islamic intellectual universe’,7 Blunt was engaging in an endeavour characteristic of the imperial zeitgeist, what Thomas R. Metcalf has described as a ‘relentless need to count and classify everything’8 for the furtherance of imperial rule.9 Indeed, the chapter title chosen for this investigation, ‘Census of the Mohammedan World’,10 is indicative of the period; the first all-encompassing Census of India had been conducted in 1871, with the heavyweight editions of 1891, 1901 and 1911, rich not just in statistical analysis but also descriptive ethnographic detail, due in the near future. Meanwhile, that parochial cousin of the Census, the District Gazetteer, would be exported to the ‘Arabian Frontier’11 of the Raj in the years preceding the First World War in the form of John Gordon Lorimer’s monumental Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf , offering British officials in the area an unparalleled source of information on a region of growing strategic importance.12 These great ethnographic surveys, classic examples of knowledge in the service of empire, revealed a mosaic of Muslim peoples inhabiting imperial Britain’s territories, identifiable not only by their distinguishing tribe, caste, or nationality, but also by their sectarian affiliation. As such, the task involved engagement with the historiographical narratives and doctrinal particularities from which the various Islamic sects were believed to have developed. Such engagement inevitably drew a focus to that formative Islamic sectarian division between Sunnis and Shia. Locating the Shia in this ‘Islamic intellectual universe’ therefore comprised a crucial element in all assessments of the state of contemporary Islam. Inquiries into the origins of the Shia and the nature of their doctrines and rituals necessitated a turn to historical scholarship and travel literature concerning Islam and the lands separating the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean; casual references to such publications litter not just the census reports and gazetteers mentioned above, but also the everyday correspondence of those British officials with a particular interest in questions relating to Islam, for whom a certain level of knowledge regarding such matters was taken for granted. The line between academic, cultural, and official forms of colonial knowledge was accordingly rather blurred and vanished almost completely in the person of the scholar-administrator, embodied in such major figures as Sir John Malcolm (1769–1833) and Sir William Muir (1819–1905), whose central works13 remained standard points of reference well into the twentieth century. By these means, an ‘official mind’14 with an emphasis on Islam was produced. It was not only characterized by an intuitive concern for the connection between the pursuit of imperial policy and the requirement to come to terms with the nature

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of the empire’s Muslim subjects, but also reflected the core assumptions and conclusions which characterized those key texts. The first part of this chapter, based primarily on these works of historical scholarship which informed much official writing on the subject, will thus analyse how the ‘official mind’ conceptualized the Shia as a distinct sect in terms of their place in relation to the identifiable ‘orthodox’ essence of Islam. It will argue that the dominant portrayal is best captured by Blunt’s description of Shiism as ‘a heresy…which has wandered far from the orthodox road’.15 The implications of this designation for matters of imperial policy, both urgent and mundane, form the subject matter of the second and third parts of this chapter. The second part, based on literature produced by the assortment of travellers and intrepid diplomats who increasingly traversed the perceived geographic heartlands of Islam in the latter half of the nineteenth century, will consider what role, if any, the British had in mind for the Shia in terms of the question of the prospective reform of Islam. It will argue that a division emerged between those for whom the ‘heretical’ or heterodox tendencies of the Shia carried with them negative connotations which drove a largely bemused indifference, and those for whom such tendencies had the potential to free Islam from the shackles of ‘orthodoxy’. The final part, based primarily on archival records of British India, will examine how, through direct engagement on matters pertaining to immediate colonial policy, the heterodox status of the Shia was transformed and ultimately cast aside, leaving the Shia to emerge as a legitimate religious minority in British India’s chaotic but theoretically neutral system of communal and sectarian relations. * * * Writing in the Punjab Census Report for 1881, superintendent of census operations and long-time Punjab-based official Denzil Charles Jelf Ibbetson attempted to distinguish the dominant Sunni tradition which seemed to prevail among the Muslims of his province from the various alternative forms of Punjabi Islam which the census enumeration process had unearthed. Turning to categories familiar to any British layperson, Ibbetson wrote: It is probably not strictly correct to apply the term sect to the Sunni belief, as it represents the orthodox church of Islam, and apparently bears a somewhat similar relation to the Shiahs and other schismatics as exists, among English

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Protestant Christians, between the Church of England and the Dissenting bodies.16

The association of ‘Sunni belief’ with ‘orthodoxy’ was, by the 1880s, an almost unspoken assumption among British observers. ‘Orthodoxy’ in Islamic terms indicated for the British a rigid adherence to the principle of monotheism and a comprehensible, rational legal code, two crucial elements which they believed defined the upper hierarchies of religious truth and which they saw perfected in their own Victorian Protestantism.17 It also embodied a heritage, in some sense racial or ethnic, or perhaps intellectual, reaching back to the Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam. While in practice this meant that only certain members of the urban class of Sunni adherents of the Hanafi or, on the Malabar Coast, Shafii madhahib 18 fulfilled the demands of ‘orthodoxy’,19 in theory any Muslim self-identifying as ‘Sunni’ in the census enumeration process could stake a claim of belonging to the ‘orthodox’ code. Such an avenue of legitimization was closed to those identifying as ‘Shii’, or indeed any other branch of Islam. For the British, Shiism was marked as a ‘sect’, a ‘schism’ which had distinguished itself from orthodoxy in the early decades of Islamic history and whose defining characteristic was its ‘heterodoxy’. Its very legitimacy in British eyes, therefore, was suspect when considered in Islamic terms. Among the most common British complaints in relation to the Shia was the charge that their veneration for Muhammad’s cousin and son-inlaw Ali went so far as to dilute the basic monotheistic message of Islam. Thus, the eighteenth-century translator of the Quran George Sale argued that ‘Many of the Shiites carried their veneration for Ali and his descendants so far, that they transgressed all bounds of reason and decency’,20 while Edward Gibbon went further, noting that in certain Shii circles, Ali was deemed to possess divine attributes.21 Yet it was not solely their semi-blasphemous fealty for Ali which stained the Shii commitment to monotheism in British eyes; the traveller James Fraser discerned in the Shii tradition a more general reverence for deceased figures of the past: Among the Persians, who are zealous Sheahs, as well as among the Mohammedans in general, their religion has lost nearly all that may originally have been valuable, and has been perverted by fanaticism, venality, and designing hypocrisy, into a despicable superstition, fit only to enthral and brutalize the nation. The reverence which the founder of Islam claimed as the last of a long line of prophets, has grown into a species of devotion that

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confounds the Deity and his apostle, and has even been extended to many of his learned or pious successors…The Sheahs have of all others probably shared deepest in these absurdities.22

No event reflected this ‘fanatical’ tendency more than the annual Muharram commemorations, which reached their climax on the tenth day ( Ashura), a period that for William Muir brought about feelings of ‘horror and indignation to the utmost pitch’.23 Surveying the pilgrim crowds of Najaf and Karbala in the 1880s, Colonel William Tweedie, political resident at Baghdad, remarked that ‘what was in its conception the most unequivocally monotheistic faith perhaps the world ever saw is here loaded with superstition and given up to the deification of dead men’.24 Thus, the Shii commitment to the basic monotheistic message of Islam was considered dubious, and the scepticism with which British observers considered the Shii veneration for Ali and his son Hussein was extended to Shii historiographical assertions regarding their claim to the early caliphate. It was not the moral worth of Ali’s own character that was in doubt; reflecting both standard Sunni and Shii interpretations, accounts of the fourth caliph in early British sources are almost unanimously admiring.25 Such respect, however, rarely carried with it acceptance of the Shii narrative regarding the legitimacy of Ali’s claim. For Gibbon, the Sunni position of granting a basically equal degree of respect to the first four caliphs was the ‘more impartial, or at least more decent, opinion’.26 The most authoritative and perhaps influential stance was taken by Sir William Muir in his The Caliphate (1891). For Muir, the entire Shii narrative of the first decades of Islamic history following the death of Muhammad was a fabrication. While the Shia liked to ‘pretend’ that Ali harboured caliphal ambitions, the truth was that ‘There is not a shadow of proof that he made any such claim himself, or that any claim was made by others for him, during the Caliphates of Abu Bakr and Omar’.27 Alone among British writers, Muir was willing to question the heroic and faultless image of Ali depicted in earlier accounts, holding him at least some way responsible for the assassination of the third caliph Uthman28 and for the sectarian schism which resulted from his own murder.29 According to Muir, Ali’s death occasioned no noteworthy outpouring of grief from among his ostensible supporters. The entire movement to have him and his descendants recognized as the only legitimate successors to Muhammad emerged only as a result of the events of Karbala in 680 which were subsequently used to express and foment opposition to

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the Umayyads, and so stoke the sectarian hatred which has plagued Islam ever since.30 In fact, due to ‘Alyite fiction’31 and ‘Shiya hate’,32 very little can be known for sure about what happened at Karbala. Muir’s assessment of the worthiness of Shii sources would later find official expression in Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf . In a section titled ‘Historical events explaining the existence of Muhammadan denominations’, Lorimer derided the Shii explanation for the early divisions which emerged within Islam. Recounting the nature of the events of Karbala, he wrote that Though the fate of Husain excites commiseration, it is difficult to regard him, as Shi’ahs do, in the light of a Shahid or martyr. In the first place there appears to be no real reason for holding that descendants of Muhammad had an exclusive right to the Khalifate; in the second, it seems that any right which they might have possessed was renounced by Hasan during his headship of the family; and, in the third, it is clear that Husain lost his life, not in vindicating a moral or religious principle, but merely in an attempt to wrest the temporal power from Yazid.33

The basis on which the Shia rejected the authority of the caliphs who were subsequently held to embody Islamic ‘orthodoxy’ was considered unreliable at best. The same attitude was applied to the sources and practice of Shii law. Writing in the preliminary discourse to his translation of the medieval work of Hanafi jurisprudence, The Hedaya, Charles Hamilton argued that the Sunnis’ orthodoxy stemmed from their adherence to the ‘most obvious interpretation of the Koran, and the obligatory force of the traditions, in opposition to the innovations of the sectaries’. Orthodoxy was defined by a ‘justness of thinking in spiritual matters’, to which the four Sunni madhahib were all devoted.34 By implication, the Shii approach to law was irrational and illogical, based not on a reasoned interpretation of the recognized sources but rather on the preconceived belief in the infallibility of the dispossessed Imams. Referring to the canonical collections of hadith compiled in the eighth and ninth centuries, the Austrian Orientalist Aloys Sprenger of the Delhi College described the Shii records as ‘infinitely less faithful than those of the Sunnies’,35 a verdict which Muir, reviewing Sprenger’s The Life of Mohammad in the Calcutta Review in 1868, felt could ‘hardly be called unjust’.36 A similar language to Sprenger’s was eventually adopted by Ibbetson in the Punjab Census Report for 1881, with the four primary collections of Shii hadith described as ‘incomparably less trustworthy’ than their Sunni equivalents.37

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Shiism was regarded as a tradition which spawned numerous derivative branches. The Punjab Census Report for 1901 noted that: [The] doctrine of inherited sanctity is dependent on, or at least closely connected with, the belief in the metempsychosis, and has rendered it possible for the Shia sect to admit of many developments, so that from the cardinal tenet of the unity of God was eventually evolved a system of pantheism. This was due, probably, to the introduction of the Sufi doctrines…and had been preceded…by an earlier mysticism.38

From where that ‘earlier mysticism’ came is left unsaid. However, it is not unreasonable to assume that the author, H. A. Rose, had in mind the cultural and religious influence of Iran, for Iran in the nineteenth-century official mind was an incubator of esoteric speculation and mysticism, a land and nation disposed to birthing all manner of spiritual eccentricities. According to Iran’s most esteemed British interpreter, the scholar Edward Granville Browne, The most striking feature of the Persians as a nation is their passion for metaphysical speculation…Persia is, and always has been, a very hot-bed of systems, from the time of Manes and Mazdak in the old Sasanian days, down to the present age, which has brought into being the Babi’s and the Sheykhis.39

British observers could not help noticing an apparent dichotomy distinguishing the Arab and Iranian, or alternatively, the Semitic and Aryan, expressions of religious devotion. While acknowledging the sequence of events that produced the Shia, the writer and Indian administrator George Birdwood located the genesis of the movement ‘in the impassable ethnological gulf which separates the Aryan and Semitic races’ and portrayed the persistence of Shii dissidence and the Shii impact on the Abbasid Revolution as basically representing Iranian protest against the domination of Arabs.40 The effect, according to Muir, was the flowering of a range of Shii influenced sects in the later Abbasid period which inspired ‘changes both of dogma and ritual [that] were so strange and sweeping…the Prophet himself would hardly have recognized the system thus evolved as in any respect his own’.41 Such ideas became embedded in the official ethnographic literature produced through the census enumeration process, as the Punjab report for 1901 described how:

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From the earliest times of Islam there have existed sects professing doctrines not inculcated in the Koran, or even condemned by it. These doctrines appear to have been from time to time revived in Persia, and in Khorassan, which from the very first age of Islam had been the fruitful parent of heresies…42

As a product of the peculiarly Iranian approach to spirituality, Shiism thus came to be associated almost exclusively with Iran, frequently described as the ‘national religion of Persia’ despite the relatively recent imposition of Twelver Shiism on the country by the sixteenth-century Safavids.43 Subsequent official accounts came to project the Arab-Iranian and Semitic-Aryan dichotomies discussed above on to the sectarian map of Muslim India; the Punjab census report for 1901 found that, from the earliest times the Shias were found chiefly among the non-Arabian races of the Mohammadan world, and that by the irony of fate the descendants of the Prophet found their most zealous supporters amongst the alien peoples. As we come down to modern times we find that Shiaism becomes more and more a question of race, or, in India of caste, its tenets finding a more congenial soil, as far as one can see, among the races of Iranian and Indian origin than among those of Arabian descent, or those which have come under Arabian influences…44

Similarly, the Imperial Gazetteer of 1907 found that ‘The Shiah movement…is strongest where there is least Arab intermixture in the population. Hence some have defined it as an Aryan protest against Semite domination’.45 Thus, the impact of Iranian civilization on Islam had helped to generate a protest movement imbued with the Iranian spiritual character, and subsequently marked Shiism’s adherents, wherever they resided, with its distinctive, heterodox nature. Where orthodoxy was strictly monotheistic, Shiism encouraged a blasphemous devotion to its founders; where orthodoxy was based on reason, reliable sources, and a rational legal foundation, Shiism was founded on a dubious understanding of Islamic history and a collection of unconvincing legal texts; and where orthodoxy sprung from the Semitic heartland of Arabia, Shiism was inherently associated with the contrasting civilization of Iran. Shiism was—objectively as far as British observers were concerned—heterodox. However, the category comprised more than a disinterested scholarly conclusion; there was in most cases a

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value judgement suggested, with implications for the role of Shiism in the great question of the reform of Islamic civilization. * * * British travellers in Arabia, Iran, and Iraq produced some of the nineteenth century’s richest and most vital contemporary source material for descriptive ethnographic accounts of the perceived heartlands of Islam and of the characteristics of the Shia specifically. The nineteenth century saw these regions, whose strategic significance was becoming increasingly apparent in British eyes, open up to European exploration and travel, enabling intrepid diplomats, amateur scholars, or simply interested civilians, to penetrate the scenes of the early sectarian history of Islam which drew the scholarly attention described in the previous section. The specific locations of the various sites associated with the Sunni-Shii schism located in these regions—cities such as Medina and Karbala—and the diverse array of Muslim peoples these objects of pilgrimage drew attracted the interest of those whose travels in the region afforded them the opportunity to witness first-hand the characteristics, rituals and doctrines of the Shia. The wanderings of travellers such as Richard Burton, William Gifford Palgrave, Charles M. Doughty, and the Blunts46 with the Bedouin and Wahhabis of the Arabian interior seem to have consolidated a rigid conception of division within Islam whereby the invariably Sunni Arabs of the peninsula retained a uniquely authentic and ‘orthodox’ aura in contrast to their Shii Iranian pilgrim guests. Their subsequently published accounts drew on the scholarly critiques of Shiism assessed above, applying them in an environment in which the Shia were often encountered as a despised, alien minority. While the holy cities of the Hijaz had always exercised a powerful hold on the imagination of interested non-Muslims, it was Mecca which had always been the focus. Perceived as the cosmopolitan heart of Islam, it was increasingly identified with pan-Islamic intrigue and more generally as the epitome of the monolithic vision of a unified Islam as the century wore on. Reflecting the former anxieties, Isabel Burton would write that ‘Mecca is not only a great centre of religion and commerce; it is also the prime source of political intrigues, the very nest where plans of conquest and schemes of revenge upon the infidel are hatched’.47 In contrast, the description of Medina offered by her husband Sir Richard portrayed a city riven by sectarian ritual and tension.48 The sectarian composition of the local population captivated Burton, who identified a number of ‘heretical’

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sects living amidst ‘the fountain-heads of the faith’.49 But it was inevitably the Persian Shii pilgrims who drew Burton’s attention, and in particular, the trials and tribulations faced by those Shia fulfilling their pilgrimage obligations at the very scenes associated with the early Islamic schism.50 The spectre of the hapless Shii pilgrim became a common motif throughout the various Arabian travel accounts of the period. He was invariably portrayed as a Persian fish out of water in the Semitic heartland, haunted en route by fanatical Wahhabi ‘guides’ and the subject of suspicion and target of abuse at his destination; only his doctrine of taqiyya shielded him from the fanatical yet somewhat understandable outrage of the ‘orthodox’. Burton had already attracted attention before setting out for the Hijaz from Alexandria, where his initial disguise as an ‘Ajami’, or Persian, of the Qadiriyya Sufi order, drew a rebuke from a fellow pilgrim.51 Having set sail from Suez, the bizarrely obstinate customs of the Shii pilgrims he encountered on the Red Sea voyage became the object of much contemptuous ridicule on the part of his fellow, ‘orthodox’, travellers.52 These attitudes would be encountered and relayed to the reader in the Arabian travel accounts of William Gifford Palgrave, Charles M. Doughty, and Lady Anne Blunt. Palgrave in particular seems to have taken great delight in describing the sufferings endured by the Persian pilgrims he met crossing the peninsula on their way to the Hijaz, never shying away from deriding in various terms their beliefs and practices, and displaying a particular interest in the doctrine of taqiyya, described as ‘unmanly’ in Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia (1815).53 In the frequent contrasts drawn between the Shia and their Wahhabi tormentors, the latter faction tended to emerge with greater credit. Palgrave mocked the Persian habit of counting the beads of the misbaha, or rosary in his terms, as a ‘ridiculous custom…justly reprobated by the Wahhabees’,54 while Doughty, in his distinctive verbiage, also noted their fastidiousness: The Persian pilgrims…are civil and ingenious (so is not the Semitic nomad race); but of a cankered ingenuity in the religion, sinners against the world and their own souls. If but thy shadow pass over their dish it is polluted meat, they eat not of it, neither willingly eat they with any catholic Moslem, an observer of the Sunna (the Mohammedan Talmud or canonical tradition). A metal ewer for water hangs at all their saddles, with which they upon every occasion go superstitiously apart to perform certain loathsome washings.55

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The Persians, according to a Hijazi encountered by Lady Anne Blunt, were ‘disliked as Persians as well as heretics, and often got beaten in Medina’.56 The ridicule and moral condemnation often applied to Shii doctrines and rituals by British observers drew not only on the scholarly evaluation of Shii ‘heterodoxy’, but also appeared to reflect the critiques commonly found in Sunni sources; after witnessing the practice of mutah, or temporary marriage, in the Shii pilgrimage destination of Mashhad in northeast Iran, George Curzon described that city as the most ‘immoral’ in Asia,57 unwittingly parroting long-standing Sunni polemics aimed at their sectarian rivals.58 In such ways was the heretical status of the Shia employed to degrade their very legitimacy in Islamic terms, and consequently to suppress any thoughts that Shiism may have a role to play in the future development of civilization. Yet by and large, Curzon’s account of his travels in Iran betrayed a level of sympathy and understanding with Shiism largely absent in the accounts of the Arabian travellers. Referring to the mujtahid class, he noted their reputation in the country for ‘general integrity and…the merciful inclination of their sentences’.59 Indeed, in contrast to those for whom the perceived Semitic and ‘orthodox’ environment of the Arabian peninsula tended to underline the less flattering characteristics of the Iranian visitors they encountered, those travellers who visited the Shii heartlands of Iran and Iraq inclined towards more sensitive positions. Travellers visiting ‘Turkish Arabia’, or Iraq, often found popular narratives of clerical fanaticism and superstition to belie the reality of the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. Throughout the nineteenth century, the region was portrayed in official discourse as the sectarian landscape par excellence,60 and from the 1870s onwards, it drew many travellers attempting to make sense of its geostrategic significance in the light of the very real prospect of Ottoman collapse. Strategic concerns aside, the holy provinces of lower Iraq drew increasing attention in British circles at this time due to imperial Britain’s growing interest in projecting herself as embodying the interests of her Muslim subjects, including of course the large number of Shii pilgrims of Indian origin who flocked to Najaf, Karbala, and the other shrine cities of the region each year.61 The lowly reputation of the mujtahid class of the shrine cities was frequently acknowledged in the accounts under review here, and it is not unreasonable to speculate that it may have suffered further with the involvement of major Persian mujtahids in driving the anti-British sentiment which accompanied the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905 and the Iraqi uprising of 1920.62 Yet our travellers frequently repu-

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diated the image of the fanatical bigoted Shii cleric and populace, finding such reports, in the words of the editor of the Bombay Gazette, Grattan Geary, to be ‘gross exaggerations’63 : The fanaticism of the inhabitants of the holy cities, of which I had heard a good deal before setting out, was not made apparent either by word or sign. I was never once the object of even a discourteous stare in Kerbella or Nejef, or at any of the stopping-places. It is doubtful whether a native of Turkish Arabia could go through some of the remoter districts of England and say the same at the end of his journey.64

Meanwhile H. Swainson Cowper found in Karbala ‘little or no trace of the anti-Christian intolerance which the inhabitants are usually credited with’,65 and granted special praise to his host in Hillah, one ‘Sayyid Hassan’ who greeted us with a cordiality which was certainly not feigned, in spite of the artificialness and formality of Persian manners in general…a kinder host we could not have found…In spite of his descent he is absolutely without any feelings of fanaticism towards Christians, and the great courtesy and hospitality he has shown to more than one English traveller shows the feelings he entertains towards our nation.66

In searching for an explanation of the perceived growth in pro-British sentiment among the local populace, Geary cited the growing British involvement with the Shii pilgrim traffic from India,67 while Cowper speculated more generally on the favourable attitude of the Indian Shia in regard to their British rulers, as well as the ‘the shrewd insight of the better-class Persians themselves, on whom the fact has dawned that Christian Europe and not Mohammedan Asia is now the true fountain-head of civilisation, progress, and of commerce itself’.68 Here, we can see the basis of a dissident British perspective on the potentialities of Islam in regard to the general progress of civilization and the role of Shiism therein, further evidenced in Col. Tweedie’s narrative. For Tweedie, Shiism represented the ‘enthusiastic and supernatural’ element of Islam that had existed in a state of antagonism with the ‘political and secular’69 and which found an environment ripe for development as Islam spread to Iran in the decades following Ali’s murder:

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The subjective and imaginative genius of Persia had all this time been fast assimilating Ali’s tenets. Not alone had the summary methods in which Islamism had there been propagated left the masses, as usual, almost unchanged; but the essential incompatibility between the religious conceptions of Aryan and Semitic races (Jew and Gentile) had even then begun to show itself in those religious exaggerations and aberrations, from Sufiism down to ‘ Babism,’ for which Persia is so remarkable.70

Babism, then, represented the fully flowered fusion of Islam with Iranian civilization, and it found two influential British enthusiasts in the late nineteenth century in George Curzon and Edward Granville Browne. In Persia and the Persian Question, Curzon remarked upon the uniquely Iranian basis for the emergence of the new faith, noting the role of the ‘somewhat mystic and speculative character’71 of the Persians in providing a constituency for the early Babi preachers: To those who know anything of the Persian character, so extraordinarily susceptible of religious influences as it is, it will be obvious to how many classes in that country the new creed makes successful appeal. The Sufis, or mystics, have long held that there must always be a Pir, or Prophet, visible in the flesh, and are very easily absorbed into the Babi fold. Even the orthodox Mussulman, whose mind’s eye has ever been turned in eager anticipation upon the vanished Imam, is amenable to the cogent reasoning, by which it is sought to prove that either the Bab, or Beha, is the Mahdi, according to all the predictions of the Koran and the traditions.72

Curzon found Babism ‘alone among Oriental heresies’ in embodying ‘ideas of amelioration and progress’.73 It was a movement which represented ‘freedom of thought and purity of observance’ and strove to achieve ‘the emancipation of women’ while encompassing tenets of ‘Brotherly love, kindness to children, courtesy combined with dignity, sociability, hospitality, freedom from bigotry…[and] friendliness even to Christians’.74 Meanwhile, Browne, who had the privilege of visiting in person the two rival successors to the Bab, Subh-i-Azal and Bahaullah, found in the teachings of the latter, later to develop into the Bahai religion, ‘a mighty force with…astonishing results…from which I believed (as I still believe) that results yet more wonderful might be expected in the future’.75 In this understanding of the potential of Islam to contribute to the progress of humanity—generally understood in the ‘official mind’ to be embodied in Britain’s imperial mission—the spiritual passions that had characterized the history

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of religion in Iran had found fertile ground for development in the Shii narrative of Islamic history, which produced a revolutionary creed with the potential to make genuine contributions to the advancement of humanity. This was not reform or revitalization from within Islam; rather, it was the forging of a novel pantheism from the heretical periphery of Islam through the medium of Persian civilization. As Blunt concluded in his assessment of the Shia, ‘their future only indirectly involves that of Islam proper’.76 * * * Yet such grand questions as these would seem to have carried little weight in the day-to-day administration of empire. In the post-1857 era in northern India, several developments initiated a process whereby the Shia became conceptualized as a distinct religious minority and were incorporated into the system of communal and sectarian relations overseen by the ostensibly neutral colonial state. While British scholars and travellers continued to theorize and speculate on the nature of Shii doctrines and rituals and their relation to ‘orthodoxy’, Indian officials directly engaged the Shia as a basically homogeneous community whose position in relation to a range of questions had a real bearing on the pursuit and execution of imperial policy. In this section, we shall consider British engagement with the Shia on three issues considered to be of paramount importance for the maintenance of the colonial regime in India—the legitimacy of British rule; knowledge of and about India’s various religious communities; and the management of communal and sectarian conflict. In attempting to discern the Shii standpoint on these matters, British officials were forced to relegate the idea of Shii ‘heterodoxy’ to the periphery of the discussion and to incorporate the Shii approach to questions of Islamic law and ritual into their thinking on an equal footing with that of their Sunni counterparts.77 This policy of what Sandria Freitag has termed ‘evenhandedness’ had the effect of unsettling the traditional structures of power which had previously defined sectarian relations in the region.78 As a result, the Shia emerged in the years immediately preceding the First World War as a recognized and legitimate religious community, with all the rights and protections implied by that status. In engaging directly with the Shia, British officials utilized the services of a collection of often selfdesignated intermediaries deemed sufficiently authoritative and representative to speak for the community as a whole. These ‘natural leaders’ were men typically drawn from the notable classes such as the mujtahids or

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taluqdars (landowners)79 who fulfilled certain ideals of authority based on parochial, ‘client/patron’ ties. Those with a claim to leadership based on transcendent ideological or charismatic appeal tended to be disregarded by the British authorities.80 Cooperation with the state therefore provided a means for the chosen leaders to contest claims to legitimacy and challenges from within their own community, as well as with their communal and sectarian rivals; concurrently, it provided the foundation for the British claim to neutrality and impartiality in religious affairs81 and implied recognition of the legitimacy of British rule. By the outbreak of the First World War, British Indian authorities had every reason to believe that a half-century of engagement along the lines outlined above had produced a loyal, compliant, and dependent Indian Shii community whose existence helped balance the questionable position assumed to be held by significant elements of the Sunni majority on the issue of the legitimacy of British authority. British anxieties in this regard were chiefly the product of the immediate post-1857 era.82 Yet although, according to Juan Cole, broadly ranged elements of the Shii community including ‘commoners, ta’alluqdars …troops of the restored Shi’i government in Lucknow, and…the Shi’i ulama’83 participated in the 1857 uprisings across the newly annexed province of Awadh, the established postMutiny narrative tended to emphasize individual acts of loyalty on the part of certain high-profile Shia.84 The idea that the Shii conception of jihad departed from the Sunni, orthodox interpretation in ways favourable to the continuance of peaceful British-Shii relations85 served both sides, as Shii notables sought to evade the general sense of suspicion which fell upon the Muslims of northern India in this period, while the British, according to Cole, ‘swallowed the lie about Shii quietism with alacrity’, with the aim of rebuilding pre-1857 relations with local elites.86 This belief became embedded in official discourse through the publication of William Wilson Hunter’s The Indian Musalmans (1871), which famously posed the question of whether Muslims were bound by duty to rebel against British authority in India. While Hunter’s focus rested on the Sunnis and on the reformist trend which in this period attracted the pejorative ‘Wahhabi’, his examination of jihad in Shii doctrine served as a point of contrast. Depending almost entirely on a pamphlet submitted to colonial authorities by a self-designated ‘natural leader’, one Munshi Amir Ali Khan Bahadur,87 Hunter accepted unquestioningly the author’s argument that for the Shia jihad was illegitimate in the absence of the Twelfth Imam,88 arguing that the pamphlet was ‘stamped with the highest author-

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ity which the Shias can give to any document, and will be permanently binding on the whole sect’.89 As the Wahhabi panic of the 1860s evolved into a more restrained yet widespread concern with the seditious nature of Ottoman-sponsored panIslamic intrigue in the decades immediately preceding the First World War, assertions of loyalty on the part of the Indian Shia became ever more regular. The publication of proclamations or articles in the vernacular newspapers upon which colonial authorities kept a close eye was a common means of attracting British attention in this regard,90 while occasionally a ‘natural leader’ would directly petition the government. In June 1906 one Sayyid Muhammad Riza appealed to the Viceroy, the Earl of Minto, stressing that recent reports of discontent in Lahore and Aligarh were due to Sunni resentment at Britain’s Ottoman policy: the Shias have got nothing to do with it, as their religion does not recognise any worldly king as their religious leader. The Shias are loyal subjects of the British Government and are highly thankful to Government for the manifold blessings which British rule has conferred on the people of India. They hold that according to the Kuran and their religious books jehad is not admissible. The petitioner, therefore, prays that Government may be pleased to regard these messages as solely from the Sunni Muhammadans.91

An intelligence report circulated on the eve of the First World War, detailing the activities of members of the pan-Islamic Anjuman-iKhuddam-i-Kaaba organization, lent further support to the image of the loyalist Shia, noting that ‘A Shiah paper warned the followers of its particular sect not to be taken in by the political tricks of the Sunnis, and remarked that the Anjuman was bound in course of time to disturb the public tranquillity’.92 As the prospect of war with the Ottomans and a prospective British-sponsored Arab revolt approached in the summer of 1914, the government of India assessed that the great majority of Shia in India would remain indifferent.93 In such a context, it behoved official opinion to accept Shii rulings to be every bit as legitimate as their Sunni counterparts. Yet in terms of raw numbers, the Shia could only hope to punch above their relative weight. The census enumeration process, conducted every decade since 1871, had increasingly revealed their numerical minority status within the Indian Muslim community. In fact, this status had in some cases provided yet another basis for the application of ‘orthodox’ to the

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Sunnis, ‘as they are…the majority’.94 In earlier years, however, the demographic balance had been less clear, with a range of authoritative voices in some cases estimating an Indian Shii population which rivalled or even outstripped that of its Sunni co-religionists.95 Even with the advent of the census counts, the collection of reliable numbers was still challenging, as provincial enumerators often encountered a general ignorance as to the significance of the Sunni and Shia categories. Ibbetson reported in 1881 that: the great mass of the peasantry have, except on the frontier and perhaps in the western districts, never even heard of the distinction between the two great divisions of the Moslem faith, and though they are undoubtedly Sunni, are only so because they know of nothing else, and not by deliberate choice or conviction.96

Furthermore, Ibbetson opined that many Shia resorted to the practice of taqiyya to conceal their real allegiances.97 Seeking to circumvent such difficulties, officials compiling data for the census report for the NorthWestern Provinces and Oudh in 1891 attempted to uncover the dominant form of prayer practised by each individual: For the less instructed of Muhammadans and especially amongst the Sunnis, the difference between the two sects is little understood, and the enumerator had in general to ascertain the sect by a question as to how the hands were placed in prayer. Sunnis pray with one hand placed over the other on the front of the body, Shias with both hands depressed by the sides.98

As Freitag has noted, many if not most Muslims would have been oblivious to the distinction.99 Yet by the process itself, such expected markers of sectarian identity were outlined, demonstrated, and effectively politicized. Faced with such tasks, Muslims were forced to tie their flag to one or the other sectarian pole, and through the resultant hardening of identities, more clearly defined, homogenous sectarian communities were produced. It was a process in which the communities’ ‘natural leaders’ eagerly engaged; a resolution passed by the All India Shia Conference in Lucknow in December 1909 urged the government to impose a separate column for the enumeration of Shia in the 1911 census—the inclusion of such a column had, until then, been left to the discretion of the provincial governments.100

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In this context of heightened religious consciousness, the development of sectarianism, defined by Justin Jones as ‘an enhanced discourse of religious and communal difference between the members of Islamic groups or schools’,101 was perhaps inevitable and indeed perpetuated by subsequent British attempts at mediation. A series of cases and disputes which played out in the North-Western/United Provinces in the three decades prior to the First World War demonstrate how the colonial state came to be utilized by competing sectarian communities for the advancement of their conflicting and internal agendas. British officials were subsequently forced to take positions on complex questions of Islamic ritual and doctrine, drawing hard lines regarding what constituted legitimate Islamic practice. The process ultimately consolidated and formalized the rival traditions in the image of certain reformist impulses, to the exclusion of those customs deemed beyond the pale by reformist and government official alike.102 A common point of contention was the bila fasl controversy surrounding the introduction in the Shii call to prayer ( adhan) of a phrase implying the illegitimacy of the first three Rashidun, revered by Sunnis alongside the fourth caliph Ali.103 Such innovations had the effect of encouraging a novel attachment to the figures of the first three caliphs on the part of the Sunnis and the development of reciprocal public rituals indicating their opposition to basic points of Shii doctrine. These disputes inevitably came to a head during the annual Muharram commemorations marking the Battle of Karbala, during which Sunni participants began to contest Shii rituals perceived to denigrate Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman, and eventually to recite verses, known as the chari yari, praising the three caliphs in defiance of commonly accepted tradition. British officials initially found it difficult to respond with one voice—following one such dispute which recurred in the town of Zaidpur between 1880 and 1885, an exasperated government official bemoaned the lengthy back-and-forth and indecision which had preceded the final settlement of the dispute, describing how: The most deplorable thing in the whole occurrence is the want of continuity in the administration. A fussy Extra Assistant Commissioner first stops an old established custom to which no one had objected. Then the Shias sulk and growl for four years and are kept in order by force. Then all of a sudden they are allowed to resume the objectionable ceremony and are patted on the back, and the Sunnis are turned into enemies of order and coerced by a large police force.104

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Sporadic eruptions of violence in Lucknow in 1906 eventually convinced officials to attempt to resolve the critical issues at hand. The Piggott Commission on Sunni-Shia Differences met in late 1908 to conclusively regulate the Muharram commemorations, and concluded by emphasizing the link between the bila fasl cases and the Sunni recitation of the chari yari verses: The public praises of the first three Caliphs on the part of the Sunnis we consider to stand essentially on the same footing as the public utterance of the words ‘bila fasl ’ by the Shias, and the two matters should be dealt with on the same lines.105

Thus in the everyday administration of empire, questions of heterodoxy and the legitimacy of Shii doctrine in relation to perceived Sunni ‘orthodoxy’ became essentially irrelevant. The neutral platform facilitated by the non-Islamic colonial state acted as a great equalizer, potentially empowering traditionally marginalized movements or, in the case of Lucknow’s Shia in 1908, providing a means by which a former ruling class could defy the logic of numerical inferiority to retain some degree of its former privilege.106 It should come as little surprise, then, to learn that the numerically dominant Sunnis felt aggrieved at the Commission’s professed evenhanded conclusions and recommendations, adopting an attitude described as ‘sullen discontent’.107 Yet the significance of the ruling went beyond matters directly pertaining to the Muharram rituals. Through the arbitration of such disputes, the British helped produce the Shia as a legitimate, seemingly homogeneous religious community whose status would no longer be defined in relation to a perceived normative or orthodox ‘other’, but would be accepted and incorporated into the colonial system of communal relations in its own terms.

Notes 1. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, The Future of Islam (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co, 1882), pp. 152–53. 2. Ibid., p. 154. 3. Ibid., pp. 163–64. 4. Ibid., pp. 213–14. 5. Ibid., p. 136. On the impact of Blunt’s thought in British official circles, see, for example, Martin Kramer, Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 10–18.

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6. On the colonial era origins of the concept of the ‘Muslim World’, see Cemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017). 7. Magnus Marsden and Benjamin D. Hopkins, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (London: Hurst & Company, 2011), p. 82. 8. Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 113. 9. Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 3. 10. Blunt, The Future of Islam, pp. 1–47. 11. James Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 12. On the Gazetteer, see, Nelida Fuccaro, ‘Knowledge at the Service of the British Empire: The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia,’ in Borders and the Changing Boundaries of Knowledge, eds. Inga Brandell, Marie Carlson, and Önver A. Çetrez (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 2015), pp. 17–34. 13. Sir John Malcolm, The History of Persia, from the Most Early Period to the Present Time: Containing an Account of the Religion, Government, Usages, and Character of the Inhabitants of that Kingdom, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1829) and Sir William Muir, The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1892). 14. In the sense employed by Frank Heinlein, British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945–1963: Scrutinising the Official Mind (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 7, footnote 1—‘the sum of the ideas, perceptions and intentions of those policy-makers who had a bearing on imperial policies. The term “policy-maker” designates politicians and civil servants who were responsible for or had a bearing on the development and execution of imperial policy’. 15. Blunt, The Future of Islam, p. 35. 16. Denzil Charles Jelf Ibbetson, Report on the Census of the Panjab Taken on the 17th February 1881, Volume 1: Text and Appendices C and D (Calcutta: Government Printing, 1883), p. 146, para 283. 17. Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 48–50 notes that for Europeans of the nineteenth century, ‘the most significant chasm among nations was between those who had knowledge of the one supreme deity and those who did not’, while Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), refers to what he calls the ‘legal-supremacist’ conceptualization of Islam to describe the identification of Islam’s essence or orthodoxy with the shari a.

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18. Sunni schools of jurisprudence, singular madhhab, of which there remain four—the Hanafi, Shafii, Maliki, and Hanbali. 19. According to the Census Report for Travancore of 1901, Shafiis counted as much the largest subset of Sunni Muslims on the south-west coast of India. See N. Subramhanya Aiyar, Census of India 1901, Volume XXVI: Travancore, Part I (Trivandrum: Malabar Mail, 1903), p. 107, para 87. 20. George Sale, The Koran, Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed (London: C. Ackers, 1734), p. 176. 21. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 8 vols. (London: 1821), Vol. 6, p. 344. 22. James B. Fraser, Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1834), p. 233. 23. Muir, The Caliphate, p. 321. 24. Col. W. Tweedie, Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886–87, Mss Eur F112/384, British Library (BL), p. 41. 25. See, for example, Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall, Vol. 6, pp. 328–29 and Andrew Crichton, The History of Arabia, Ancient and Modern, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1834), Vol. 1, pp. 366–369. 26. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall, Vol. 6, p. 332. 27. Muir, The Caliphate, p. 5. 28. Ibid., pp. 239–40. 29. Ibid., p. 300. 30. Ibid., p. 301. 31. Ibid., p. 321. 32. Ibid., p. 323. 33. J.G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf , Vol. I, Historical, Part II, IOR/L/PS/20/C91/2, BL, p. 2354. 34. Charles Hamilton, trans., The Hedaya, or Guide: A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws (London: W. H. Allen & Co: 1870), p. xxi. 35. Aloys Sprenger, The Life of Mohammad from Original Sources (Allahabad: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1851), p. 69. 36. Sir William Muir, The Mohammedan Controversy and Other Indian Articles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1897), p. 118. 37. Ibbetson, Report on the Census of the Panjab, p. 146, para 283. 38. H.A. Rose, The Punjab, Its Feudatories, and the North-West Frontier Province, Part I: The Report on the Census (Simla, 1902), p. 144, para 43. 39. Edward Granville Browne, A Year Amongst the Persians: Impressions as to the Life, Character, & Thought of the People of Persia, Received During Twelve Months’ Residence in that Country in the Years 1887 –1888 (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1893), p. 122.

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40. George Birdwood in Sir Lewis Pelly, The Miracle Play of Hasan and Husain, 2 vols. (London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1879), vol. 1, pp. xvi–xvii. 41. Muir, The Caliphate, pp. 553–54. 42. Rose, The Punjab, Its Feudatories, and the North-West Frontier Province, p. 147, para 47. 43. Malcolm, The History of Persia, vol. 2, p. 218 and George Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1892), vol. 1, p. 7. 44. Rose, The Punjab, Its Feudatories, and the North-West Frontier Province, pp. 147–48, para 48. 45. The Imperial Gazetteer of India: The Indian Empire, Vol. 1—Descriptive (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), p. 436. 46. See Kathryn Tidrick, Heart-Beguiling Araby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 47. Quoted in Saurabh Mishra, Pilgrimage, Politics, and Pestilence: The Haj from the Indian Subcontinent, 1860–1920 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 120. For more on the view of Mecca and the Hajj as facilitators of anti-imperialist, pan-Islamic sentiment and plots, see Michael Christopher Low, ‘Empire and the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam Under British Surveillance, 1865–1908,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 2 (2008): 269–290. 48. Perhaps the first British traveller of the nineteenth century to cross Arabia from the Gulf to the Red Sea coast (1819), G. Forster Sadlier, would note Medina as the location not only of Muhammad’s tomb, but also of ‘four others, sacred to Fatima, Omar, Aboobekar, and Ali’ as well as two mosques administered by ‘two mooftees, the one of the Hanifeite, and the other of the Shafeite sect, to expound the laws and doctrines’. See Captain G. Forster Sadlier, Diary of a Journey Across Arabia from El Khatif in the Persian Gulf, to Yambo in the Red Sea, During the Year 1819 (With a Map.), V 6499, BL, p. 93. 49. Richard F. Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage Mecca and Medina, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1874), vol. 2, p. 151. 50. See, for example, Burton’s account of the Persian pilgrims at the Prophet’s Mosque, Ibid., pp. 142–44. 51. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 45–46. 52. Ibid., pp. 198 and 216. 53. William Gifford Palgrave, Narrative of a Year’s Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–63), 2 vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1865), vol. 1, pp. 404–406 and Malcolm, The History of Persia, vol. 2, p. 262. 54. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 107–8. 55. Charles M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), vol. 1, p. 60.

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56. Lady Anne Blunt, A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race: A Visit to the Court of the Arab Emir, and ‘Our Persian Campaign,’ 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1881), vol. 2, p. 47. 57. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 1, pp. 164–65. 58. See Syed Akbar Hyder, Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 82–83. 59. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 1, p. 453. 60. See, for example, ‘Précis of Turkish Arabia Affairs. 1801–1905,’ IOR/L/PS/20/C236, BL, p. 1. 61. On which for the nineteenth century, see Meir Litvak, Shi’i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 62. See, for example, Hardinge to Grey, 23 December 1905, no. 1 in Iran Political Diaries 1881–1965, Vol. 2: 1901–1905, ed. Dr. R. M. Burrell (Cambridge: Archive Editions, 1997), pp. 491–92, in which Hardinge opines that the ‘Shiah Church…combines with Papal pretensions a total lack of the discipline of the Papal system…[the Mujtahids] are determined opponents of all progress on modern lines, and the frequent advocates of intolerance and persecution in the case of Armenians, Jews, Babis, and other dissenters from the orthodox faith, whilst many of them are personally rapacious and corrupt’. 63. Grattan Geary, Through Asiatic Turkey: Narrative of a Journey from Bombay to the Bosphorus, 2 vols. (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1878), vol. 1, p. 165. 64. Ibid, pp. 196–97. 65. H. Swainson Cowper, Through Turkish Arabia: A Journey from the Mediterranean to Bombay by the Euphrates and Tigris Valleys and the Persian Gulf (London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1894), p. 367. 66. Ibid., p. 330. 67. Geary, Through Asiatic Turkey, vol. 1, p. 169. The dilemma of destitute pilgrims left stranded at their destinations is a recurring theme in John Slight, The British Empire and the Hajj 1865–1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 68. Cowper, Through Turkish Arabia, pp. 264–65. 69. Tweedie, Turkish Arabia, p. 41. 70. Ibid., p. 42. 71. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 1, p. 502. 72. Ibid., pp. 503–4. 73. Ibid., p. 504. 74. Ibid., p. 502. 75. Edward G. Browne, A Traveller’s Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bab: Edited in the Original Persian, and Translated into English, with an Introduction and Explanatory Notes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891), p. xxi.

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76. Blunt, The Future of Islam, p. 39. 77. Justin Jones, Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 147, notes that in this period ‘Shi‘a and Sunni political identities were increasingly construed as alternative – and even adversarial – forms of political affiliation’. 78. Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley and Oxford: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 54–56. 79. Ibid., pp. 58–60. 80. Ibid., p. 60. Freitag argues that this policy ‘expressed an imperial philosophy of rule. Only in a society ordered and controlled through networks based on personal ties - exercised face-to-face by powerful patrons - could room be found for representatives of the paramount power as well’. 81. Ibid., p. 57. 82. Julia Stephens, ‘The Phantom Wahhabi: Liberalism and the Muslim Fanatic in Mid-Victorian India,’ Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 1 (January 2013): 28. 83. Cole, Roots of North Indian Sh¯ıism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 280. 84. Jones, Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India, p. 169. 85. Cole, Roots of North Indian Sh¯ıism, p. 272. 86. Ibid., p. 280. 87. See ‘Views of the Sheeah sect of Mahomedans as to the term ‘Jehad’’. Foreign/Secret (India)/4-5/1871, National Archives of India (NAI). 88. William Wilson Hunter, The Indian Musalmans (London: Tr¨ubner, 1876), pp. 118–19. 89. Ibid., p. 121. Jones, Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India, pp. 167–72 argues that ‘the alleged “authorities” responsible for this tract…were not representative of the opinion of all Indian Shia’ and that ‘there was never a single Shia response to British rule’. 90. See, for example, the Gauhar-i-Shahwar of Lucknow for June 1907, which argued that due to their religious beliefs, the Shia could not support the Congress or the Ottomans, and consequently, ‘it is only the British Government whose help and support they can look for in this world’. United Provinces Native Newspaper Reports (UPNNR). 91. Saiyid Muhammad Roza to Private Secretary to the Viceroy, no. 770, 12 June 1906. Foreign/Secret-E/May 1907/764-796, NAI. 92. Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Kaaba, 1913–14. IOR/L/PS/20/242, BL. 93. Government of Bombay to Government of India, 21 August 1914. FO 371/2143, National Archives of the United Kingdom (NA).

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94. J.A. Baines, Imperial Census of 1881: Operations and Results in the Presidency of Bombay Including Sind, Vol. 1—Text (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1882), p. 49. See also Malcolm, History of Persia, vol. 2, p. 236. 95. See, for example, Meer Hasan Ali, Observations on the Mussulmauns of India: Descriptive of Their Manners, Customs, Habits, and Religious Opinions, Made During a Twelve Years’ Residence in Their Immediate Society, 2 vols. (London: Parbury, Allen, 1832), vol. 1, p. 128 and Hamilton, The Hedaya, p. xx. 96. Ibbetson, Report on the Census of the Panjab, p. 145, para 282. 97. Ibid., p. 146, para 282. According to John Norman Hollister, The Shi’a of India (London: Luzac & Company Ltd., 1953), p. 181, ‘many Shias refused to record themselves as such’ well into the twentieth century. 98. D.C. Baillie, Census of India, Vol. XVI: The North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Allahabad: North-Western Provinces and Oudh Government Press, 1894), p. 177. 99. Freitag, Collective Action and Community, pp. 252–53. 100. ‘Memorial of the All India Shia Conference regarding the provision of a separate column for the Shias in the schedule for the census of 1911,’ no. 6070, 14 March 1910. Home/Census /72-73/Part A/April 1910, NAI. 101. Jones, Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India, p. 4. 102. See ibid., 28 and Freitag, Collective Action and Community, p. 262 who notes that such episodes were ‘quickened by reformist movements and the self-conscious efforts by each community to publicly define its boundaries’. 103. See, for example, the Amroha dispute of 1896, in which the local Shii community appealed to the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Antony MacDonnell, to reverse an earlier decision to ban utterance of the phrase in deference to Sunni sensibilities. See GAD/106C-64/1896, Uttar Pradesh State Archives (UPSA). 104. 1885 Dispute in Zaidpur, GAD Block/507/1885, UPSA. 105. Piggott Commission on Sunni-Shia Differences, United Provinces, Agra and Oudh Proceedings, 1909, IOR/P/8098, BL. For a more in depth analysis of the Commission, see Freitag, Collective Action and Community, pp. 262–71 and Jones, Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India, pp. 188–89. 106. Freitag, Collective Action and Community, pp. 270–71. 107. See ‘History of the Shia-Sunni controversy at Lucknow subsequent to the 7th January 1909’, GAD/366/1912, UPSA.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Contemporaneous Publications Ali, Meer Hasan. Observations on the Mussulmauns of India: Descriptive of Their Manners, Customs, Habits, and Religious Opinions, Made During a Twelve Years’ Residence in their Immediate Society. 2 vols. London: Parbury, Allen, 1832. Blunt, Lady Anne. A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race: A Visit to the Court of the Arab Emir, and “Our Persian Campaign”. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1881. Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen. The Future of Islam. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co, 1882. Browne, Edward Granville. A Traveller’s Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bab: Edited in the Original Persian, and Translated into English, with an Introduction and Explanatory Notes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891. ———. A Year Amongst the Persians: Impressions as to the Life, Character, & Thought of the People of Persia, Received During Twelve Months’ Residence in That Country in the Years 1887–1888. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1893. Burton, Richard F. Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage Mecca and Medina. 3 vols. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1874. Cowper, H. Swainson. Through Turkish Arabia: A Journey from the Mediterranean to Bombay by the Euphrates and Tigris Valleys and the Persian Gulf. London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1894. Crichton, Andrew. The History of Arabia, Ancient and Modern. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1834. Curzon, George. Persia and the Persian Question. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1892. Doughty, Charles M. Travels in Arabia Deserta. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921. Fraser, James B. Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1834. Geary, Grattan. Through Asiatic Turkey: Narrative of a Journey from Bombay to the Bosphorus. 2 vols. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1878. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 8 vols. London: J. F. Dove, 1821. Hunter, William Wilson. The Indian Musalmans. London: Tr¨ubner, 1876. Malcolm, Sir John. The History of Persia, from the Most Early Period to the Present Time: Containing an Account of the Religion, Government, Usages, and Character of the Inhabitants of That Kingdom. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1829.

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Muir, Sir William. The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline, and Fall. London: The Religious Tract Society, 1892. ———. The Mohammedan Controversy and Other Indian Articles. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1897. Palgrave, William Gifford. Narrative of a Year’s Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862–63). 2 vols. London: Macmillan and Co., 1865. Pelly, Sir Lewis. The Miracle Play of Hasan and Husain. 2 vols. London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1879. Sadlier, Captain G. Forster. Diary of a Journey Across Arabia from El Khatif in the Persian Gulf, to Yambo in the Red Sea, During the Year 1819. (With a Map.). V 6499, British Library. Sale, George. The Koran, Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed. London: C. Ackers, 1734. Sprenger, Aloys. The Life of Mohammad from Original Sources. Allahabad: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1851. The Hedaya, or Guide: A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws. Translated by Charles Hamilton. London: W. H. Allen & Co, 1870. Col. Tweedie, W. Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886–87. Mss Eur F112/384, British Library. Archival/Official Records Census/Gazetteer Records Aiyar, N. Subramhanya. Census of India 1901, Volume XXVI: Travancore, Part I. Trivandrum: Malabar Mail, 1903. Baillie, D.C. Census of India, Vol. XVI: The North-Western Provinces and Oudh. Allahabad: North-Western Provinces and Oudh Government Press, 1894. Baines, J.A. Imperial Census of 1881: Operations and Results in the Presidency of Bombay Including Sind, Vol. 1—Text. Bombay: Government Central Press, 1882. Ibbetson, Denzil Charles Jelf. Report on the Census of the Panjab Taken on the 17th February 1881, Volume 1: Text and Appendices C and D. Calcutta: Government Printing, 1883. Rose, H.A. The Punjab, Its Feudatories, and the North-West Frontier Province, Part I: The Report on the Census. Simla, 1902. The Imperial Gazetteer of India: The Indian Empire, Vol. 1—Descriptive. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907. Cambridge Archive Editions Iran Political Diaries 1881–1965, Vol. 2: 1901–1905. Edited by Dr. R.M. Burrell. Cambridge: Archive Editions, 1997. British Library IOR/L/PS/20/C91/2. Lorimer, J.G. Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf. Vol I. Historical, Part II. IOR/L/PS/20/C236. ‘Précis of Turkish Arabia Affairs. 1801–1905’. IOR/L/PS/20/242. Anjuman-i-Khuddam-i-Kaaba, 1913–14.

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IOR/P/8098. Piggott Commission on Sunni-Shia Differences. United Provinces Native Newspaper Reports. National Archives of United Kingdom FO 371/2143. National Archives of India Foreign/Secret (India)/4-5/1871. Views of the Sheeah sect of Mahomedans as to the term “Jehad”. Foreign/Secret-E/May 1907/764-796. Home/Census/72-73/Part A/April 1910. Memorial of the All India Shia Conference regarding the provision of a separate column for the Shias in the schedule for the census of 1911. Uttar Pradesh State Archives GAD Block/507/1885. Dispute in Zaidpur. GAD/106C-64/1896. Amroha Dispute. GAD/366/1912. History of the Shia-Sunni controversy at Lucknow subsequent to the 7th January 1909.

Secondary Sources Ahmed, Shahab. What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Aydin, Cemil. The Idea of the Muslim World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. Cohn, Bernard. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Cole, Juan. Roots of North Indian Sh¯ıism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Freitag, Sandria B. Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India. Berkeley and Oxford: University of California Press, 1989. Fuccaro, Nelida. ‘Knowledge at the Service of the British Empire: The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia.’ In Borders and the Changing Boundaries of Knowledge, edited by Inga Brandell, Marie Carlson, and Önver A. Çetrez, pp. 17–34. Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 2015. Heinlein, Frank. British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945–1963: Scrutinising the Official Mind. London: Frank Cass, 2002. Hollister, John Norman. The Shi’a of India. London: Luzac & Company Ltd., 1953.

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Hyder, Syed Akbar. Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Jones, Justin. Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Kramer, Martin. Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Litvak, Meir. Shi’i Scholars of Nineteenth-Century Iraq. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Low, Michael Christopher. ‘Empire and the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam Under British Surveillance, 1865–1908.’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 2 (2008): 269–90. Marsden, Magnus, and Benjamin D. Hopkins. Fragments of the Afghan Frontier. London: Hurst & Company, 2011. Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Metcalf, Thomas R. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Mishra, Saurabh. Pilgrimage, Politics, and Pestilence: The Haj from the Indian Subcontinent, 1860–1920. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011. Onley, James. The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Slight, John. The British Empire and the Hajj 1865–1956. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Stephens, Julia. ‘The Phantom Wahhabi: Liberalism and the Muslim Fanatic in Mid-Victorian India.’ Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 1 (January 2013): 22–52. Tidrick, Kathryn. Heart-Beguiling Araby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Introduction to Part II

The years between 1300 and 1683 were politically and militarily successful ones in the Islamic World. The Ottoman Empire in particular expanded into the Balkans, the Russian steppe, the Saharan and Syrian deserts, and to the Atlantic Ocean along the North African coast. However, despite this continual growth, it soon found itself falling behind Europe in technology. Where once Muslim states and soldiers had equal or even more advanced weaponry than its European neighbors, by the late seventeenth century it no longer held this advantage. This loss of advantage led to a series of military losses that would lead to the ejection of Ottoman power in Europe for the first time in four centuries and last until its final collapse in 1922—one of history’s major turning points. The role played by Britain in these events is varied. Formal British relations between Britain and the Ottoman Empire began at the end of the sixteenth century when Elizabeth I dispatched the merchant William Harborne to be English ambassador to Istanbul. This appointment was primarily commercial, and the relations between the two would remain so until the later seventeenth century when Britain began to pursue more imperial ambitions in the region. A series of wars between the two countries ushered in the era of Ottoman contraction. Adding to the Ottoman Empires woe’s, Russia’s long-standing desire for control of the Bosporus Straits in order to gain access to the Mediterranean trade coupled with its steady growth in the Far East put them in direct competition with Britain. Faced with increasing pressure from its European rivals, Britain

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began to see the Ottomans as a counterweight to Russian interference with British India and its commerce in the Mediterranean Sea. Allying itself with France and the Ottoman Empire against Russia during the 1853 Crimean War, Britain established itself as a protector of Ottoman sovereignty. By 1906, Britain signed numerous agreements with the Ottoman Empire intended to avoid conflict and achieve mutual goals. Many of these treaties were designed to maintain the Ottoman integrity in order to preserve peace. The size and importance of the Ottoman Empire in history made it of great concern to British leaders. Even as it began to disappear, the British were developing designs on it. Warren Dockter analyzes the influence of writer and anti-imperialist Wilfred S. Blunt on British statesmen and Winston Churchill. Jim Tallon addresses the impact of these treaties and examines how they led to the rupture of British–Ottoman relations. Though these treaties recognized legitimate Ottoman concerns, they inevitably served British interests. He goes on to analyze how Britain was able to re-establish a working relationship with Turkey in 1923. Justin Quinn Olmstead considers how the rift that developed between the two nations, due to British policy, led Germany to take advantage of the Ottoman desire for self-sufficiency. Ottoman leaders saw decisions made by British leadership to treat the Ottoman Empire as a power to be divided up as a more significant threat than Russian desires for the Bosporus Straits. Germany provided the specter of a new supporter and defender of Ottoman integrity.

Allies and Adversaries: Anglo-Ottoman Boundary Negotiation in the Middle East, 1906–1914 James Tallon

In the decade leading up to the First World War, the British and Ottoman Empires penned several agreements to settle long-standing issues and to avoid conflict. Several moments of hostility arose during this eight-year period, but there were also some successful attempts at cooperation and understanding. This period, beginning with the crisis and the subsequent agreement on the Sinai in 1906 and ending with British declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire on 5 November 1914, was a moment of great diplomatic activity between these two empires. During this time, the British and Ottoman empires frequently oscillated their positions. A complex international context partly explains this, but both empires also faced domestic political change. In this brief time, the British Empire had two governments and two monarchs; the Ottoman Empire had two governments, two monarchs, and twelve Grand Viziers. In the early part of the twentieth century, both the Ottoman and British Empires were interested in securing the frontiers of their respective empire, as were many empires of the period. Frequently, there is a historiographical emphasis on pre-war treaties and alliances as a root cause of the First World

J. Tallon (B) Lewis University, Romeoville, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_4

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War; however, the intention of these, especially in the case of the British and Ottoman Empires, was quite the opposite. Many of these agreements were signed in order to deal with old points of contention and administrative ambiguity, which created distrust between the two empires. The rupture of this uneven but working relationship finally occurred with the outbreak of the First World War. During the period in question, diplomats from London and Istanbul were keen to get agreements that would secure borders and offer official recognition of territorial control. This recognition was important for both empires involved, but it was perhaps more important to the numerous local actors that populated these frontiers and that frequently did not recognize either empire as their sovereign. Additionally, even within the Ottoman and British imperial governments in Istanbul and London, there were several factions and often numerous positions on what course of action to take. Within the British government, London and the India government, not to mention Cairo, often had differences. The Ottoman government in Istanbul frequently clashed with provincial officials in Jerusalem, Sana’a, and Baghdad. In the provinces and along the frontiers of these two empires, a process of transforming borderlands into bordered lands was underway. This process can be viewed as a part of the Ottoman Empire’s centralization and modernization program as well as the regularization of protectorates and spheres of influence on the part of the British. This work focuses on the issues of border security and agreements penned by both parties to establish a working relationship, albeit an unbalanced one. Britain grudgingly accepted Ottoman sovereignty abutting its territories. The Ottoman Empire found a way to accept British protectorates and spheres of influence. Two examples highlight the working relationship between the Ottoman and British Empires, the Sinai agreement of 1906, the process of delineating the boundary between British-occupied Egypt and the Ottoman Vilayet of Syria (Sam) ¸ and the Anglo-Ottoman Agreement of 1914, which offered a comprehensive attempt to delineate the frontier between the two empires in the Arabian Peninsula.

Prologue Throughout much of the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, Britain viewed the Ottoman Empire as a weakened empire that served as a useful buffer between its interests in the Mediterranean, the Middle

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East, and India against the rising power of the Russian Empire. This is a simplification, but Britain tended to support Ottoman territorial integrity more often than it did not. Britain did support the secession of Greece from the Ottoman Empire 1821–1832, but Britain intervened on behalf of the Ottomans’ territorial sovereignty during the Egyptian-Ottoman war of 1839–1841 and during the Crimean War 1853–1856. This military support strengthened Anglo-Ottoman ties during the liberal Tanzimat period 1839–1878. However, due to British inaction during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 this relationship fissured. After the conflict, the relationship was restored, but German influence grew because of diplomatic assistance and military support during the war. Many Ottoman officials still valued Istanbul’s relationship with Britain, but some had turned against Britain in favor of the rising power of Germany. The Tanzimat period ended during the war and was replaced by the enlightened despotic rule of Abdülhamid II 1876–1909. Abdülhamid II encouraged closer ties with Germany, but was also interested in maintaining the status quo with Britain. Abdülhamid and his government raised minimal concern over the British occupation of Cyprus in 1878 and Egypt in 1882. They also signed and grudgingly accepted the Constantinople Convention of 1881, which ceded Thessaly to Greece. Abdülhamid’s government valued a working relationship with Britain in order to maintain support against Russia and secure much-needed loans. If small territorial concessions were necessary to maintain the integrity of the empire, then Abdülhamid II and his government were willing to accept it. Although these territorial acquisitions on the part of the British were disliked by both Ottoman officials and much of the general populations, these views, to some degrees, became popularized and this fueled a new wave of anti-British sentiment and distrust. The rise of the Young Turks and the deposition of Abdülhamid II ushered in the Young Turk period. The Committee of Union and Progress often referred to as the Young Turks, brought a new dynamic to the AngloOttoman relationship. The Ottoman Empire throughout the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suffered from several serious conflicts. Istanbul had many problems with territories along the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire that had an ambiguous status. Often outside powers, such as the British, used this ambiguity to gain influence and seek advantage. Because of this reality, the Young Turks government worked toward greater regularity in administration. They also attempted to sign agreements to get formal recognition of their frontiers. In addition to the

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Anglo-Ottoman Agreement of 1914, which will be discussed later, the Young Turk government signed an agreement with France regarding its protectorate in Tunis with Convention de Tripoli of 1910 and the final implementation of the Treaty of Erzurum of 1847 with a boundary commission for the Ottoman-Qajar frontier in 1911–1914.1 All of these factors show that one of the goals of the Young Turk government was to secure the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire. This was accomplished by militarily asserting sovereignty in border regions or regularizing administrative practice in order to facilitate greater control. Alongside these practices, the Young Turk government sought international and legal recognition in the form of formal treaties and agreements. Abdülhamid II had also utilized this policy. But formally seeking to establish borders had unintended consequences. Populations leaving on or near the border, as was the case elsewhere in the world in the same period, had to deal with new regulations that they did not totally understand and did not agree to. During the early twentieth century, Britain too sought to solidify the frontiers of its empire by engaging in a process of delineation and bilateral recognition. This was motivated by several factors most importantly the rise of Germany. These agreements desired to mitigate conflict and seek mutual benefit by resolving long-standing territorial disputes. The most significant of these agreements are the Entente Cordiale of 1904 and the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907.2 As with the Ottoman Empire, most of the local populations affected by these diplomatic measures were not consulted and the acceptance and observance of the new boundaries varied widely. The Entente Cordiale settled border issues between the two empires in North and West Africa and dealt with spheres of influence in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The Entente Cordiale was further strengthened by Algeciras Conference of 1906 after increased German interest in Morocco concerned the British and the French; the agreement drew Spain more directly into the alliance and also sought to minimize German influence. The Anglo-Russian agreement outlined mutual spheres influence in Iran, Central Asia, and Tibet effectively bringing about an effective end to the ‘Great Game.’

The Sinai 1906 Britain had long had influence in Egypt. Since the Napoleonic Wars, British commercial interests provided support to the emerging gubernatorial dynasty of Mehmed Ali/Muhammad Ali and his successors. British

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capital along with French interests financed the Suez Canal dramatically changing the fortune of Egypt. However, in 1882 this relationship changed. The ‘Urabi Revolt raised concerns on the part of the British that the debts of the Khedive might be annulled if the radicals among the ‘Urabi rebels came to power. These debts were not simply owned by the British government or large firms, but were held by many average British citizens. Default on these debts could cause a catastrophe. Additionally, there was great concern over the seizure or closure of the Suez Canal. Therefore, a British invasion was launched to ‘maintain order’ and ensure access to the canal. In July of 1882, the invasion began. Despite concerted Egyptian resistance, fighting ceased in September of 1882 and Britain established a protectorate in Egypt. The Khedive remained in place as the nominal vassal of the Ottoman sultan, but in essence, a British administration managed foreign policy and military affairs. Domestic policy remained under the purview of the Khedives’ government. Thus, a ‘veiled protectorate’ arose with little legal framework or formal mechanisms for administration. Because of this, the boundary between Egypt and the rest of the Ottoman Empire remained rather vague.3 This vagueness mattered little when Egypt and its Khedive were nominally bound to the Ottoman Empire through de jure ties, but with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1867 and later with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the exact boundaries between the British-occupied Khedivate and the Ottoman Empire became a more pressing matter. The Inheritance Firman of 1841, which outlined the domains of Egypt, arose from the peace terms of the Ottoman-Egyptian War of 1839–1841.4 Along with the Convention of London signed 15 July 1840, this firman (Hatt-ı S¸ erif ) issued 13 February 1841 and reaffirmed 1 June 1841 gave a hereditary governorship to Mehmed Ali/Muhammad Ali and his decedents. The attendant map of this firman delineated the eastern border running from Rafah in modern Gaza and continuing along an angular straight line to Suez in modern Egypt.5 Thus, this delineation awarded most of the Sinai Peninsula to the Ottoman Empire. Not long after the agreement was reached, this map was ‘lost.’ This frontier remained ambiguous until the opening of the Suez Canal and the Ottoman development of the southern portion of the Syria Vilayet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The foundation of the town of Bersheba/Birüsseb’ 1899–1900 and the construction of a station on the Hijaz Railway at Ma’an near Aqaba raised British concerns.6

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The immediate cause compromise of 1906 was the desire to clarify the boundary between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. In January 1906, Wilfred Jennings-Bramly, a British officer in the Egyptian Camel Corps, accompanied by four Egyptian policemen and directed by Captain R. Owen to head Aqaba and build a guard post for the Egyptian police, to assist in ongoing operations against Bedouin raiders. On 5 January 1906, this party reached the outskirts of Aqaba and established a post. Ottoman authorities were made aware of this and began constructing two guard posts near Bramly’s position. On 9 January 1906, Bramly and his party were ordered by Rü¸stü Pasha, the Ottoman commander of Aqaba to evacuate, which he did.7 Before Bramly returned, around 13 January 1906, the Ottoman government acted on two fronts. First, the Ottoman ambassador to London, Musurus Pasha, addressed his concerns to the Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, and Second, Ottoman troops were dispatched from Aqaba and occupied Taba eight miles southwest of the city. These events set up the ‘incident’ that was to unfold.8 As more forceful measures were taken, the Ottoman government also sent conciliatory messages to the British.9 Ottoman officials wanted BritishEgyptian forces to withdraw, but were not interested in a formal delineation. The ambiguity of the frontier between the Ottoman domains in Syria and British-Occupied Egypt became untenable. The British sent the HMS Diana to the Gulf of Aqaba to see what reactions the Ottomans would have. Not surprisingly, they viewed it as an escalation and it added to the mistrust on the part of the Ottoman Empire. By February 1906, both sides were deadlocked. The Ottoman government sent several officials to Cairo to seek a resolution; however rather than engage in direct negotiation, they issued a statement, which confirmed that the Sinai was definitively in Ottoman territory. This move only exacerbated the situation. Britain became increasingly desperate and even considered an attack on the Dardanelles to force Ottoman acceptance of an agreement. As negotiations stalled, Abdülhamid II considered putting the issue forward for international arbitration. This move has been argued to have been an Ottoman strategy throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.10 Britain responded forcefully to this suggestion, knowing that success was unlikely without any documentation to prove Egypt’s claim, by threatening Aqaba itself with seizure. On 3 May 1906, Britain issued an ultimatum. Evacuate Taba in ten days and sign on to an agreement to a

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mixed delegation to delineate the border. Germany pressured Abdülhamid II and Yıldız to accept these demands. Finally, out of options the Ottomans accepted all British demands and evacuated Taba on 19 May 1906. In September, Ottoman and British officials delineated the boundary in the Sinai and the new frontier was confirmed officially on 6 October 1906. Eventually, a British-Ottoman commission went to the Sinai in the summer of 1906 and demarcated the line along the new boundary.11 Despite the compromise, the Ottomans were forced to accept a boundary line, which had no historical precedent.12 Multiple personalities, misunderstanding, and ambiguity all played a role in precipitating this crisis. Nicolas O’Connor, the British ambassador, sought to bring a quick amicable solution to the issue, and he had many contacts in Istanbul and understood the Ottoman position on the Sinai.13 Lord Cromer, consul-general in Egypt, sought a maximalist solution to the Sinai and took a hard line against the Ottomans, and he firmly believed that most of Istanbul’s actions came at the instigation of Germany.14 Abdülhamid II had historically been accepting of ‘temporary’ occupations on the fringes of the Ottoman Empire, but the recent British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and the brazen seizure of the Sinai rubbed the Sultan and his Yıldız Palace confidants the wrong way. He became less compromising as the crisis progressed. In many ways, Abdülhamid II’s intransigence caught British authorities off guard. There may have been a bit of urgency on the part of the British due to the recent issue over Thasos. Thasos was one of the few examples of where the Ottoman government forestalled a would-be takeover of a territory that had an ambiguous relationship with Istanbul. Thasos was given to Muhammad ‘Ali in 1813 as part of his reward for his service in Greece. It remained in administrative limbo throughout the rest of the century. The island had several vakıfs administered by Muhammad ‘Ali’s family and significant timber resources that were utilized by Cairo, but aside from this there was little direct influence from Egypt and the Khedives.15 The island became an important issue after the British occupation of Egypt in 1882.16 The Ottoman government became concerned about a ‘temporary occupation’ by the British navy. The island sat in a strategic position near the Dardanelles and in close proximity to Salonika as well. There were concerns over British and Greek interests in the island. A rebellion against Egyptian rule in 1902 gave the Ottoman government an opportunity. The Vali of Salonika, Emin Pasha, along with around 200 Ottoman soldiers and gendarmes landed on the island, restored order, and placed it under

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the authority of the Salonika vilayet.17 Later measures were put in place to fully incorporate the island into the Ottoman system in 1902–1903, where it remained until Greek occupation in 1912. This incident showed that uncertain administrative boundaries could have consequences, a lesson that both sides were cognizant of.

Aden, Yemen, and Arabia Britain’s acquisition of the Aden Protectorate came about amid the chaos of the Egyptian-Ottoman war of 1839–1841. As Egyptian forces moved against numerous local powers in Arabia and eventually the Ottoman army, Britain chose its moment to gain access to a port in South Arabia in order to secure supply lines to India.18 From the port city of Aden through conflict and compromise, the Anglo-Indian army created a structure that eventually drew nine local families and gave them recognition as well as monetary and military support in return for British control of Aden. Eventually, between the 1880s and 1890s treaties were signed with local rulers and the protectorate became more formalized. However, there always remained ambiguity over the frontier between the protectorate and the Ottoman domains in Yemen. The Zaydi Imam of Yemen rarely recognized either the Ottomans or the British as rightful ruler further complicating this situation; instead, he claimed all of South Arabia for himself. After the establishment of the Aden Protectorate, Ottoman forces slowly reasserted control over much of Yemen. Reassertion began in 1849, and by the 1870s, much of Ottoman control in South Arabia and Yemen were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in part to minimize British influence in the region.19 The reassertion of Ottoman control in Yemen was difficult.20 Rebellion broke out in 1872, 1891, and serious rebellion in 1905–1911.21 This rebellion finally resulted in the Da’an Accord in 1911.22 This accord settled the tumultuous relationship between the Ottoman government and the Imam. Ottoman rule in Yemen also struggled due to the British protectorate in the port of Aden. The protectorate offered an alternative to the Ottomans in South Arabia, and the boundary between Aden and Ottoman Yemen was ill-defined and local potentates negotiated with both sides for the most favorable deal.23 An excellent example of this was the activities of Muhammad Nasir Muqbil of Humar.24 Muqbil as an Ottoman surrogate gained a great deal of local power by playing the two sides off against one another, recruiting local allies from both sides of the border, and manipulating trade

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to benefit himself and his allies. The British responded by empowering one of their allies Muhsin ibn ‘Ali ibn Mani, who countered Muqbil’s claims. This brought them into conflict when Muqbil occupied territory on the ‘British’ side of the border. As with Sinai, territorial ambiguity became difficult to stomach for the imperial governments in London and Istanbul. Both sides agreed to a new border delineation. This process began on 2 February 1902.25 The process was drawn out by negotiation and other issues distracting both participants, and finally, the border commission ended its work in April of 1905; however, it was not until August of 1906 that Istanbul accepted the agreement.26 On the British side, Robert A. Wahab sought to maximize British claims, but was thwarted by disinterested or pragmatic British officials as well as local Ottoman allies who sought to undermine British influence.27 Even though Ottoman officials had some success in diplomatically defending its frontier with the Aden Protectorate, the growing rebellion by the Zaydi Imam pushed the Ottoman side to compromise.28 Along with Wahab, several factions in the India government wished to extend British influence into South Arabia and to project strength in order to maintain an advantageous position among its allies in the region even if this provoked conflict with the Ottomans.29 Here, as with the Sinai negotiations, opinions varied officials in London were inclined toward compromise whereas the Indian government took a much harder line. As can be seen above, local actors played a profound role in shaping events. Aside from Muqbil, Yahya Muhammad Hamid al-Din, the Zaydi Imam of Yemen, influenced the tribes within the Aden Protectorate. This reality caused some concern on the part of British officials in the protectorate, in particular during the First World War when Ottoman forces occupied portions of the Aden Protectorate. However, as seen above also put quite a bit of strain on Ottoman efforts as well. Locals contested and adjusted the boundaries laid down by imperial powers. The delineation of the frontier between the Yemen Vilayet and the Aden Protectorate, like the Sinai issue, was also a part of a larger move on the part of the British and Ottoman to formally lay out the territories they controlled and their zones of influence within the Arabian Peninsula. This in some ways mirrored previous British moves with France and Russia. The final delineation between British and Ottoman domains came about in part to the response of the aforementioned issues in Aden and Yemen, but also growing concerns from both parties over the fluidity of administrative boundaries in eastern Arabia and, as with the other cases, the activities

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of local powers. To define once and for all the domains in Arabia, the boundary of the Aden Protectorate and the Vilayet of Yemen would be linked to the frontier between the British protectorates in Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Trucial States and Ottoman territory in Qatar and eastern Arabia. One grand diplomatic bargain would settle all previous grievances. This move, like the others, came after decades of uncertainty between the two powers. In the 1870s, a similar issue to the one in Yemen arose as the Ottomans launched an expedition to retake territory lost over previous centuries in eastern Arabia. This brought the Ottomans into the Persian Gulf and to the edge of the protectorates of the British. Another perennial issue for Ottoman rule in eastern Arabia was Saudi resistance to Ottoman control over the region.30 This contest, a ‘Scramble for Arabia,’ developed throughout the early twentieth century as the Ottoman and British Empires asserted greater control on the peninsula and local actors used the imperial rivalry to improve their respective positions. The First World War ruptured this rivalry, with the departure of the Ottomans from the contest; however, the power vacuum created resulted in a new struggle between Arab contenders themselves as well as with the British Empire began. However, before this occurred a working agreement was established. The two sticking points for the agreement were Ottoman acceptance of British influence in Kuwait and British acceptance of Ottoman influence in Qatar. As with the previous agreements international events and moves on the part of local actors profoundly affected the situation. The Anglo-Ottoman agreement of 1913 was another example of the type of negotiated settlement that was ongoing during the early twentieth century. Hakki Pasha, the former Grand Vizier, traveled to London in May of 1913. As the negotiations for the Anglo-Ottoman agreement of 1913 were ongoing, other international factors were at play. The construction of the Berlin to Baghdad Railway was a reoccurring concern for British authorities. Additionally, negotiations were underway to permanently delineate the Ottoman-Iranian Frontier, with the implementation of the treaty of Erzurum of 1847, which would become connected to the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913. Britain was somewhat distracted by affairs in Morocco, and the Ottoman Empire having just finished the Turko-Italian War of 1911–1912 and still fighting a war with Balkan Alliance 1912–1913 was haggard. This motivated both sides to seek compromise. Negotiations proceeded throughout the summer of 1913. There were two principal sticking points in these negotiations. The issue of Kuwait was one; however, during negotiations,

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this was papered over by a vague promise of autonomy for the Emir of Kuwait as well as Ottoman and British spheres of influence.31 As for Qatar events helped to settle the issue. Right before the commencement of negotiations, the Saudis struck eastern Arabia, occupying most of it, and putting Ottoman claims in disarray. The Saudis chose to take advantage, in part, because they were also indirectly encouraged by the British to move against eastern Arabia. This put pressure on the Ottoman government, which was already engaged elsewhere, and it made them more amenable to negotiations, which eventually led to the negotiations for the Anglo-Ottoman Agreement of 1913. Ibn Saud’s move into eastern Arabia assisted in making Ottoman officials more amenable to renouncing rights in Kuwait and Qatar.32 The Ottomans did formally renounce claims to Qatar during the negotiation. This occupation eventually brought about an agreement between the Ottomans and the Saudis, which was also encouraged by the British.33 The Ottoman side was war-weary from conflicts in the Balkans, Libya, and Arabia and was glad to sign the Anglo-Ottoman agreement in July of 1913 and agree to further demands of an edited agreement in December of 1913.34 There was some regret on the Ottoman side about renouncing territorial claims in eastern Arabia, but events on the ground necessitated the move.35 However, negotiations dragged on over several small points remained.36 A more complete agreement was signed by both parties in December of 1913, but it remained stagnant and was not ratified by either side. Issues over petroleum rights, the annulment of capitulations in the Ottoman Empire, and the terminus of the Berlin–Baghdad Railway bedeviled final ratification. Britain did seek agreements with Germany relating to construction projects and concessions within the Ottoman. It was hoped that this would propel the agreement for final ratification. It did not. Global events and lingering doubts on the part of both British and Ottomans meant that the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913 agreement was moribund. However, in a peculiar turn of events, another Anglo-Ottoman Convention, which was an auxiliary agreement that grew out of the negotiations from the 1913 Convention and linked this potential agreement with the previously signed agreement regarding the Yemen/Aden frontier of 1902–1905, was signed by both parties.37 This Anglo-Ottoman Convention was signed on 9 March 1914, confirming the previous negations of 1902–1905 and linking them to the still-unratified 1913 Convention.38 In this way, a comprehensive Anglo-Ottoman agreement was put in place, partially agreed to, but remained unratified.

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Conclusion The relationship of the Ottoman and British Empires at the beginning of the twentieth century offers an intriguing example of the British Empire compromising with a state that it did not regard as a ‘Great Power.’ The Ottoman Empire for its part was able to negotiate with a state that it increasingly viewed with suspicion and was able to maintain a relationship with Germany, one of Britain’s chief rivals. Both of these empires were trying to deal with very different issues and navigate a difficult situation. Britain strove to maintain its maritime empire and get official acceptance by locals and neighboring powers of its patchwork of agreements and spheres of influence that had been acquired throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Ottoman Empire for its part equally wanted recognition of its sovereignty in many areas where there was ambiguity. This was especially true in Arabia, where Ottoman officials sought greater control to offset territorial loses in the Balkans. The British Empire clearly had a significant advantage over the Ottoman Empire in fiscal and military terms, but these advantages were balanced out it some ways by the Ottoman relationship with Germany and the potential of its assistance in a conflict. Additionally, the Ottoman Empire often exerted a great deal of ‘soft power’ of over global Muslim populations, principally drawing on the sultan’s position as caliph. This was occasionally exaggerated by the British, and the fear of a massive global jihad unleashed by the Ottoman sultan seemed unfounded. However, at a local level many Muslims preferred the rule of the Ottoman Sultan to the British King. That being said, preference and pragmatic reasoning are two different things. Many Muslims put preference aside and chose material advantage over coreligional affinity. Furthermore, Britain’s main lever of military power, its navy was effective in enforcing demands in the Arabian littoral, but was little use in the Najd or the highlands of Yemen. Understanding these realities, the two empires chose to compromise and mutual advantage over sustained conflict. Clearly, Britain received a better bargain, but the Ottomans were allotted their share, and more importantly, the Ottoman Empire’s frontiers were formally recognized by the British Empire, which carried weight on a global scale. The fact that all of these agreements were undone with the outbreak of the First World War does not negate their importance. Indeed, the Suez Agreement of 1906 remains the treaty, which has delineated the Egypt and Israel/Palestine border ever since.

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Notes 1. Sabri Ate¸s, The Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 229–83 and Sinan Kuneralp, ‘The Ottoman Drang Nach Osten: The Turco-Persian Border Problem in Azerbaican, 1905–1912,’ in Studies on Ottoman Diplomatic History IV (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1990), pp. 71–76. 2. For an English version of the Anglo-French agreement, see Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, vol. CIII, Cmd. 5969 (London, 1911), and for an English version of the Anglo-Russian agreement, see Foreign Office, Great Britain, British and Foreign State Papers (London, 1911), pp. 555–60. 3. This was the case with Ottoman Syria, but also with Ottoman Libya, see Matthew H. Ellis, Desert Borderland the Making of Modern Egypt and Libya (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018). 4. Letitia W. Ufford, The Pasha: How Mehemet Ali Defied the West, 1839–1841 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007) and P.E. Caquet, Orient, the Liberal Movement, and the Eastern Crisis of 1839–41 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 5. Yuval Ben-Bassat and Y. Ben-Artzi, ‘The Collision of Empires as Seen from Istanbul: The Border of British-Controlled Egypt and Ottoman Palestine as Reflected in Ottoman Maps,’ Journal of Historical Geography 50 (2015): 27 and 31–34 provides a maps that outline the 1841 and other versions of the frontier and Rashid Khalidi, British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906–1914: A Study of the Antecedents of the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration (London: Ithaca Press, 1980), p. 17. 6. Yasemin Avcı, ‘The Application of Tanzimat in the Desert: The Bedouins and the Creation of a New Town in Southern Palestine (1860–1914),’ Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 6. (2009): 969–83. 7. For more detailed accounts of this incident, see consult John Burman, ‘British Strategic Interests Versus Ottoman Sovereign Rights: New Perspectives on the Aqaba Crisis, 1906,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 37, no. 2 (2009): 275–92 and Khalidi, pp. 1–48. 8. Burman, pp. 278–79 and Khalidi, pp. 22–23. 9. For examples, see TNA FO 371/60/1880/2062 and TNA FO 371/60/1880/2761. 10. Deringil argues that Ottoman authorities would assert a legalistic foreign policy, particularly arbitration, in the absence of military power, see Selim Deringil, ‘Some Comments on the Concept of Legitimacy in the Foreign Policy of Abdülhamid II,’ in Studies in Ottoman Diplomatic History, vol. I, ed. Sinan Kuneralp (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1987), pp. 97–102. ˙ 11. R¨us¸ d¨u, Akabe meselesi (Istanbul: Matbaa-ı Osmaniye, 1910 [1326]). 12. Ben-Bassat and Ben-Artzi, p. 30.

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13. Khalidi, pp. 45–47. 14. Burman, p. 282. 15. Süleyman Kızıltoprak, II. Abdülhamid Han’ın Dı¸s Politikası ve Ta¸söz Opersasyonu (Istanbul: Titik Hazine Yayınları, 2011), pp. 211–261 and Süleyman Kızıltoprak, ‘The Administration of Tashoz Island Assigned to Mehmet Ali Pasha’s Waqf in Kavala and Related Issues,’ Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Islamic Civilisation in the Balkans (Tirana, December, 2003), pp. 185–91. 16. TNA PRO-FO 195/2459, Ali Arslan, Balkanların Anahtarı Önemi Bilinmeyen Ada Ta¸söz (Istanbul: Emre Yayyınları, 2005) and Konstantinos A. Vakalopoulos, Thasos, son histoire, son administration de 1453 à 1912 (Paris: E.d. Boucard, 1954). 17. Kızıltoprak, ‘The Administration,’ p. 191. 18. C.E. Farah, The Sultan’s Yemen: Nineteenth-Century Challenges to Ottoman Rule (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), pp. 14–29 and R.J. Gavin, Aden Under British Rule, 1839–1967 (London: C. Hurst, 1975), pp. 1–38. 19. Thomas Kuehn, Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference: Ottoman Rule in Yemen, 1849–1919 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 31–52. 20. Farah, The Sultan’s Yemen, pp. 1–13 and 58–81. 21. Vincent Wilhite, ‘Guerrilla War, Counterinsurgency, and State Formation in Ottoman Yemen,’ PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004. Wilhite provides significant details on early rebellions to Ottoman rule in Yemen 197–236, the 1891 rebellion 237–302, and the 1904–1905 rebellion of 372–410. 22. The Sultan’s Yemen: 19th Century Challenges to Ottoman Rule, pp. 297–299 and TNA FO 195/2376. 23. Spencer Mawby, ‘A Crisis of Empire: The Anglo-Ottoman Dispute over the Aden Frontier, 1901–1905,’ Diplomacy and Statecraft 18 (2007): 27–52 and Ceasar Farah, ‘The British Challenge to Ottoman Authority in Yemen,’ The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 22, no. 1 (1998): 36–57, for an example of the local context, see George Wyman Bury, The Land of Uz (London: Macmillan and Co., 1911), pp. 17–27. 24. Blumi, ‘The Frontier as a Measure of Power,’ pp. 299–301. 25. IOR L/P&S/10/63 and IOR L/P&S/18/B137f, or a detailed account from the British perspective, see G.R. Berridge, Gerald Fitzmaurice (1865–1939), Chief Dragoman of the British Embassy in Turkey (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007), pp. 41–72. 26. TNA FO 881/9050. 27. IOR R/20/E/234. 28. Farah, The Sultan’s Yemen, pp. 212–33. 29. TNA FO 7878/5243 and IOR L/R/20/A1197. 30. J.A. Saldana, Précis of Turkish Expansion on the Arab Littoral of the Persian Gulf and Hasa and Qatif Affairs (Calcutta, India: Government of India,

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33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

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1906) provides a great deal on the return of the Ottomans to eastern Arabia, see also Frederick Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar 1870–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 16–53. Jacob Goldberg, ‘The 1913 Saudi Occupation of Hasa Reconsidered,’ Middle Eastern Studies 18, no. 1 (1982): 21–29. Askar Al-Enazy, The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914–1927 (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 38–39. They were encouraged by the British to launch their attack on eastern Arabia, IOR/R/15/5/27. IOR/L/P&S/10/385. IOR/R/15/2/30. Mahmud Sevket ¸ Pa¸sa, Sadrazam ve harbiye nazırı Mahmut S¸ evket Pa¸sa’nın ˙ g¨unl¨ug˘ u¨ . Sirkeci (Istanbul: ARBA, 1988), p. 45. Wilkinson, pp. 97–109. Wilkinson, pp. 100–108. IOR/L/P&S/10/407, for maps showing the connection between the two agreements, see FO 881/10517 and Wilkinson, p. 366.

Bibliography Al-Enazy, Askar. The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914–1927. London: Routledge, 2014. Anscombe, Frederick F. The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar 1870–1914. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Arslan, Ali. Balkanların Anahtarı Önemi Bilinmeyen Ada Ta¸söz. Istanbul: Emre Yayyınları, 2005. Ate¸s, Sabri. The Ottoman-Iranian Borderlands: Making a Boundary, 1843–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Avci, Y. ‘The Application of Tanzimat in the Desert: The Bedouins and the Creation of a New Town in Southern Palestine (1860–1914).’ Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 6 (2009): 969–83. Ben-Bassat, Yuval, and Y. Ben-Artzi. ‘The Collision of Empires as Seen from Istanbul: The Border of British-Controlled Egypt and Ottoman Palestine as Reflected in Ottoman Maps.’ Journal of Historical Geography 50 (2015): 25–36. Berridge, G.R. Gerald Fitzmaurice (1865–1939), Chief Dragoman of the British Embassy in Turkey. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007. Biger, Gideon. ‘The First Map of Modern Egypt Mohammed Ali’s Firman and the Map of 1841.’ Middle Eastern Studies 14, no. 3 (1978): 323–25. Blumi, Isa. ‘The Frontier as a Measure of Modern Power: Local Limits to Empire in Yemen, 1872–1914.’ In The Frontiers of the Ottoman World, edited by A.C.S. Peacock. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2009.

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˙ Burak, Durdu Mehmet. Birinci D¨unya Sava¸sı’nda T¨urk-Ingiliz ili¸skileri 1914–1918. Ankara: Babil Yayıncılık, 2004. Burman, John. ‘British Strategic Interests Versus Ottoman Sovereign Rights: New Perspectives on the Aqaba Crisis, 1906.’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 37, no. 2 (2009): 275–92. ———. Britain’s Relations with the Ottoman Empire During the Embassy of Sir Nicholas O’Connor to the Porte, 1898–1908. Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2010. Bury, George Wyman. The Land of Uz. London: Macmillan and Co., 1911. Canton, James. ‘Imperial Eyes: Imperial Spies. British Travel and Espionage in Southern Arabia, 1891–1946.’ The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 37, no. 4 (2009): 537–54. Caquet, P.E. Orient, the Liberal Movement, and the Eastern Crisis of 1839–41. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Churchill, Rogers Platt. The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1972. Deringil, Selim. ‘Some Comments on the Concept of Legitimacy in the Foreign Policy of Abdülhamid II.’ In Studies in Ottoman Diplomatic History, Vol. I, edited by Sinan Kuneralp. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1987. Ellis, Matthew H. Desert Borderland the Making of Modern Egypt and Libya. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018. Farah, C.E. ‘The British Challenge to Ottoman Authority in Yemen.’ The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 22, no. 1 (1998): 36–57. ———. The Sultan’s Yemen: Nineteenth-Century Challenges to Ottoman Rule. London: I.B. Tauris, 2002. Foreign Office, Great Britain. British and Foreign State Papers. London, 1911. Gavin, R.J. Aden Under British Rule, 1839–1967. London: C. Hurst, 1975. Gil-Har, Yitzhak. ‘Egypt’s North-Eastern Boundary in Sinai.’ Middle Eastern Studies 29, no. 1 (1993): 135–48. Goldberg, Jacob. ‘The 1913 Saudi Occupation of Hasa Reconsidered.’ Middle Eastern Studies 18, no. 1 (1982): 21–29. Heller, Joseph. British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914. London: Routledge, 2014. Jacob, Harold F. Kings of Arabia: The Rise and Set of the Turkish Sovranty in the Arabian Peninsula. Reading: Garnet, 2007. Kedourie, Elie, and G.R. Elton. England and the Middle East: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1921. London: Mansell, 1987. Khalidi, Rashid. British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906–1914: A Study of the Antecedents of the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration. London: Ithaca Press, 1980. ¨ Kocat¨urk, Onder. Balkanlar’dan ortado˘gu’ya: Osmanlı-Ingiliz ili¸skileri (1908–1910). Istanbul: IQ K¨ult¨ur Sanat Yayıncılık, 2009.

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———. Osmanlı-ingiliz ili¸skilerinin d¨on¨um noktası, 1911–1914: ili¸skilerin bozul˙ ması ve ilk krizler. (2. cilt) 1911–1914. Istanbul: Bo˘gazi¸ci Yayınları, 2011. Kuehn, Thomas. Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference: Ottoman Rule in Yemen, 1849–1919. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Kuneralp, Sinan. ‘The Ottoman Drang Nach Osten: The Turco-Persian Border Problem in Azerbaican, 1905–1912.’ In Studies on Ottoman Diplomatic History IV, edited by Sinan Kuneralp. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1990. Mawby, Spencer. ‘A Crisis of Empire: The Anglo–Ottoman Dispute over the Aden Frontier, 1901–1905.’ Diplomacy & Statecraft 18, no. 1 (2007): 27–52. Pa¸sa, Mahmud Sevket. ¸ Sadrazam ve harbiye nazırı Mahmut S¸ evket Pa¸sa’nın ˙ g¨unl¨ug˘ u¨ . Istanbul: ARBA, 1988. Rolo, Paul Jacques Victor. Entente Cordiale: The Origins and Negotiation of the Anglo-French Agreements of 8 April 1904. London: Macmillan, 1969. Rose, Andreas, and Rona Johnston. Between Empire and Continent: British Foreign Policy Before the First World War. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017. ¨ urk. Akabe meselesi: Piyade Mirlivaˆ sı R¨us¸t¨u. Elazı˘g: R¨us¸ t¨u, Mirliva, and Mustafa Ozt¨ ¨ Fırat Universitesi, 1998. Saldana, J.A. Précis of Turkish Expansion on the Arab Littoral of the Persian Gulf and Hasa and Qatif Affairs. Calcutta, India: Government of India, 1906. Stuhlmann, Franz. Der Kampf um Arabien zwischen der T¨urkei und England. Hamburg: Westermann, 1916. The India Office Records (IOR) the British Library, London. The National Archive of the UK (TNA) Foreign Office (FO) Kew Gardens, London. Ufford, Letitia W. The Pasha: How Mehemet Ali Defied the West, 1839–1841. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. Vakalopoulos, Konstantinos A. Thasos, son histoire, son administration de 1453 à 1912. Paris: E.d. Boucard, 1954. Warburg, Gabriel R. ‘The Sinai Peninsula Borders, 1906–47.’ Journal of Contemporary History 14, no. 4 (1979): 677–92. Wilhite, Vincent. ‘Guerrilla War, Counterinsurgency, and State Formation in Ottoman Yemen.’ PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, 2004.

‘A Test of Support’: British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire, 1913–1914 Justin Quinn Olmstead

When considering British foreign policy at the beginning of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire is not the first country to come to mind. Even more uncommon is the idea that the events that led to the Ottoman’s joining the Central Powers resulted from policies developed under British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey’s policy towards Russia (began in 1905) and the strategy of First Sea Lord Winston Churchill. Grey’s belief that the Anglo-Russian Entente served as the cornerstone of his foreign relations pushed him to place peace with Russia above allegiances to Ottoman integrity, changing the decade’s old position of maintaining the Ottoman Empire as ‘an independent and vigorous’ power.1 Significantly, Churchill’s seemingly unrelated decision to withhold delivery of the dreadnoughts Reshadieh and Sultan Osman I in the early days of the First World War must be included among the insults that drove the Ottomans to join the Triple Alliance. Internal issues such as the financial concerns, or capitulations, certainly played a role in stirring the masses towards anti-British, French and Russian feelings. It is also certain that the age-old rivalry between Russia and the

J. Q. Olmstead (B) Department of History and Geography, College of Liberal Arts, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 107 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_5

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Ottomans for control of the Bosporus Straits was an important factor in Ottoman decision-making. The outcome of these actions is not in question here. What this chapter argues is that the final decision to join the Central Powers resulted from the British Foreign Office’s Russia policy and the neglect that came from it. It will also argue that Churchill’s decision to withhold the dreadnoughts sufficiently outraged Turkish leaders to leave neutrality behind.

Building Tensions When the group known as the Young Turks fomented a revolution and took power from the Sultan in 1908, the Ottoman Empire already had an increased feeling of hostility towards Britain, as well as France and Russia. Long gone were the cordial desires of British policy makers such as Lord Palmerston and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who saw the Ottoman Empire as a vital bulwark against Russia and sought to ensure its continued existence.2 Indeed, from the late eighteenth century an essential part of British policy was the maintenance of Ottoman integrity and the prevention of Russia seizing Constantinople.3 These ‘diplomatic’ ideals were replaced by a policy supporting new Balkan states and possible British acquisition of Ottoman lands. While not a stated goal of Britain’s Foreign Office, the colonization of Ottoman territory had become the de facto British policy for the region.4 At least this was the perception the Young Turks had as Britain acquired Egypt in 1881, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 and Italy captured Libya and the Dodecanese Islands in 1912. The final blow that clearly indicated the demise of the Ottoman Empire was marked by the aggressive cleaving of more land from the empire’s European holdings by the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. To the Young Turks and their political organization, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), British policy towards the Ottoman Empire had become one of complete hostility. Where once Britain had fought to maintain Ottoman integrity (the Crimean War of 1853–1856 and the Eastern Crisis of 1877–1878), it now seemed that they were bent on carving up the Turkish territories and creating more British colonies. Viewed through the eyes of the CUP, this British ambition manifested itself in the lack of support for the Ottoman cause during the Tripoli war against Italy, the Balkan Wars and Britain’s insistence that the Porte (the term used to reference the Ottoman Government) renounces its sovereignty in the territories of the Arabian littoral south of Ojeir, Muscat and Oman.5

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By the end of 1913, the Ottoman Empire was dealing with the hardships caused by the expenses caused by the wars with Italy and the Balkan states— a cost that was more than just financial. When the last of the Balkan Wars ended in July 1913, the Ottoman’s had lost approximately 159,791 square kilometres of its European lands and more than 4.6 million people to the countries of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia.6 Despite this immense forfeiture of land and population, the Porte continued to fear that Greece was still intent on adding to its territory at Ottoman expense.7 Ottoman leadership found itself stuck in a precarious position. On the one hand, the CUP believed that Europe’s great powers were determined to let the empire break apart. On the other hand, they felt that the only way to preserve the empire was to entice one of these very same powers to become its protector.8 Complicating matters more was the divided leadership: Djemal Pasha, Minister of Marine, was pro-French; Djavid Bey, the Minister of Finance, was pro-British; and Pasha Enver, Minister of War, was pro-German. Ottoman leaders in Constantinople had not forgotten that when Italy had attacked Turkey in 1911, appeals to Britain for support received next to no response whatsoever. Within the Asquith government, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had argued that the war provided Britain with an opportunity to keep the growing German influence in check.9 Yet the response Grey sent to Constantinople was ‘that the time was not opportune’.10 Churchill’s position was on sound footing. Germany, in contrast to Britain, had been courting the Porte for a number of years. The Germans were heavily involved with the building of the Bagdad Railway, selling arms and warships to the Ottomans and providing loans without attempting to interfere with Turkish internal affairs. At the International Finance Commission in Paris after the Balkan Wars, German diplomats opposed any claims made by the Balkan states for financial compensation from Turkey.11 These attempts at building a positive relationship with the Ottomans even went so far as banning unfavourable comments about Turkey or Turkish troops in German newspapers.12 German attention was successful enough that the CUP thought that Germany had no imperialist ambitions towards the empire.13 This shift in what was a long-standing Ottoman policy resulted from Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey’s decision to come to an understanding with Russia. Upon being appointed Foreign Secretary in 1905, Grey left the policies of Palmerston and Disraeli behind and developed a strategy of his own that revolved around creating an entente with Russia.14 Grey’s

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belief that peace with Russia was desirable came from his time as UnderSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the early 1890s when Britain was at constant unease due to the possibility of war with France one moment and Russia the next.15 In 1907, Grey’s work came to fruition with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention. As with the Anglo-French entente of 1904, which Grey inherited, the Anglo-Russian Convention was designed with two points in mind: first to create a balance of power in Europe and, second, to ease the strain of defending the empire, and in particular, India. During the negotiations, Grey enticed Russia into signing the Convention by suggesting continued talks about the control of the Bosporus Straits, a long-time strategic objective of Russia.16 Grey went so far as to tell Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Izvolsky that he had felt that ‘good relations with Russia meant that our old policy of closing the Straits against her, and throwing our weight against her at any conference of powers must be abandoned’.17 Having completed this entente by sacrificing the not quite dead Ottoman Empire, Grey was now committed to maintaining friendly relations with Russia at almost any cost.18

Supporting Russia’s Interests Similar to many of the issues confronting Turkey, it was the poor showing of Ottoman military forces that influenced many decisions between 1908 and 1914. A particular grievance occurred during the First Balkan War when the Greek cruiser Averoff outclassed every ship in the Ottoman navy, giving control of the Aegean Sea to Greece and its Balkan allies. Holding out hope that they would eventually reclaim the European portion of the Empire, Turkish leaders saw the modernization of their military, beginning with its navy, as a necessary step to limit the vulnerability of the empire to further attacks. The decision to rebuild the Ottoman navy would put Grey’s Russia policy to the test. They turned to Britain to overhaul their maritime fleet and then followed suit by asking Germany to do the same with its land forces. For both countries, this meant a simple modification to their plans as both had been training Ottoman forces since before the Balkan Wars. In the case of the Ottoman navy, British Admiral Sir Arthur Limpus was given command of the entire Turkish fleet in order to enforce its restructuring. The Ottoman Army would have German General Otto Liman von Sanders in command of Army Corps I in Constantinople. Liman von Sanders takes this one Corps and creates a model regiment that would in turn train the officer corps for the entire Ottoman army. A key factor to von Sanders’

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position was that he would have ‘no authority over the Straits of Bosporus nor Dardanelles’.19 Nevertheless, Grey believed that von Sanders’ appointment would strengthen the Ottomans at the expense of Russia. A German General commanding a military unit in Constantinople was an issue because, as British Charge affairs at St. Petersburg Hugh O’Beirne noted in a letter to Grey, the ‘cardinal principle for Russia [was] that Constantinople…continue to be Turkish or must become Russian…’.20 Accordingly, Britain joined with Russia in pressuring the Porte to ‘stop the appointment of General von Sanders’.21 The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Sazonov stated that it was impossible for the Triple Entente to allow the German General to take his post and proposed they use ‘all means of pressure on Turkey’ to ensure they were not ‘defeated in this question [including going so far as being] prepared to take active steps such as the occupation of Turkish ports’.22 Sazonov’s highly emotional statements about Constantinople’s importance to Russia caused O’Beirne to warn Grey ‘it would be unsafe to infer that [Russia would refuse to risk war] in the present case’.23 Despite ongoing discussions between all of the parties, Russia continued to push for action. The Porte, quite bewildered by the growing hysteria over the matter, asked what the difference was between a German General training Turkish troops and a British Admiral training the Turkish Navy.24 When Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador to Russia posed this question to Sazonov, the foreign minister replied curtly that Russia was, in fact, worried about the possibility of a growing Turkish navy but that ‘the position of the English admiral was not analogous [to that of the German General] because there was no Turkish fleet!’25 Russia understood the importance of the Anglo-Russian Convention to Britain’s foreign policy and was willing to exploit it.26 This was not a new policy. As early as 1881, General Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev stated that the ‘…whole Central Asian Question [should] enable us …to take seriously in hand the Eastern Question, in other words, to dominate the Bosphorus’.27 O’Beirne counselled the Foreign Office that Russia considered the matter of German control of Constantinople a ‘test of the support which they can expect’ from Britain, and if Britain was not prepared to support Russia in this case, then it must ‘be prepared for a definite change in the general attitude of the Russian government toward [Britain]’.28 In a move designed to placate the Russians, Grey intimated that he was willing to ‘make modifications’ to Admiral Limpus’ position if the Germans agreed to modify General von Sanders position to a point that would ‘satisfy

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Russia’.29 While Grey was not necessarily in favour of this idea, he thought it was ‘a smaller evil than estrangement from Russia’.30 Grey was willing to sacrifice not only Ottoman integrity, but British preponderance in the region as well. In an attempt to reassure Russia of Britain’s desires, Ambassador Buchanan assured Sazonov that Grey was ‘always most anxious’ to support Russia’s interests.31 Adding to the elevated emotions, Russian and French papers were printing articles that were in the words of Sir Francis Bertie, British Ambassador to France, ‘…very antagonistic’.32 These public attacks on what most Turkish citizens, and the Porte, felt was an internal matter added to the already bitter anti-Entente feeling within the Empire.33 Sazonov’s statements and Grey’s reluctance to restrain Russia in order to preserve the Anglo-Russian Convention were driving the Ottoman Empire into the arms of Germany and the Triple Alliance.

A Regretful Necessity In many respects, it was the modernization of the Ottoman military that drove these events. In an attempt to avert future calamities such as that imposed by the Averoff, the Porte contracted for two dreadnoughts to be constructed in the United States, with a French company to build ten gunboats, and approached Argentina, Brazil and Chile about the purchase of dreadnoughts that were already under construction in Britain and the United States. Brazil was the only country to agree to sell and the two ships, renamed the Reshadieh and Sultan Osman I, were expected to be completed and delivered in August 1914. Admittedly, much has been written on the subject of the Turkish dreadnoughts, but always on its own and rarely as it relates to the Anglo-Russian Convention. In order to understand its importance on these events, it is necessary to delve into the details of the event. The belief among Russian leadership was that their previous failures in acquiring Constantinople stemmed from the slow movement of troops through the Balkans which gave the other European powers time to coalesce against them. Without control of the Black Sea, the Russian military would have little chance of taking what Grey would later call ‘the greatest prize’.34 The spring of 1914 saw a flurry of activity on this front. On the third of April 1914, in a discussion with British Ambassador to Russia, Sir George Buchanan, Tsar Nicholas II brought up the issue of German control of Constantinople and threatened to go to war in order to keep the Straits

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free of German control.35 A few weeks later, Buchanan received a Russian query about the possibility of purchasing two dreadnoughts currently under construction for Chile.36 Grey saw the Russian Ambassador to London, Alexander Benckendorff urged Churchill and Grey to withhold the Reshadieh and Sultan Osman I from being delivered.37 Then finally, on 2 June 1914, Benckendorff, met with Grey to explain the implications of the Ottoman’s acquiring dreadnoughts to Russian interests. The Reshadieh, finished in 1913, was so large that it was unable to be delivered because the Ottoman’s lacked a port with modern facilities wide enough to accommodate a ship of this size. The British government negotiated the right to have British firms modernize docking facilities and agreed to maintain the ship in Britain until the upgrade was completed, which was estimated to be in the late summer of 1914. The Sultan Osman I was considered to be of such class that ‘her possession by any Nation would be a serious factor in the balance of naval strength’.38 With control of Constantinople and the Straits considered the ‘single greatest operational priority’ of the Russian navy, the arrival only one of these dreadnoughts would ‘immediately make obsolete Russia’s entire Black Sea Fleet’.39 The British Foreign Secretary’s response at the time was to reassure Benckendorff of Britain’s commitment to Russia by commenting that it was his wish to see the Ottoman Navy become no stronger than that of Greece. Within the historiography of this episode, much has been made about the actual superiority of these two ships.40 The apparent fragility of these dreadnoughts while in use of the Royal Navy does not, and should not, change the understanding of the 1913–1914 time frame. British, German, Ottoman and Russian leadership sufficiently believed the acquisition of the Sultan Osman I and the Reshadieh would give the Ottoman navy an advantage in the Black Sea as well as the Mediterranean. Within only a few weeks’ time, European governments would be dealing with the repercussions of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and Austria-Hungary’s harsh ultimatum. As far back as 1902, it had been decided that in case of war with Germany, the Royal Navy would be used primarily to starve Germany of the materials needed to wage war.41 If the Imperial German Navy were to seek battle, the Royal Navy expected to win because of the overwhelming size of its fleet. At the end of July 1914, Britain boasted twenty-two active dreadnoughts compared to Germany’s fifteen and another eleven under construction to Germany’s five.42 Leaving out those under construction, First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston

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Churchill did not consider the difference of seven dreadnoughts as sufficient to ensure Britain’s security. As Churchill began to search for a means of ensuring the Royal Navy’s preponderance of power in comparison to Germany’s navy, he was notified of the two powerful Ottoman ships being prepared for delivery.43 On 28 July 1914, Churchill began the process of holding on to the two dreadnoughts.44 As First Sea Lord his reasoning was sound: if war with Germany came, and by 28 July it was looking all the more likely, then Britain would need to guarantee its naval supremacy. The Ottoman dreadnoughts, about to be delivered, provide added strength in the case of a Trafalgar-like battle. The next day, 29 July, Third Sea Lord Sir Archibald Moore responded to Churchill’s call for action by delivering a plan of action that required the purchase of the two ships.45 Turkey still owed money on the ships, and the Turkish flag had yet to be raised on either of them meaning that technically the ships had not been delivered. But the flaw in the plan, according to the Foreign Office, was that the ships were, by law, still Turkish property and there was no precedent for seizing foreign warships during a time of peace.46 The legal advisors at the Foreign Office went to work to find a solution, pointing out that if the Admiralty thought it was immediately necessary, then, in order to be legal, they should begin negotiations with the Turkish Government to purchase the two ships.47 The Foreign Office made two additional comments that proved to be of importance to the situation: In order to gain time to negotiate, the Admiralty would have to find a way for the builders to prevent the ship being commissioned and, once the ships had been taken into possession, Britain would need to compensate the Ottoman’s for each ship acquired.48 As Moore notified Churchill about both his plan and its legal hurdles, Sir Eyre Crowe, the Assistant Under-Secretary of State, at the Foreign Office alerted the Admiralty of the impending departure of the Sultan Osman I. Churchill rose to the occasion displaying his characteristic genius and audacity. The First Lord of the Admiralty immediately sent notification to Armstrong & Co. and the Superintendent of Contract-built ships at Newcastle-on-Tyne that they were to ‘in no case…allow [the Osman] to leave… and authorised him to use force if necessary to prevent it from being handed over to the Ottomans’.49 Churchill’s plan was to be temporarily stopped because, according to Attorney General, Sir John Simon, the law allowing the British government to withhold ships did not apply unless there was ‘reasonable case to believe’ that it was going to be ‘employed by a foreign state at war…’.50 Turkey was not at war. Pressed by Grey, and

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after Benckendorff insisted that the two ships be ‘retained in England’, Simon concluded that it might be possible to seize the ships under the idea of ‘salus republicae suprema lex’ or the ‘welfare of the state is supreme law’.51 With the idea that it would defend these actions after the fact, the Foreign Office notified the Admiralty to seize the Ottoman ships without first communicating with the Turkish government.52 Churchill immediately issued a ‘Quartering Bill’ for the confiscation and manning of the two Turkish battleships.53 Unaware as they were about British actions, Turkish leaders were finalizing their plans for the final payment of approximately £800,000 to Armstrong Whitworth and had sent a crew of 600 sailors and 1000 troops to sail the Osman I home to Constantinople. The presence of such a large number of Ottoman troops at the Newcastle shipyards was a cause of concern for Churchill. Therefore, he issued orders for British troops to be dispatched to the dock in the event that the Turkish troops were used in an attempt to board the Osman I by force.54 The decision to simply ‘detain’ the Osman I is of critical importance at this point because it gave the British government the time needed to deflect any negative response from the Porte. Having received his orders, the Superintendent of Contract-built ships, Newcastle, along with a Mr. Vere, a member of Armstrong’s board of directors, intercepted the intended captain of the ship, Raouf Bey, on 1 August 1914, and informed him that the ship was being detained. The stunned captain calmly responded to the news by requesting the immediate use of Mr. Vere’s office to telephone the Turkish ambassador in London for instructions.55 Upon receiving the news that the Sultan Osman I was being detained, Ahmed Tewfik Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador in London did what was expected and contacted the Foreign Office for an explanation. Sir Arthur Nicolson, the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, responded by politely noting that the present situation in Europe did not allow for the battleship to be delivered, that the detainment was only temporary, and that the Turkish government would not lose any money.56 But by the third of August the Admiralty notified the Foreign Office of their intent to no longer simply detain the two battleships but to ‘take [them] over’.57 The reaction in Constantinople was to call the British Counsellor, Henry Beaumont (Ambassador Mallet was on holiday) into a meeting with the Grand Vizier, Said Halim and the Minister of the Interior, Talaat Pasha. At this meeting, the two Ottoman leaders made it clear that they considered this an unfriendly action and reminded the counsellor that Turkey was not at war.58 When notified of this meeting, Grey’s response was to put off the

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Porte by having Beaumont inform the Porte of his ‘sincere regret’ and that the British government would take into consideration the financial hardships their actions were placing on Turkey.59 This was hardly the response hoped for by the Porte. On hearing that London had stopped delivery of the two dreadnoughts, the Ottomans began a ‘violent press campaign’ against the British.60 Weeks after the seizure, anti-English protests were noted by members of Admiral Limpus’ staff in Constantinople.61 The response from the Porte was swift; they threatened to cancel all other contracts for ships with British companies as well as to cancel the current work to upgrade the docking facilities. Additionally, they demanded immediate repayment, in full, plus a fine, for the two battleships. Beaumont notified Grey that paying the fine along with reimbursing the Ottomans for their current expenses would help alleviate the anti-British feelings in Constantinople. Churchill, rightly fearful that the Ottomans would use this as an excuse to join the Germans, countered that they should delay any payments until they had assurances that the Ottomans would remain strictly neutral.62 The consequent public outcry was due, in part, to how the ships were financed. The Sultan Osman I was paid for in the normal fashion of simple borrowing, and paying in instalments to the company manufacturing the ship. The Reshadieh, on the other hand, had been the subject of a public subscription, meaning that the Ottoman public—men, women and children—had donated from their meagre wages to have the ship built.63 Whether or not building the Reshadieh was truly popular or not is immaterial. The idea that once again Britain was dictating what the Ottoman state could do was an insult to the Ottoman citizens who had paid for the ship. This perception made for great anti-British propaganda within the Ottoman Empire. The debate about compensation continued well into October 1914 with the British government sticking to the line that if Turkey were to adhere to strict neutrality, then Britain would pay £1000 a day for the use of the two ships upon the war’s end. Churchill continues to argue that if they were to have paid a lump sum immediately that money would simply make its way to Germany.64 The British Foreign Office believed that Germany would attempt to entice the Ottoman Empire into an alliance. What the British did not know was how active the Porte was in pursuing a Great Power Alliance.

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Conclusion As late as 22 July 1914, Germany had rebuffed several treaties proposed by Enver Pasha. The German Ambassador in Constantinople, Baron Hans von Wangenheim, reported that during discussions with Grand Vizier Halim, he was clear that if Turkey joined the Triple Alliance it would almost certainly face war with Russia.65 The Porte continued pressing for entry into the Alliance, stating that their greatest fear, and the power they most wanted to be protected from, was Russia.66 From the Ottoman perspective, Britain had deserted them for their old enemy Russia anyway, so the need for German protection was even greater than before. On 24 July 1914, German Kaiser Wilhelm II directed Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to begin negotiations with the Porte.67 By 3 August 1914, Germany had determined that the possibility of a British declaration of war would soon be made therefore a ‘quick conclusion of [a] treaty alliance’ with Turkey was imperative.68 The Ottoman’s had, in their view, been forced to actively court Germany in order to maintain any semblance of independence. Churchill’s decision to withhold the two battleships, in conjunction with Germany’s decision on 3 August 1914 to send the battlecruisers Goeben and Breslau to Turkey, had cemented the belief in Constantinople that an agreement with Germany was crucial.69 The importance of this action is that the arrival of the Goeben and Breslau in the Turkish Straits on 10 August 1914 shifted the balance of power in the Black Sea. Churchill was so sufficiently worried that he penned a note to Enver threatening Turkey with the ‘overwhelming superiority at sea’ of the Entente powers.70 But it was the combined failure of Britain to deliver the Reshadieh and Sultan Osman I, and stop the delivery of the Goeben and Breslau gave Turkish officials the belief that Britain was not as much in control of the seas as they had been led to believe.71 Sensing this apparent weakness, Turkish officials felt more emboldened to strengthen their ties with Germany. The British Foreign Office was acutely aware that these two events (the acquisition of the Goeben and Breslau and the confiscation of the Reshadieh and Sultan Osman I ) had dramatically swung Turkish opinion in favour of Germany.72 Turkey had been attempting to find cover for its reforms since 1911. Britain had been the traditional protector of Ottoman integrity but since the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, relations between the two countries had clearly soured. According to Grey, the ‘sick man of Europe’ had become the ‘sick man of Asia’.73 The Foreign Secretary questioned the

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need for Britain to turn Turkey into an ally when it had no alternative but to stay neutral, which was just as convenient to the Entente. Self-interest, Grey believed, would dictate a policy of neutrality in Turkey. Britain’s lack of support for Ottoman needs during this time allowed Germany to replace Britain as protector. Germany’s economic desires were clear, but it was its desire not to dismember or embarrass the Ottoman Empire that the Porte was drawn to. By the summer of 1914, Germany had become the sole power to whom the Ottomans could turn to for support. Acknowledgements I want to thank the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs at the University of Central Oklahoma for the grant that helped fund this research. I also need to thank my two Research Assistants Peter Sheetz and Olivia Hewitt for their hard work and time.

Notes 1. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to Sir Henry Layard 22 November 1877 as quoted in: John Charmley, Splendid Isolation? Britain and the Balance of Power, 1874–1914 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999), p. 138. 2. John Charmley, Splendid Isolation? Britain and the Balance of Power, 1874–1914 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999), p. 19. 3. Ibid., p. 18. 4. Joseph Heller, British Policy Toward the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914 (London: Frank Cass and Company, 1983), p. 6. 5. The Porte is a French translation of Turkish Babiali or ‘Gate of the Eminent’. Specifically, it refers to the gate giving access to the government buildings in Constantinople. 6. Taner Ozmen, British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire on the Eve of the First World War (1910–1914) (Taner Ozmen, Amazon Digital Services, 2014), p. 87. 7. Allan Cunningham, ‘The Wrong Horse: A Study of Anglo-Turkish Relations Before the First World War,’ Middle Eastern Affairs, St. Antony’s Papers (Oxford, 1965), p. 69. 8. Ahmed Djemal Pasha, Memories of a Turkish Statesman: 1913–1919 (New York: George H. Doran, 1922), p. 108. 9. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989), p. 49. 10. Note by Sir Edward Grey, 12 June 1913, FO 27117/13/44, BD, p. 901. 11. Taner Ozmen, British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire on the Eve of the First World War (1910–1914) (Taner Ozmen, Amazon Digital Services, 2014), p. 802.

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12. Ibid., p. 760. 13. Ibid., p. 4278. 14. Salisbury and Lansdowne had toyed with the idea of a settlement with Russia but had lost interest due to varying reasons. 15. Keith Wilson, Sir Edward Grey and the Outbreak of the First World War. Conference Organized by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the London School of Economics, 7 November 2014. https://audioboom. com/boos/2701925-professor-keith-wilson-author-of-the-policy-of-theentente-the-determinants-of-british-foreign-policy-1904-1914-1985reflects-on-grey-and-his-relations-with-the-russian-empire-before-1914. 16. C.J. Lowe and M.L. Dockrill, The Mirage of Power: British Foreign Policy, 1902–14, Vol. I (London: Routledge, 1972), pp. 64–65 and Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2011), p. 12. 17. Grey to Nicholson, 24 February 1908, noted in G.P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914, Vol. X: The Near and Middle East on the Eve of War (London: HMSO, 1931), pp. 616–17 (Hereafter referred to as BD). 18. Keith Wilson, Sir Edward Grey and the Outbreak of the First World War. Conference Organized by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the London School of Economics, 7 November 2014. https://audioboom. com/boos/2701925-professor-keith-wilson-author-of-the-policy-of-theentente-the-determinants-of-british-foreign-policy-1904-1914-1985reflects-on-grey-and-his-relations-with-the-russian-empire-before-1914. 19. Mallet to Grey, 15 December 1913, FO 371/1847, The National Archives of the UK (TNA). 20. Charge d’affaires to St. Petersburg Hugh O’Beirne to Grey, 30 October 1913, FO 371/1847, Turkey File, 1913 (TNA). 21. O’Beirne to Grey, 4 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 22. O’Beirne to Grey, 7 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 23. O’Beirne to Grey, 9 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 24. Mallet to Grey, 13 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 25. O’Beirne to Grey, 12 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 26. Keith M. Wilson, The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 83. 27. Jennifer Siegel, Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), p. 3. 28. O’Beirne to Grey, 14 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 29. Foreign Office Minutes, 27 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 30. Minutes on O’Beirne’s letter to Grey, 15 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 31. G. Buchanan to Grey, 19 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA.

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32. Bertie to Grey, 19 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 33. Mallet to Grey, 5 December 1913 and 15 December 1913, FO 371/1847, TNA. 34. Keith Wilson, Sir Edward Grey and the Outbreak of the First World War. Conference Organized by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the London School of Economics, 7 November 2014. https://audioboom. com/boos/2701925-professor-keith-wilson-author-of-the-policy-of-theentente-the-determinants-of-british-foreign-policy-1904-1914-1985reflects-on-grey-and-his-relations-with-the-russian-empire-before-1914. 35. Sir G. Buchanan to Sir Edward Grey, 3 April 1914, document no. 537 in G.P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, eds. British Documents on the Origins of the War of 1914, Vol. 10 (London: HMSO, 1926–1938), pp. 780–82 (Hereafter referred to as BD). 36. Sir G. Buchanan to Sir A. Nicolson, 16 April 1914, document no. 538 in BD, Vol. 10 (London: HMSO, 1926–1938), pp. 784–85. 37. Sean McMeekin, The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908–1923 (New York: Penguin Press, 2015), p. 98. 38. Sir Archibald Moore to Churchill, 30 July 1914, ADM 137/880, The National Archives of the UK (TNA). 39. Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2011), p. 23 and Russian Ambassador to Belgrade Charikov to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov, in Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War, p. 30. 40. Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Matthew S. Seligmann, ‘Keeping the Germans Out of the Straits: The Five Ottoman Dreadnought Thesis Reconsidered,’ War in History 23, no. I (2016): 20–35. 41. Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 43–44. 42. Michael Epkenhans, ‘The Global War at Sea, 1914–1918,’ in World War I Companion, ed. Matthias Strohn (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2013), p. 78. 43. Sir Archibald Moore to Winston S. Churchill, 30 July 1914, in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume III, Part 1, July 1914–April 1915 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973), p. 5. 44. Churchill to Third Sea Lord, Sir Archibald Moore, 28 July 1914, ADM 137/880, The National Archives of the UK (TNA). 45. Ibid. 46. Sir Archibald Moore to Churchill, 29 July 1914, ADM 137/880, The National Archives of the UK (TNA).

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47. Sir Archibald Moore to Churchill, 29 July 1914, ADM 137/880, The National Archives of the UK (TNA). 48. Ibid. 49. Churchill to Moore, 29 July 1914 and Sir Graham Greene to Captain Power, 29 July 1914, ADM 137/880, The National Archives of the UK (TNA). Importantly, one of the directors at Armstrong Whitworth was Charles Ottley, a former director of naval intelligence and secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence under Churchill. 50. Sir John Simon to Churchill, 30 July 1914, ADM 137/880 (TNA). 51. Ibid. and McMeekin, The Ottoman Endgame, p. 98. 52. Crowe: minute, 30 July 1914, FO 371/2137, The National Archives of the UK (TNA). 53. Quartering Bill Submitted, First Sea Lord, 1 August 1914, CAB 1/34, TNA. 54. Power to Admiralty, 1 August 1914, CAB 1/34, The National Archives of the UK (TNA). 55. Superintendent of Contract-built ships to Secretary of the Admiralty, 1 August 1914, CAB 1/34, TNA. 56. Ibid. 57. Admiralty to the Foreign Office, 3 August 1914, FO 371/2138, TNA. 58. Beaumont to Foreign Office, 3 August 1914, FO 371/2138, TNA. 59. Grey to Beaumount, 4 August 1914, FO 371/2138, TNA 60. Beaumont to Grey, 9 August 1914, FO 371/2138, TNA. 61. HMS Indomitable to Admiralty, 19 August 1914, ADM 137/800, TNA. 62. Notes attached to Beaumont’s letter to Grey, 8 August 1914, FO 371/2138, TNA. 63. Beaumont to Sir Edward Grey, 10 August 1914, FO 371/2138, TNA. 64. Churchill to Grey, 8 September 1914, CAB 1/34, TNA. 65. Ernest Jackh, The Rising Crescent: Turkey Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc, 1944), p. 13. 66. Ibid., p. 14. 67. Ibid., pp. 14–22. 68. Foreign Minister to Minister in Sofia, 5 August 1914, in Ernest Jackh, The Rising Crescent: Turkey Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1944), p. 23. 69. Navy Minister to Foreign Minister, 3 August 1914, in Jackh, p. 22. 70. Churchill to Enver Pasha, 15 August 1914, tel. Gilbert, p. 38. 71. Z.A.B. Zeman, The Gentlemen Negotiators: A Diplomatic History of World War I (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 51. 72. Beaumont to Crowe, 14 August 1914, FO 371/2138, Turkey (War) 1914, TNA. 73. Allan Cunningham, ‘The Wrong Horse: A Study of Anglo-Turkish Relations Before the First World War,’ Middle Eastern Affairs, St. Antony’s Papers (Oxford, 1965), pp. 56–76.

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Bibliography Primary Sources The National Archives of the UK (TNA). ADM 137/800. ADM 137/880. CAB 1/34. FO 371/1847. FO 371/2137. FO 371/2138, Turkey (War) 1914. FO 27117/13/44.

Secondary Sources Charmley, John. Splendid Isolation? Britain and the Balance of Power, 1874–1914. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999. Cunningham, Allan. ‘The Wrong Horse: A Study of Anglo-Turkish Relations Before the First World War.’ Middle Eastern Affairs, St. Antony’s Papers. Oxford, 1965. Epkenhans, Michael. ‘The Global War at Sea, 1914–1918.’ In World War I Companion, edited by Matthias Strohn. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2013. Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989. Gilbert, Martin. Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume III, Part 1, July 1914–April 1915. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973. Gooch, G.P., and Temperley, Harold, eds. British Documents on the Origins of the War of 1914. Vol. 10. London: HMSO, 1926–1938. ———. Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914. Vol. X: The Near and Middle East on the Eve of War. London: HMSO, 1931. Jackh, Ernest. The Rising Crescent: Turkey Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1944. Joseph Heller, Joseph. British Policy Toward the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914. London: Frank Cass and Company, 1983. Lambert, Nicholas A. Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. Lowe, C.J., and Dockrill, M.L. The Mirage of Power: British Foreign Policy, 1902–14. Vol. I. London: Routledge, 1972. McMeekin, Sean. The Russian Origins of the First World War. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2011.

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———. The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908–1923. New York: Penguin Press, 2015. Ozmen, Taner. British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire on the Eve of the First World War (1910–1914). Taner Ozmen, Amazon Digital Services, 2014. Pasha, Ahmed Djemal. Memories of a Turkish Statesman: 1913–1919. New York: George H. Doran, 1922. Seligmann, Matthew S. ‘Keeping the Germans Out of the Straits: The Five Ottoman Dreadnought Thesis Reconsidered.’ War In History, 23, no. I (2016): 20–35. Siegel, Jennifer. Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia. London: I.B. Tauris, 2002. Wilson, Keith. Sir Edward Grey and the Outbreak of the First World War. Conference Organized by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the London School of Economics, 7 November 2014. https://audioboom.com/boos/2701925professor-keith-wilson-author-of-the-policy-of-the-entente-the-determinantsof-british-foreign-policy-1904-1914-1985-reflects-on-grey-and-his-relationswith-the-russian-empire-before-1914. Wilson, Keith M. The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Zeman, Z.A.B. The Gentlemen Negotiators: A Diplomatic History of World War I. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

‘A Considerable Effect’: Winston Churchill and Wilfrid S. Blunt’s Legacy Warren Dockter

On 14 October 1910, Winston Churchill met with his friend and antiimperialist provocateur, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, at his country home Newbuildings in Sussex to discuss the role of Egypt in the British Empire as they often did. By 1910, many Churchill’s previously and relatively liberal imperial views were changing. Much to Blunt’s chagrin, Churchill argued that Britain ‘should hold on to Egypt as we hold onto India…a necessity of Empire.’ Churchill’s last words to Blunt that night were ‘you must not quarrel with me if I annex Egypt.’ Frustrated but unwavering in his position Blunt recorded in his diary that despite Churchill’s view, he thought he was ‘shaken on the subject’ and that he ‘produced a considerable effect’ on Churchill’s views.1

An earlier version of this article appeared in the Journal of Historical Biography. See Warren Dockter, ‘The Influence of a Poet: Wilfrid S. Blunt and the Churchills,’ Journal of Historical Biography 10 (Autumn 2011): 70–102. W. Dockter (B) Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_6

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The importance of Winston Churchill’s role in the twentieth century has been exceptionally well documented and need not be rehearsed here. It is clear a plethora of sources that Churchill had tendency to collect and trust experts in various fields. For instance, there is much evidence to show that Churchill’s unwavering devotion to T. E. Lawrence as an expert on Arabian affairs influenced his tenure at the Colonial Office in the early twenties.2 However, Churchill’s early political career has received comparatively less academic attention. In particular, his relationship with the poet, orientalist and anti-imperialist Wilfrid S. Blunt has received even less consideration. This is an odd oversight given Winston Churchill’s prominence as a historical figure and Blunt’s friendship with Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, whose influence on Winston is well documented.3 Additionally, this omission is odd because their relationship raises interesting historical curiosities owing to their radically different political beliefs regarding the British Empire. The chances that Blunt, an almost lone voice of anti-imperial dissent in British high society, would befriend Lord Randolph and later Winston Churchill, a diehard imperialist in the 1930s, seem strange indeed. This omission may be due to Winston Churchill’s son and first biographer, Randolph Churchill. Randolph’s work covered the earlier portion of his father’s life, from his birth in 1874 until 1914. These early volumes of the biography, volumes one and two, are less well researched and less comprehensive than Martin Gilbert’s later volumes. From Winston Churchill and Blunt’s first meeting in 1903 until 1914, Randolph Churchill only references Blunt a handful of times despite their frequent meetings. While it is difficult to ascertain Randolph’s reasons for casting Blunt as a peripheral character in his father’s life, he may have wanted to downplay his father’s relationship with such a radical political figure as Blunt. Alternatively, Randolph may have simply not had enough information or evidence regarding the relationship as much of the work done on Blunt at that time had been heavily biased by his estranged daughter, Judith Blunt-Lytton. Judith often revered to her father with great bitterness calling him an ‘eastern potentate’ or ‘ex-sultan’ who maintained ‘dangerous friendships.’4 Whatever the reason for the marginalization, Randolph’s biography largely ignores Winston’s relationship with Blunt. Likewise, Blunt receives only scattered mentioning in later Churchill historiography. Historians such as Peter de Mendelssohn in The Age of Churchill: Heritage and Adventure 1874–1911 (1961), Paul Addison in Churchill on the Home Front 1900–1915 (1993), Roy Jenkins in Churchill (2001) and Richard Toye

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in Churchill’s Empire (2010) have not discussed in any depth Blunt and Churchill’s relationship. Blunt and Churchill’s connection has also been relatively underexplored in the literature surrounding Blunt. The first biography Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1938) by Edith Finch, a remarkably impressive biography, explores their relationship concerning prison reform and social gatherings but mentions little else. His own grandson, Lord Lytton, wrote on Blunt in The Desert and the Green (1957) and a full biography, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: A Memoir (1961) but these were heavily influenced by Judith Blunt and only mention Winston Churchill a few times. However, Elizabeth Longford’s A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1979) discusses their relationship more fully, but Longford’s biography can be too confined at times to aristocratic gossip to systematically analyse the importance of the influence of Blunt on Churchill. However, Blunt kept extensive diaries of his political and social affairs which are widely regarded as both reliable and valuable sources. Indeed, other Churchill biographers like de Mendelssohn described Blunt as ‘a shrewd observer of men and a faithful and reliable recorder of their opinions.’5 Roy Jenkins, echoed this, noting that ‘in spite of [Blunt’s] extravagance of behavior and of opinion, often provides a good window on to Churchill.’6 The diaries reveal the extent of Blunt’s relationship with Winston, and how close they were during the earlier phases of Churchill’s political life. In reviewing Blunt’s relationship with Winston Churchill, this article argues that Blunt established a connection to Winston Churchill through his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, and thus through this connection, Blunt had an influential role on the early and more liberal phases of Winston Churchill’s political career. This is especially true concerning the key issues of prison reform and British imperial policy in Middle Eastern affairs. While Wilfrid Blunt has been treated as a serious literary figure (often seen as an anti-Kipling), he has often been overlooked as a historical figure. When examined for historical impact, many historians such as Lord Randolph Churchill’s biographer R. F. Foster and the Middle East historian Peter Mansfield have tended to dismiss Blunt as a ‘an object of fun’ and a man who ‘greatly exaggerated his political influence.’7 However, as will be demonstrated, the impact of his relationship with Winston Churchill undercuts this assertion. Moreover, Blunt’s role as a serious and influential political reformer has been recently re-evaluated in post-colonial, orientalist discourse. Writers in this field such as Aiman Sanad Al-Garrallah, Ziaud-

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din Sardar, Chris Brook and Peter Fulkner have explored the literary and cultural implications of Blunt’s poetry and travel literature.8 These reassessments by historians including Elie Kedourie, Kathryn Tidrick and Geoffrey Nash also emphasize Blunt’s role as a counterorientalist political reformer. Kedourie argued that Blunt was a prophetic figure, noting his belief in the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the eventual recognition of Arab Muslim states, a concept which before 1914 would have been seen as ‘ignorant and lunatic fantasies’ but in the early 1920s ‘became the ground on which staid Civil Servants and politicians…built their plans.’9 Tidrick expanded on this notion and has differentiated Blunt from other Victorian Arabists such as Richard Burton and Charles Doughty because Blunt ‘went beyond admiration, to active pursuit of what he conceived to be their interests’ making him the ‘first Englishman to take up the lance for the Arabs.’10 Significantly, the notion that Blunt was different and perhaps more sincere than other Victorian travel writers of the time was also expressed by Edward Said who lamented of other Victorian writers that ‘in their final analysis they all (except Blunt ) expressed the traditional Western hostility to and fear of the Orient.’11 Nash’s recent work From Empire to Orient (2005) has explored the significance of Blunt’s associations with prominent Eastern political reformers such as Jamal al-Din alAfghani and Muhammad Abduh (whom he introduced to Lord Randolph) and illustrated the importance of Blunt’s counter-orientalist discourse. He maintains that: Blunt’s association with al-Afghani and Abduh…brought a counter-balance that was certainly fortuitous in the sense that his concern with the renewal of Islam coincided with the activism of these seminal figures in Islamic thought. As a result, a seriousness and weight is added to Blunt’s discourse.12

By the 1880s, Wilfrid Blunt had become ‘the avatar for anti-imperial causes’ and an active force for the ‘regeneration of Islam’ by means of ‘agitation and negotiation as well as by poetry and horse breeding.’13 Blunt often used Arabian horse breeding at his fashionable Crabbet Park Estate to disseminate his political views among his social connections in the influential horse trading community, especially in Tory circles including George Wyndham, the Lytton family and even conservatives as prominent as George Curzon and Arthur Balfour. Blunt has been described by Roy Jenkins as a ‘rich Sussex squire, Arabist, honorary Irish nationalist and well known coureur’ and by Richard Toye as the ‘anti-imperialist in chief.’14 Blunt was

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enraged at Gladstone’s second government for its intervention and occupation of Egypt after a nationalist uprising led by Colonel Ahmed Urabi.15 He believed the interventionist policy to be one of fiscal self-interest and blatant imperialism which was diametrically opposed to his vision for the Levant that he described in The Future of Islam (1882). Blunt’s far-sighted design interpreted the collapse of the Ottoman Empire as inevitable due to its excess and archaic use of the oppressive vilayet system which split the administration of the Middle East into small manageable regions. Once the Ottoman Empire had disappeared, Blunt reasoned that ‘The Caliphate— no longer an empire, but still an independent sovereignty—must be taken under British protection, and publicly guaranteed its political existence, undisturbed by further aggression from Europe.’ Furthermore, he advocated the creation of an Arabian state as home of the new caliphate. According to Blunt’s design, the English were singular among Europeans because they had a ‘tradition of tolerance towards Islam,’ which would result in ‘Moslems, recognizing this,’ and looking to ‘England as their advisor and protector.’16 According to Blunt, this was already evident in India. However, his faith in the British Empire as a progressive force in the Islamic World waned heavily after he published The Future of Islam, leaving Blunt increasingly politically isolated and on a course which was bound to part company with British politicians of all parties, ultimately leaving Blunt’s friendship with both Lord Randolph Churchill and Winston Churchill in tatters. Wilfrid Blunt first became connected with the Churchill family after befriending Lord Randolph at a chess tournament in the Strand in 1883. Always on the lookout for political contacts to aid his quest for ending the recent occupation of Egypt, Blunt wrote to Randolph, one of the leading Tories, in November 1882 prior to their meeting and asked if Randolph would ‘defend the Egyptian nationalists against the charge of complacency in the Alexandria riots.’17 This led to an alliance and friendship between Randolph Churchill and Blunt which was lasted until Randolph’s death in 1895. Though parliamentary allies in the beginning were against Gladstone’s government, ultimately the issue of home rule for Ireland ended their political alliance once Gladstone moved towards Blunt’s position.18

Wilfrid Blunt and Winston Churchill Despite his largely Victorian understanding of the empire and before meeting Blunt, the young Winston Churchill had echoed his father’s would-be reforms in India. In fact, Blunt would later remark on the power of Lord

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Randolph’s legacy over his son, noting in his diary ‘There is something touching about the fidelity with which he continues to espouse his father’s cause and his father’s quarrels.’19 Though Churchill was picking up his father’s banner, his ideas were largely militarily focused unlike Lord Randolph’s reforms which were primarily political. Churchill had served with the Queen’s Own Fourth Hussars in the North-West Territory of India and began to question some of the government’s military policies such as the punitive ‘Butcher and Bolt’ expeditions licensed by the imperial forward policy which Churchill referred to as ‘undignified’ in his The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898).20 However, it was not until Churchill became embroiled in Egypt during the ‘Anglo-Dervish War’ against the Mahdiyya and their leader the Mahdi that Blunt became interested in him. In May 1899, Blunt was informed by George Wyndham that the young Churchill was publishing his new book The River War (1899). Because Blunt hoped the young Churchill would take up the mantle of his father’s progressive tendencies, he assumed the book would ‘[blurt] out all kinds of inconvenient truths about the Sudan campaign.’ The book did just that and Blunt was impressed that Churchill had even called General Kitchener’s desecration of the Mahdi’s tomb ‘a foul deed.’21 A few days later, Churchill gave Blunt more reason to assume that he was a young progressive version of Lord Randolph when he gave a speech in the House of Commons which historian Robert Rhodes James entitled ‘A Brutal Act.’22 Churchill argued that he would not vote for the award of £10,000 to Kitchener for his victory in Sudan because ‘it is beyond all contention that the matter in which the dismemberment and removal [of the Mahdi’s body] were carried out was such as to constitute the whole proceeding, a brutal act.’23 Years later in 1909, Churchill told Blunt that Kitchener behaved like a ‘blackguard’ and Blunt informed Churchill that he believed Kitchener still had the head of the Mahdi as a trophy despite being ordered to return the head to Sudan. To this Churchill replied, ‘I made a row about that though they told me it was bad taste for a young Lieutenant to say anything. I always hated Kitchener, though I did not know him personally.’24 However, it was not until October 1903 that Wilfrid Blunt met Winston Churchill for the first time. Blunt recorded in his diary his impressions of the young Winston: He is a little square headed fellow of no very striking appearance, but of wit, intelligence, and originality. In mind and manner he is a strange replica of

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his father, with all his father’s suddenness and assurance… In opposition I expect to see Winston playing precisely his father’s game, and I should not be surprised if he had his father’s success. He has a power of writing Randolph never had.25

After this initial meeting, their relationship would continue to grow during the early 1900s and coincidentally, after Churchill’s switched political allegiances from the more traditional, imperialist conservatives to the relatively less imperialist liberals. Blunt and Churchill met several times, at first to discuss young Winston’s impending biography of his father, but then simply as friends. On some occasions, they dressed in Arab clothing, a tradition Blunt and Churchill would carry on into the twilight of their friendship.26 After Winston Churchill published the biography of his father, Blunt recorded in his diary that it was ‘well done and on the whole a very fair statement of Randolph’s career.’ However, Blunt was frustrated by Winston’s underestimation of ‘Randolph’s Home Rule dallying in 1885.’27 Additionally, Blunt criticized Winston’s biography and offered a ‘convincing rebuttal’ in his article ‘Randolph Churchill’ (1906) in which Blunt lamented the omission of ‘his father’s more liberal Indian views.’28 Further evidence of Churchill’s liberal views can be found in the period following his appointment as Colonial Under-Secretary in December 1905. In fact, Winston’s reputation as a liberal reformer preceded him. Upon hearing the news of Churchill’s appointment, the ultra-conservative High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, Frederick Lugard, ‘just shook his head and called the appointment bad news.’29 The two men soon came to loggerheads over the Sokoto Crisis in early 1906. Lugard had written to the Colonial Office for permission to go on a punitive expedition against the Munshi tribe in Nigeria because they had destroyed the Royal Niger Company’s depot, an expedition Lugard made standard procedure. Two years earlier, he had mounted an expedition against the Sokoto tribe, an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria and the Kano tribe. Blunt shared Churchill’s antipathy. Upon learning of Lugard’s actions, Blunt regretfully noted that ‘Nothing with less excuse has been perpetrated in the history of British aggression’ and all to ‘gratify Lugard’s ambition.’30 Churchill tended to agree with Blunt’s sentiments, as he was weary of such expeditions because he had witnessed their brutal and politically self-destructive nature on the North-West frontier of India. Moreover, several members of the Liberal Party, including Lord Elgin, the Colonial Secretary, typically frowned on such expeditions as well. Churchill advised Lord Elgin not to give permis-

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sion for a punitive expedition. According to Lugard’s biographer Margery Perham, Churchill’s reaction was ‘vigorous and by implication very critical of Lugard and the whole forward policy for which he stood and upon which he had now been acting steadily for five years.’31 Maintaining his liberal view, Lord Elgin agreed with Churchill. Despite this, Lugard unilaterally moved against the Munshi tribe and his army was ‘defeated and annihilated.’32 As a result, the situation reached crisis level because news of the defeat reached the previously defeated Amir of Sokoto and Lugard was afraid that the Amir would rise in jihad. Upon learning of the Sokoto Crisis, Churchill continued to argue against the employment of punitive expeditions in this circumstance in the House of Commons on 27 February 1906.33 As Blunt’s friendship with Churchill solidified, there is further evidence of their convergence of views. This is especially evident in Churchill’s unofficial tour of the British colonies in Africa in 1907. In October, the first leg of his journey took Churchill to Cyprus, where he was met with a ‘turbulent demonstration in favor of Enosis, or union with Greece.’34 Unimpressed by the ‘flag waving,’ Churchill addressed the crowd and assured them that Great Britain would ‘respect the national sentiments of both races [referring to Greeks and Muslims].’35 In one report made to the Colonial Office, Churchill echoed Blunt’s views once more by remarking on the ridiculous situation created by Lord Salisbury’s promise to the Greek Cypriots that they would never again be under Turkish rule, despite the fact that England was obligated by a treaty to respect the Turkish position.36 In this way, Churchill began to take on Blunt’s design for Randolph as a champion of Islam when Churchill argued for the protection of the Islamic population in Cyprus by opposing the return of Cyprus to Greece: If that were done, the lives of the Muslims in the island, who constitute more than a fifth of the population, and who have always behaved to us with the utmost loyalty and good conduct, would be rendered utterly intolerable, and they would all be oppressed or frozen out…Union with Greece means their ruin.37

In order to avoid such disastrous consequences, Churchill recommended that a large amount of investment and active participation by the British would help both parties come to an agreement. He also noted the imperative need for success in Cyprus because ‘British methods were on trial before the tribunal of Europe. Success in Cyprus, as in Egypt, credits Britain in

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European eyes.’38 Such notions borrowed heavily from Blunt’s assertion in The Future of Islam that the British Empire was a progressive force in Islamic matters.39 Another matter in which traces of Blunt’s thought can be seen was in Churchill’s prescriptions for the protectorate of Somaliland. Upon his visit there, Churchill understood the issue to be one of fiscal ability. The interior of the country was controlled by the militant and unfriendly Dervish Somali nationalist, Mullah Sheikh Muhammad Abdulla Hassan, and Churchill believed Britain could not afford the cost of holding interior of Somaliland with the sufficient troops required to repel the Mullah’s advances because the return on the investment could never be repaid. As a result, ‘Churchill would not seriously entertain the policy of effectively occupying Somaliland and crushing the Mullah.’ The alternative course of action which Churchill thought would be more economically effective was to move the British forces to the coast where they could contain the Mullah and control the coast, and thus the custom duties which raised the majority income.40 This notion of withdrawal and coastal control was first suggested by Blunt in a letter to his old friend George Wyndham, the previous Under-Secretary for the State of War, which Blunt recorded in his diary on 17 March 1904: I have written to George Wyndham to get him to stop the Somali campaign, and to provide for the safety of the ‘friendly tribes’ on the Arab principle of paying blood money so as to end the feud between them and the Mullah. The British forces should then retire to the seaports and leave the interior strictly alone. If there are any friendly chiefs who feel themselves compromised they should be given handsome pensions and invited to live at Berbera under English protection. The rest of the tribes will very soon come to terms with the others, only don’t leave British garrisons anywhere in the interior and forbid all travelling and sporting expeditions by our officers for some years to come.41

On 3 October 1909, Blunt recorded in his diary that Churchill ‘had a scheme for settling the Somaliland folly on the lines precisely the same as those I proposed five years ago.’42 Eventually, this scheme was adopted after Churchill had left the Colonial Office, though it was not until March 1910 that the orders came to withdrawal from the interior of the country and hold the coast, as Churchill had advocated. However, the plan proved to be a total failure and was characterized by historian Ronald Hyam as ‘melancholy and even catastrophic.’43 The interior of Somaliland collapsed into confusion and resulted in starvation for many of the tribes who lived

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there. The British left and the Mullah continued to plague the British forces until 1920, when Churchill, by then Secretary of State for War, employed air power to destroy him and his forces. Hyam placed the blame at Churchill’s feet because Churchill failed to understand ‘Mullah’s unique position as a national figure appealing to the patriotic sentiments of Somali as Muslims irrespective of clan or lineage allegiance.’44 This concept would have also escaped Blunt who saw the Somali conflict through an Islamic or perhaps pan-Islamic lens and failed to understand the nationalist nature of Mullah’s movement. However, neither of them knew how the Somali strategy would play out and in the meantime Blunt was very pleased with Churchill’s handling of Cyprus and Somaliland. Churchill even sent copies of the secret minutes to Blunt outlining the plans for troop withdrawal in Somaliland and financial aid in Cyprus. Blunt concluded that ‘all this is excellent and may lead to real imperial reforms.’45 Away from policy decisions, there is evidence that Blunt’s association with Churchill may have affected his personal life too. In a letter to Lady Lytton during the first part of Churchill’s journey to Africa, Churchill’s fascination with the orient was obvious when he declared ‘You will think me a pasha. I wish I were.’46 Traces of this attraction with the orient were also evident in the letters sent to Churchill from his friends. Before departing, Churchill received a letter from his long-time friend and soon to be sister-inlaw, Lady Gwendoline Bertie, who wished him well on his voyage, but fresh with the knowledge that Churchill had been spending time with Blunt, implored him not to give into his Islamic sympathies: Please don’t become converted to Islam; I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalism, pasha-like tendencies, I really have; you are not cross my writing this, so if you come in contact with Islam, your conversion might be effected with greater ease than you might have supposed, call of the blood, don’t you know what I mean, do…fight against it.47

As the first decade of the twentieth century came to a close, Blunt and Churchill saw each other socially with increasing regularity. They discussed and agreed on several aspects of imperial reform such as Irish Home Rule, which was the topic which alienated Blunt from Lord Randolph. Blunt’s diaries record his faith in Churchill’s pro-Home Rule disposition. Their discussions on imperial reforms did not stop with Ireland. During a luncheon in September 1909, Blunt tried to finesse Churchill to speak on India. To

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Blunt’s regret all, Churchill gave him was ‘if they ever unite against us and put us in Coventry all round, the game would be up.’ Churchill, however, did speak on Blunt’s old pursuit, Egypt. To Blunt’s dismay, Churchill exclaimed ‘We shall continue to hold it whatever happens; nobody will ever give it up- I won’t- except if we are driven out at the end of a war.’48 Blunt was fearful that perhaps Winston was like his father and not really the champion of Islam he had hoped for. Winston reaffirmed his position to Blunt a month later while he was spending the weekend with Blunt by calling himself an ‘Imperialist.’ Despite this, Blunt had not given up on Churchill as a defender of the East. Blunt recorded in his diary that ‘Winston sympathizes much with my ideas about the native question in India, and in general about the enslavement of the coloured by the white race.’49 The next day after a long conversation with Churchill, Blunt recorded ‘I think Churchill will come around to my views about India for in all essentials he is at one with me.’50 Blunt continued to pressure Churchill to be an imperial reformer in the same way he had done with Lord Randolph. After discussing his latest book India Under Ripon, with Churchill, Blunt concluded that Winston was ‘much more favourable to my anti-Imperial views than he was two months ago. Indeed he is almost converted to the view that the British Empire will eventually ruin England.’ Churchill also candidly told Blunt that ‘I think you may see me yet carry out your anti-imperial ideas.’51 In fact, he exclaimed to Blunt that the empire was ‘a lot of bother’ and ‘the only thing one can say for it is that it is justified if it is undertaken in an altruistic spirit for the good of the subject races.’52 According to historian Richard Toye, the second part of Churchill’s answer was far more Churchill’s ‘normal sentiments’ regarding the British Empire.53 Back home, in September 1909, they also spoke on the question of prison reform, a goal the Liberal Party had sought after since the 1890s and an issue which would become another area where Churchill heavily considered Blunt’s opinion. While intellectual currents of in the Liberal Party of prison reform undoubtedly kept Churchill informed, it was on this issue that Blunt’s input with Churchill reached its peak. Blunt even recorded that he believed that ‘he could influence the son more creatively than he influenced the father some twenty five years before.’54 Churchill believed Churchill announced to Blunt that he was ‘dead against the current system’ and if he was ever appointed to Home Office, he would ‘make a clean sweep of it.’55 When Churchill was handed the position of Home Secretary in 1910, he was true to his word for Blunt, unlike Randolph had

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been in his attempts to change the India Office. In a letter on 15 February 1910, Blunt reminded Churchill of his pledge and that he was himself a convict in Ireland after being arrested in 1888 for an anti-imperial speech in a prohibited district.56 Blunt’s imprisonment only lasted two months, but his sentence was hard labour. He served at two prisons, Galway Gaol and Kilmainham Gaol, the second of which was far harsher.57 After having seen John Galsworthy’s play Justice, which was an indictment of the penal system and ‘made a powerful impact’ on Churchill, he telegraphed Blunt asking him for his memorandum on prison reform.58 Essentially, Blunt wanted better conditions for political prisoners so that the punishment would take ‘a form of restraint on liberty without however, the enforcement of conditions calculated to degrade or humiliate dignity or self respect.’59 These reforms included external food, being able to wear their own clothes, access to a library and freedom from compulsory work. Blunt’s recommendations were roundly approved and adopted by Churchill with the notable exception of compulsory feeding for prisoners who went on hunger strikes.60 Despite this difference, when Churchill’s reforms were adopted Blunt rejoiced, ‘Winston’s pronouncement on prison reform…is everything I could have wished. He is quite thorough about the reforms and said he would like to adopt the whole of my programme only public opinion was not ready for it yet.’61 However, penal historian Alan Baxendale noted that Blunt misread Churchill’s Rule as he believed that ‘the Home Secretary would now have power to mitigate prison treatment and… put all prisoners with a good character (and this would include political prisoners) in the first class of misdemeanants.’62 In reality, ‘Churchill, the Home Office senior officials and the Prison Commissioners and the Government as a whole adhered rigidly to the axiom that no one had any right to claim exemption from the criminal law on the basis of political motivation for the commission of illegal conduct.’63 Despite Blunt’s misunderstanding, Churchill’s rule still represented real prison reform which Blunt, in addition to Galsworthy, helped create. This represented the apex of Blunt’s influence on Churchill because while Blunt did not formulate policy, he was able to use his direct access to influence Churchill thinking on prison reform. At the very least, Blunt helped build on Churchill’s existing beliefs, as prison reform was one of the staples of Liberals at the turn of the century. Alan Baxendale has given the verdict that ‘Some of his [Blunt’s] proposals…had a bearing on Churchill’s later measures.’64

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After they had agreed on some aspects of prison reform, Churchill and Blunt’s opinions began to diverge, especially on the question of empire in Egypt and India. While discussing the Egyptian question at Blunt’s home at Newbuildings on 14 October 1910, Churchill argued that ‘we should hold on to Egypt as we hold onto India…a necessity of Empire.’ Churchill’s last words to Blunt that night were ‘you must not quarrel with me if I annex Egypt.’ Despite this pronouncement, Blunt still believed that Churchill was ‘shaken on the subject’ and that he ‘produced a considerable effect on him.’65 Four days later upon hearing that Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, was contemplating occupying Southern Persia, Blunt recorded in his diary he would write to the Turkish government and advise them to join the Triple Alliance because ‘it was the only thing left for any Moslem state to do. The Anglo-Franco-Russian Entente intends their destruction.’66 Blunt finally accepted he was losing Churchill’s ear in January 1911 when he noted in his diary that he ‘was sorry to find that Winston was getting more and more imperialist.’67 In early 1911, Churchill became the First Lord of the Admiralty, where he was increasingly concerned with the welfare of the empire even at the expense of other areas in which he was interested. After Churchill had been appointed to the Admiralty, Blunt feared Churchill was becoming too close to Sir Edward Grey, a leading member of the Liberal Imperialist group within the party, and recalled a conversation they had in passing just before Churchill went to the Admiralty: As I was going away Churchill called to me- ‘What will you say to our making a large increase in the Cairo garrison and putting the expense of it on Egypt as a result of your inflammatory pronouncement?’ ‘You make keep 100,000 men there if you like’ I said. It will make no difference in the result.68

After several months of silence between the two, Churchill wrote Blunt a letter in which he suggested that they sit down and have a talk. The letter also said that Churchill was ‘glad to find that [his] belonging to a government wicked enough to send Lord Kitchener to Egypt has not altered [their] relations.’69 Churchill clearly felt trepidation regarding Blunt’s opinions on Kitchener returning to Egypt and in fact Blunt did have strong (if not delusional) opinions on it. He noted that ‘Churchill had abandoned his long time feud with Kitchener.’ Going so far as to speculate that Kitchener, Churchill and Asquith might be planning a coup,70 Blunt’s frustration with Churchill was clear.

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However, Blunt was not accurate in his estimation of Churchill as an anti-Eastern, imperialist at this point. One of Churchill’s first actions as First Lord of the Admiralty was to try and bolster a political and strategic relationship with the Ottoman Empire. Leading up to the First World War, the Ottoman Empire’s allegiance hung in a delicate balance. Both Britain and Germany had attempted to sway Turkey to their side since 1911. In fact, ‘Churchill tried to encourage an actively pro-Turkish policy before 1914.’71 Djavid Bey, the Turkish finance minister wrote to Churchill in late October 1911 advocating a formal alliance between Britain and Turkey. Churchill wrote to Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office on 4 November 1911 regarding the letter from Djavid Bey: I have thought a good deal since the cabinet meeting about an arrangement with Turkey. I could not help feeling that our colleagues were rather inclined to treat a little too lightly the crude overture which the Turkish government has made…Turkey has much to offer us…we must not forget that we are the greatest Mohammedan power in the world. We are the only power who can really help and guide her…even a gesture might produce a lasting impression on the Mahometan world.72

Traces of Blunt’s thought can be observed in Churchill’s relatively proTurkish outlook. Of course, Grey did not acquiesce to Churchill’s suggestion on Turkish policy but Churchill’s intentions suggest, at least, an element of Blunt’s thinking and Churchill’s own fascination with the Islamic World. Despite this, Blunt was increasingly frustrated by their diverging opinions. After one of Blunt’s opulent and orientalist (everyone dressed in Bedouin robes) weekend parties, Blunt noted in his diary that ‘Winston is quite changed on these matters from what he was two years ago when I had hopes of encouraging him to better things. How like his father!’73 Indeed, the two had diverged politically and intellectually regarding matters of empire and the Middle East, owing partly to Churchill’s more imperial mindset and partly to Blunt’s increasingly anti-imperial position. Blunt’s disdain for the British Empire was evident in his diary entry for 22 June 1916 after he had heard of the Arabian revolt against the Ottomans and his fear that Britain intended to leave Constantinople with Russia after the war: ‘I should rejoice at the independence of Arabia but it will be less a misfortune for Islam to have German garrison on the Bosphorus and in Constantinople than these to fall into the hands of Russia.’74 In fact, when he and Churchill met again on 5 October 1916, Churchill was ‘anxious to

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get [Blunt] to agree with him in expecting great things from the Grand Sherif of Mecca as replacing the Ottoman Caliph.’ But Blunt disagreed, fearing the Russian intervention in caliphate question and concluded that Churchill, ‘like everyone else, quite misunderstands.’75 However, these disagreements never altered their friendship as deeply as it had Blunt’s relationship with Lord Randolph. They continued to see each other into the twilight of Blunt’s life. Churchill even continued to defend Blunt privately, scolding Sir John Edward Bernard Seely, the UnderSecretary for the State of the Colonies for being rude to Blunt.76 Churchill also arranged for T. E. Lawrence to go see Blunt a couple of times before his death.77 Blunt never gave up on Winston being his anti-imperial champion. In a letter to Winston’s wife Clementine in June 1921, Blunt wrote: I believe [Churchill] agrees with me in his heart of hearts about the regeneration of the East and the way it should be set about if the British Empire is not to go the road of ruin all other Empires have gone. I used to talk in the same way to his father and it pleases me to find myself, after so many years talking again to Winston, especially now he is in a position to carry out his ideas as his father never was except the few months he was at the India Office. About Egypt he was always with me to the last days of his life. You may tell Winston this with my love.78

Blunt’s Legacy Observing traces of Blunt’s influence on Churchill’s later thinking is more difficult and can only be seen in an abstract sense. Suggestions of Blunt’s legacy become clearest when Churchill was Secretary for the State of the Colonies in 1921–1922. In this position, Churchill was an advocate and signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which saw to the creation of an Irish free state, a cause pursued by Blunt, but previously rejected by Lord Randolph and the Tories. Blunt and Churchill exchanged letters regarding the situation in Ireland and Blunt even noted that ‘it was a relief to him that Irish affairs were in [Winston’s] hands.’79 However, the most obvious example of Blunt’s legacy can be viewed in Churchill’s solution for the postwar Middle East. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East was left with Britain, and to a lesser degree France, to determine its fate Churchill oversaw the creation of a nominally independent Middle East under the direct control of the British ally the Hashemite family, with King Hussein on his Sherifian throne in Mecca, Feisal as King of Iraq and

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his brother Abdullah as King of Transjordan. All of which remained under informal British control. This so-called Sherifian solution was very similar to what Blunt had in mind in his Future of Islam. Britain became the guarantor of a titularly independent Middle East under the control of Islamic leaders based around a sort of special relationship between the Sherifian Bedouin tribes and the British that was forged in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks. Elements of Blunt’s thinking were evident to Churchill’s speech to the House Commons on 14 June 1921, when he defended this new Middle East ern policy. Like Blunt, Churchill rejected the Ottoman vilayet system arguing that was ‘cynical’ and that it kept the Arabs divided and discouraged their national aspirations. Instead, Churchill argued his policy would build ‘around the ancient capital of Baghdad in a form friendly to Britain and her allies an Arab state which can revive and embody the old culture and glories of the Arab race.’80 After the speech, Churchill wrote to Blunt saying, ‘I knew you would be pleased about Mesopotamia…The Arabs have a chance now of building up in Bagdad a civilization and prosperity which will revive its long-vanished glories.’81 Indeed, Blunt was pleased. With the exception of Egyptian home rule, a matter the two had quarrelled over for nearly a decade, Blunt noted in his diary, ‘They will have adopted my advice for pretty nearly the whole of the Near Eastern question.’82 While Blunt was satisfied with Churchill’s solution for the Middle East, he still had reservations about uniting all the Bedouin tribes as one nation, a scheme Blunt felt was impossible because ‘each tribe had lived as an independent nation since Solomon.’83 Moreover, Blunt tended to credit the solution, not to Churchill, whom he continued to mistrust over imperial matters, but to his famous protégé, T. E. Lawrence who Blunt believed ‘forced his policy on the Foreign Office and Colonial Office’ and on Winston.84 Blunt may have been right. Churchill was enamoured with the co-author of this Middle Eastern policy. According to Middle Eastern historian, Timothy Paris, their relationship was characterized by ‘deep mutual admiration and respect’ and ‘Lawrence’s influence on Churchill was considerable’ resulting in ‘Churchill’s adherence to Lawrence’s recommendations even on issues which the rest of the Middle East Department dissented.’85 Interestingly, Kathryn Tidrick described Lawrence as ‘Blunt’s most devoted…disciple’ and in fact, a little more than a ‘caricature’ of Blunt.86 While this dismissal of Lawrence’s personality seems extreme, it does illustrate the extent to which Lawrence (and thus, Churchill) was swayed by Blunt.

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For Blunt’s part, he was as fascinated with the young Lawrence as much as Churchill was. After meeting him in 1920, Blunt’s admiration for Lawrence was evident in his diary in which he wrote that Lawrence’s service in the Middle East was ‘an adventure of the heroic kind, carrying out very exactly the old one I had dreamed of attempting myself in 1880.’87 Additionally, Tidrick has argued that Lawrence reiterated Blunt’s assertion that the caliphate be moved to Arabia and assumed by nomadic Bedouins, by advocating that the new Arab leader ‘should come from the family of the Sherifs of Mecca, whose nomad instincts and faultless pedigree made them natural candidates for the rulership of Arabia.’88 This correlation reveals Blunt’s effect on British Middle Eastern policy in the post-war period. However, despite traces of Blunt’s political thought being evident in the Middle Eastern solution, there were major differences between his and Churchill’s designs for the Middle East. Churchill’s scheme did not transfer the caliphate as Blunt had hoped for. Instead, the caliphate, and indeed, any pan-Islamic identity, was lost. Consequently, rather than revolving around an Arab caliphate, the Arab society was in orbit around the British Empire. As Dominic Green has observed, Blunt’s ‘vision of the Arab nations emerging under Anglo-French supervision came true; though not as he had envisioned, around an Arab caliphate. Instead, it happened via the imperialism he detested.’89 Blunt would have abhorred the exaggerated role of the British Empire originally, but as he began to see the post-war world unfolding, Blunt began to reconsider his view of the British Empire in the Middle East and actually sort of realigned himself with his earlier, more imperially friendly position in The Future of Islam. In 1919, Blunt recorded in his diary that future of Muslim aspirations ‘are joined with that of the British Empire and on the whole I am inclined for their less harm the less it is divided among other Christian empires…Any single control is better than joint control.’90 So while Blunt was certainly not endorsing British imperialism, he did conclude that it was probably the least harmful to Islamic aspirations by default. Prophetically, Blunt wrote in 1884 that government had already undermined his work in The Future of Islam by ‘adopting’ it and ‘using it for its own purposes.’91 The great tragedy then, of Wilfrid Blunt’s legacy, may be that he indirectly helped engineer a British imperial legacy in the Middle East. Blunt’s friendship with Winston Churchill had a considerable effect indeed. While their ideas were formed in a similar sociopolitical environ-

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ment, Blunt’s notions were often vehemently anti-imperial and ultimately proved too radical for the essentially conservative Churchill. Despite this, however, the evidence suggests that Blunt’s relationship with Churchill itself had an effect on his attitudes and policies. In this way, Blunt helped shape young Churchill’s Weltanschauung especially on imperial issues in the East. This is evident in Churchill’s policies as Colonial Under-Secretary, regarding his rebuff of Lugard, his handling of Cyprus and his strategy for Somaliland. But Blunt’s influence was not limited to imperial affairs, it extended to domestic concerns which were evident in Churchill’s prison reforms as Home Secretary. Moreover, Churchill’s designs for the Middle East after the First World War strongly echoed some of Blunt’s ideals. Blunt’s friendship with Winston Churchill was an enduring and powerful one which when explored systematically reveals a more nuanced understanding of Churchill’s early political decisions and policy objectives, especially regarding the Middle East.

Notes 1. Blunt, My Diaries, pp. 736–37. 2. See Kathryn Tidrick, Heart Beguiling Araby: The English Romance with Arabia (London, 1981), pp. 126, 181. There are several sources which illustrate Churchill’s fascination with Lawrence. One such source is Col. Richard Meinertzhagen who recorded in his diary that he was ‘struck by the attitude of Winston towards Lawrence, which almost amounted to hero worship.’ Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary: 1917 –1956 (London, 1959), p. 33. 3. See R.F. Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life (Oxford, 1981). 4. Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion, pp. 155, 429. 5. Peter de Mendelssohn, The Age of Churchill: Heritage and Adventure 1874–1911 (London, 1961), p. 57. 6. Roy Jenkins, Churchill (London, 2001), p. 165. 7. See R.F. Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill, pp. 110, 120 and Peter Mansfield, The British in Egypt (London, 1972), p. 22. 8. See Aiman Sanad Al-Garrallah, ‘Bedouin Romance in English Poetry: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s, “The Stealing of the Mare”,’ The IUP Journal of English Studies 5, nos. 1 and 2 (March and June 2010): 15–41; Ziauddin Sardar in an interview with The Browser 1 June 2010, http:// thebrowser.com/interviews/ziauddin-sardar-on-future-islam, accessed 15 February 2011; and Chris Brooks and Peter Faulkner, The White Man’s Burden: An Anthology of British Poetry of the Empire (Exeter, 1996). 9. Elie Kedourie, England and the Middle East (London, 1956), p. 28.

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10. Kathryn Tidrick, Heart Beguiling Araby: The English Romance with Arabia (London, 1981), p. 107. 11. Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 2003), p. 237. Italics are mine. 12. Geoffrey Nash, From Empire to Orient: Travellers to the Middle East 1830–1926 (London, 2005), p. 85. 13. R.F. Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life (Oxford, 1981), pp. 111, 120. 14. Jenkins, Churchill, p. 165 and Richard Toye, Churchill’s Empire (London, 2010), p. 8. 15. Blunt and other early writers referred to him as Arabi, in an effort to connect Urabi to the Arab struggle and to embody the Arab ideal. Dominic Green, The Armies of God: Islam and Empire on the Nile, 1869–1899 (London, 2007), p. 110. Also see Lucy McDiarmid, ‘A Box for Wilfred Blunt,’ PLMA 120, no. 1 (January 2005), p. 179, n. 6. For more information on the Anglo-Egyptian War, see W.S. Blunt, The Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (London, 1907); Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London, 2000); A.G. Hopkins, ‘The Victorians and Africa: A Reconsideration of the Occupation of Egypt, 1882,’ The Journal of African History 27, no. 2 (1986); and John Galbraith and Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British Occupation of Egypt: Another View,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 9, no. 4 (1978). 16. W.S. Blunt, The Future of Islam (London, 1882), p. 204 and Kathryn Tidrick, Heart Beguiling Araby, p. 126. 17. Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfred Scawen Blunt (London, 1979), p. 194. See also Blunt MSS 380/1977. 18. Warren Dockter, ‘The Influence of a Poet: Wilfrid S. Blunt and the Churchills,’ Journal of Historical Biography 10 (Autumn 2011): 75–81. 19. Wilfrid Blunt, My Diaries: Being a Personal Narrative of Events 1888–1914 (London, 1932), p. 518. 20. Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (London, 1897) p. 252. 21. Wilfrid Blunt, My Diaries, pp. 321–22. 22. Robert Rhodes James, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, Vol. 1 (London, 1974), p. 31. 23. Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, ed., Robert Rhodes James, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, Vol. 1 (London, 1974), pp. 31–32. 24. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 683. 25. Blunt, My Diaries, pp. 488–89. 26. Churchill’s dressing in Arab garments with Blunt was first recorded in a letter from Wilfrid Blunt to Lady Anne Blunt, 5 July 1904 in the British Library Manuscript Collection, Correspondence between Lady Anne and

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27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

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WS Blunt (Wentworth Bequest), Vol. CCXC, BL, MSS, Add. 54107. Blunt would later record this type of occasion again in his diary for 19 October 1912 in Wilfred Blunt, My Dairies, p. 812. This was corroborated by Clementine Churchill in Jack Fishman, My Darling Clementine: The Story of Lady Churchill (London, 1963), p. 46. They even continued the tradition into late Blunt’s life, see Blunt’s diaries for 14 August 1915 and 5 June 1921 in the Fitzwilliam Museum MS 155-1975; MS467-1975; and Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 409. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 538. Blunt, ‘Randolph Churchill,’ Nineteenth Century (March 1906): 406. Forster believes Blunt’s article was to illustrate that at one time Lord Randolph had been a convert to Home Rule since Winston’s biography did not clearly illustrate this. See Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill, p. 395 and Jenkins, Churchill, p. 66. Margery Perham, Lugard: The Years of Authority 1898–1945 (London, 1960), p. 237. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 461. Perham, Lugard, p. 248. Perham, Lugard, p. 252. Parliamentary Debates, 27 February 1906, Vol. IV, no. 152, pp. 1022–23. Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: Young Statesmen 1901–1914 (London, 1967), p. 227. Ibid., p. 227. Winston Churchill in a Colonial Office report taken from the Colonial Office Archives, file number: 883/7/3, pp. 1–2. Ibid., pp. 5–6. Ibid., pp. 6–7. While there is no proof Churchill read Blunt’s The Future of Islam (though he probably did as he read several other books penned by Blunt) it is reasonable to assume he and Blunt discussed such ideas. For a complete examination of Churchill’s proposal, see his memo on the Somaliland Protectorate, CHAR 10/41. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 502. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 693. Ronald Hyam, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office 1905–1908: The Watershed of the Empire-Commonwealth (London, 1968), p. 366. Ronald Hyam, p. 366. Blunt, My Diaries, pp. 688–94. Winston Churchill in a letter to Lady Lytton 19 September 1907 taken from Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill Companion, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, pp. 679–80. A Pasha was a rank of nobility in the Ottoman Empire. Lady Gwendoline Bertie in a letter to Churchill, 27 August 1907 and Randolph Churchill, ed., Winston S. Churchill Companion, Vol. 2, Pt. 1 (London, 1969), p. 672.

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48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75.

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Blunt, My Diaries, pp. 684–85. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 690. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 693. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 702. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 698. Richard Toye, Churchill’s Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (London, 2010), p. 121. Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 386. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 685. Blunt to Churchill 15 February 1910 and Randolph Churchill, ed., Winston S. Churchill Companion, Vol. 2, Pt. 2 (London, 1969), p. 1137. For more information of Blunt’s time as a convict, see Blunt, The Land War in Ireland (London, 1912); Blunt, My Diaries (London, 1932), Appendix 4, pp. 859–65; and Alan Baxendale, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill Penal Reformer (London, 2010), pp. 2–5. Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p. 180. Concerning John Galsworthy’s lobbying for penal reform and his coining of the phrase ‘solidarity confinement,’ see Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front 1900–1955 (London, 1992), pp. 112–13. Baxendale, Penal Reformer, p. 42. Baxendale, Penal Reformer, p. 43. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 709. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 709. Baxendale, Penal Reformer, p. 47. Baxendale, Penal Reformer, p. 43. Blunt, My Diaries, pp. 736–37. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 737. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 750. Wilfrid Blunt, My Diaries, p. 781. The pronouncement which Churchill refers to a letter Blunt wrote and sent to press officers in both Cairo and Constantinople, shortly after reaching the conclusion that Muslim states should join the Central Powers. For more information, see Wilfred Blunt, My Diaries, p. 738. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 791. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 803. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, The Challenge of War 1914–1916 (London: Minerva Edition, 1990), p. 189. Winston Churchill in a letter to Sir Edward Grey 4 November 1911 and Churchill, ed., Winston S. Churchill Companion, Vol. 3, Pt. 2 (London, 1969), p. 1137. Blunt, My Diaries, p. 814. Blunt’s diary, 22 June 1916, Blunt Papers MS 166-1975. Blunt’s diary, 5 October 1916, Blunt Papers MS 168-1975.

146 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

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Blunt, My Diaries, p. 787. See CHAR 2/118/96. Blunt’s diary, 11 June 1919, Blunt Papers MS 467-1975. Blunt to Churchill, 26 December 1921, Blunt Papers MS 279-1976. See ibid., pp. 3100–101. Churchill to Blunt 15 September 1921, Blunt Papers MS 244-1976. Blunt’s diary, 11 March 1921, Blunt Papers MS 465-1975. Blunt’s diary, 5 June 1921, Blunt Papers MS 467-1975. Blunt’s diary, 26 February 1921, Blunt Papers MS 465-1975. Timothy Paris, Britain, the Hashemites and Arab Rule 1920–1925: The Sherifian Solution (London, 2003), p. 130. Kathryn Tidrick, Heart Beguiling Araby, pp. 126, 181. Also see Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary: 1917 –1956 (London, 1959), p. 33. Blunt’s diary, 21 August 1920, Blunt Papers MS 459-1975. Kathryn Tidrick, Heart Beguiling Araby, p. 174. Dominic Green, The Armies of God: Islam and Empire on the Nile, 1869–1899 (London, 2007), p. 307. Blunt’s diary, 15 April 1919, Blunt Papers MS 448-1975. Blunt, India Under Ripon, p. 231.

Introduction to Part III

Because the British Empire virtually encompassed the Islamic World, the two sides certainly influenced each other. The British people, and by extension their government, spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand Islam and its role in the empire. Aspects of the empire’s role in the subjugation of Muslims on its fringes or of those firmly within its boundaries are essential to understanding how the Islamic World was ‘managed’ from London. In 1892, Lord Curzon noted that without India the British Empire could not exist. This was true for the troops it provided as much as its trade with Britain. The use of Indian troops to put down rebellions within the empire is addressed by Derek Blakeley in his chapter examining an attempted revolt by what the British termed as fundamentalist and religious fanatic in Somaliland. The use of Muslims to control other Muslims in its empire would prove to cause many problems for Britain. The moving of troops from India to quash revolts in East Africa is particularly significant as the arrangements needed to secure support placed undue stress on the imperial infrastructure. Anyone who has served on a committee will, upon reflection, appreciate the overwhelming nature of the task facing Britain’s leaders as they attempted the management of the empire. Decisions made in the post-First World War British Mandate in Palestine provide a particularly insightful look at the mistakes made by attempting to control a population far from London. Elizabeth Brownson provides a unique perspective

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of the legislative attempts of Britain’s civilian administration in Palestine used to maintain the British view of gender roles. With the conclusion of the First World War, the empire, once the source of Britain’s power, became like a weight around its neck. Not only had Britain lost trade to parts of its empire, but the postwar peace conference had provided them with expectations of freedom and democracy of their own. From the British perspective, the Islamic World was convulsing. Violence and opposition to British rule could be found in Egypt, Somalia, India, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Burma. The unrest in Egypt and Iraq was in partial response to Britain’s refusal to allow those countries leaders to attend the Paris Peace Conference. The additional humiliation was the institution of a British Mandate was enough to create unrest and eventually a full-scale revolt. Britain’s initial response was to call in the Indian Army and declare martial law. Eventually, Britain was forced to compromise and agree to more autonomy and self-governance as Iraqi officials threatened grave consequences for using Indian Muslims to break up the Ottoman Empire.

‘Britain, India, and the Somaliland Campaigns of 1901–04’ Derek Blakeley

Between 1901 and 1904, the British Empire launched four campaigns in British Somaliland, in northeast Africa, just across the straits at the southern end of the Red Sea from the British base at Aden. These would be the first of a series of incursions which would continue intermittently until 1920. The motivation for these expeditions was to suppress the revolt of Muhammad Abdullah Hassan. This local cleric had returned from studying in Mecca in 1899 and begun to spread his militant brand of Islam among the Somalis, causing unrest in the countryside. Committed to defending the tribes under their control and maintaining order in the territory, Britain felt the need to intervene against the Mullah. This, however, was not an easy task given the harsh terrain, the ability of their enemy to escape to fortified positions deep in the desert, and, not least, the strains upon imperial resources at the turn of the century, most especially the South African War. Contemporary accounts almost universally depict Hassan as a religious fanatic, leading the Consul-General in 1899, J. Hayes Sadler, to suggest that ‘the Mullah has gone religious mad’ in a letter to Lord Salisbury and the sobriquet ‘the Mad Mullah’ became a near-universal contemporary

D. Blakeley (B) McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_7

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moniker.1 But, to British eyes, it was not only his religious beliefs—and they believed his Salahieh brand of Islam alien to most Somalis—that caused disruption in the local society: his tough justice and cattle theft also disrupted local tribes.2 British officers, however, reported that one way Hassan attracted recruits was through such raids; some Somalis wanted their share of the spoils.3 He also punished tribes that had cooperated with the English, pronouncing that ‘the country was meant for the Somalis and not for the English, whose power was on the sea and at places near the sea’; not the interior of the country.4 They believed that, when Hassan failed to win over the tribes to his teachings, he blamed the failure on the alien influence now enveloping the country.5 In contrast, the Mullah, as John Slight concludes, ‘saw his struggle as religiously motivated against British imperialism and insufficient piety in Somali Islam.’6 Apart from the religious radicalism, the local British officials considered the religious justice offered by the Mullah and his propensity for cattle raiding as having unsettled local tribes that were under British protection. Additionally, Roy Irons contributes another motivation: that the apparent plans of the Mullah to wage war against the Christians in Abyssinia prompted the British, who had a treaty with the Emperor Menelik, to act against Hassan seeking to prevent the Abyssinia from looking to other Europeans for support.7 Finally, a specter recently vanquished haunted British evaluation of the situation; despite recognizing that the Somalian clans and traditions were distinct from those of the Sudan and that the religious beliefs of the Mahdi and the ‘Mad Mullah’ were not identical, it remained quite common for the British to refer to the followers of Hassan as ‘dervishes.’8 This persistence does suggest that the British were concerned that, if left unchecked, the Mullah’s activities could prove as problematic as those in Sudan which had only been quelled in 1898. All of these disputes led to the outbreak of conflict and it would be twenty years before Hassan was defeated. It is not the causes of the dispute, the Mullah’s motives or beliefs, or the conduct of the campaigns that are the focus here. Instead, what does the organization of the imperial effort tell us about the organization of the Empire, the capacity of different elements within it to cooperate? How did the British adapt to the transitions taking place in technology, diplomacy, and policy that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century in organizing and conducting such a campaign? The results demonstrate both the varied resources of the Empire which Britain could harness to wage this war, but also illuminate the challenges encountered in the process. Much more

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would change a short while later, but the Somaliland campaigns provide a useful study in imperial cooperation, especially between the government in London and the Government of India, at the turn of the century. It is, incidentally, also an exceptionally well-documented event, with comprehensive records retained in both the National Archives (Foreign Office and War Office) and the India Office records at the British Library. One is astonished at the sheer force of Victorian record-keeping given the correspondence retained—much of it, even on the most mundane topics, initialed by Lord Lansdowne, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Cranborne, the Under-Secretary, or other high officials. At the same time, there was sufficient public interest that soon after the conclusion of these events, the government published two volumes of the Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, as well as a Military Report on Somaliland published by the War Office in 1907.9 Numerous contemporary accounts by soldiers and administrators were published by officers who served in these actions.10 Subsequently, Douglas Jardine, who served as a civil servant in Somaliland from 1916 to 1921, when the Mullah was finally defeated, wrote an account of The Mad Mullah of Somaliland in 1923.11 More recently, Roy Irons has published Churchill and the Mad Mullah of Somaliland: Betrayal and Redemption, 1899–1901, which considers the long series of campaigns against the Mullah, largely retelling the campaigns, utilizing the early official sources, but adding analytical material.12 While all these sources admirably relate the military actions, the landscape, and the local people, they do little to explore the wider questions of imperial issues and cooperation or consider the technological and organizational transitions that were underway and shaped these campaigns. The Somali coast was a relatively recent addition to the Empire. The Horn of Africa had not excited much European interest until the 1860s and the opening of the Suez Canal. Hitherto, the only relevance was as a source of meat for the British garrison at Aden across the Red Sea on the Arabian Peninsula. In the 1860s, the Khedive of Egypt had taken control from the Turks—an action resisted by the British.13 From the mid-1880s, Britain began to take a more active role and negotiated agreements with local Somali clans for a permanent British presence in order to maintain order and protect the supply routes passing the Somali coast, especially as it seemed likely that the Egyptians would be withdrawing from the area. Lord Ismay, in 1922, confirmed the strategic motives for the British presence in the area, stating,

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Our motives in undertaking this new responsibility were not entirely disinterested. In the first place, we had secured Berbera, a natural harbour and only 150 miles from Aden. Even if we had no particular need of it ourselves, we certainly did not want any other European and potential enemy Power to have it; and Germany was known to be throwing out feelers in this direction.14

Five decades earlier, Lord Northbrook, viceroy of India, had expressed a similar perspective, arguing that it was ‘disadvantageous’ to see ‘the establishment of other European Powers on the African coast of the Gulf of Aden’; not only had the French and Italians already established positions in the region, but the Germans had negotiated a commercial treaty with the Mijjarten tribe along the coast.15 Permanent officials were now sent to Berbera, Bulbar, and Zeila, all working under the authority of the consul in Aden.16 To avoid conflict, agreements were reached with the French at Djibouti and the Italians in their section of Somaliland, to the south of the British position across the Red Sea from Aden, as well as the Abyssinians, demarcating borders and relations. From this point, the British established a permanent administrative presence, but it was a light one. Doubters about the advisability of annexation continued to exist. Even fifteen years later, Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, suggested that, ‘The fact is we have been too hasty in the past in establishing protectorates in places where the trade return is small, and where from the fanaticism and roving habits of the nomad tribes, they are always liable to some wholesale fanatical outbreak.’17 Annexation of the new Somali Coast Protectorate created some problems that would persist into the twentieth century. Furthermore, the interests and priorities of the governments in London and India did not always align. In the 1870s, the Bombay Presidency, which administered Aden, was more intent on resisting Egyptian encroachment in Somaliland than had been the Foreign Office, which had not wanted to damage relations with the Khedive. Furthermore, Lord Salisbury, the Secretary of State for India, was already contemplating the transfer of Aden to the imperial government, since its possession invoked more imperial than Indian concerns.18 In the 1890s, the question of administrative control of the protectorate recurred; should Somaliland (and Aden, as the two were so closely linked) be run from London or India? Significantly, control also meant financial responsibility. On the one hand, India, especially its military establishment, might like to control Aden, but it did not want to pay for any conflict that occurred, nor did it have much interest in Somaliland. The feeling in India,

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as costs rose in response to rising unrest due to Abyssinian ambitions in the 1890s, caused the Government of India to argue that it was imperial, not Indian reasons that required a British presence on the African coast.19 By 1898, Lord Elgin was ready to propose that the Somaliland Coast Protectorate, though not Aden, be transferred to the imperial government, arguing, ‘how superfluous it is that the Indian Government should continue any longer to have any administrative connection with, or any political control over, our Somali Protectorate.’20 The irony was that, even though political control was transferred to London, they had little incentive to act and less ability to administer a campaign independent of Aden, and hence India.21 Still, it would now be the Foreign Office that was responsible. This did not, however, always lead to consistent or effective policies. In the 1890s, Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, saw no real imperial interest in stationing troops on the Somali coast. The Viceroy didn’t see an Indian interest there. Only the Presidency of Bombay identified much need, and then only to support Aden.22 No one was ready to abandon Somaliland, but neither did anyone really want to be responsible for it. The transfer, however, would have a significant impact on the conduct of the campaigns against the Mullah. This meant an awkward administrative situation existed when the conflict broke out in 1900. The representatives of the Foreign Office in Berbera were often the same men who had acted for the Government of India earlier, now simply seconded from their Indian Army or ICS positions to imperial service. The small colony was still dependent on the military, naval, and administrative resources in Aden, 150 miles across the Red Sea, for support. Other than the Admiralty gunboat on station, these were officials and troops sent by the Government of India. Furthermore, Aden continued to be administered by the Presidency of Bombay, not London nor the Viceroy’s government in Calcutta, introducing an additional level of administration. Requests for support or matériel therefore might go from Berbera to Aden to Bombay to Calcutta to London. Consequently, the transfer of the SCP to the Foreign Office proved in many ways more symbolic than real—except when it came to money and ultimate responsibility. Then the buck landed in Whitehall. The transfer did mean that the cost would be borne by the British Treasury, initially initiating with the establishment of the proper exchange rate between pounds sterling and rupees and the ‘purchase’ of arms and ordinance already in the SCP by the Home Government from India.23

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A larger issue between India and the Home Government was the supply of men. Until the 3rd and 4th campaigns in 1903–1904, the troops sent were entirely African or Indian. Ultimately, London would pay for the troops, but the Indian Army was being called upon to supply troops to a variety of conflicts at the turn of the century. Typical of the relationship was a telegram sent in 1899 stating, ‘Composition of force for Berbera has been fixed by Home Government on advice of War Office. If you think the composition should be modified please give specific reasons for what you propose as question will have to be referred to Government of India and Home Government.’24 Otherwise, India should just dispatch the troops to Africa. Overall, India wanted to help—but not to pay—and Curzon took affront when Lord Hardwick, the Under-Secretary of State at the War Office, suggested that Britain was only in Somaliland for India’s sake. While in the most general sense this might be true, as Curzon put it, ‘I suppose that the argument is that we were first in Somaliland because of Aden, and first taken to Aden because of India. But really is that not extremely far-fetched, if not utterly fallacious?…To try and pretend, therefore, that England has, so to speak, been dragged into this wretched muddle …because of India, is I think, rather too strong.’25 The Viceroy, Lord Curzon, was willing to assist the campaign but did not seem terribly invested in it; he had plenty of other irons in the fire between 1902 and 1905 including the mission to Tibet and all things Kitchener, but what he did have to say about the events in Somaliland was critical. While he often took pride in India as the imperial reserve, he now suggested that this was being abused, with calls for troops in South Africa, Africa, Egypt, China, and elsewhere. There was, he wrote, ‘no time in history when India has been so indented upon and drained before: and though you will never have a Viceroy more willing to subordinate local to imperial interests I say advisedly that you may not again have a Viceroy who can afford to assume these risks,’ and it was best not to set a precedent that could not be repeated.26 The Under-Secretary of State at the India Office, Lord Percy, in October 1902, agreed that ‘This Somaliland business looks rather serious…It is a good thing that Indian troops are going there, for the native levies appear to be quite unreliable.’27 The Indian officials were not, however, above second-guessing the ‘men on the spot’ or the policies emanating from London. Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, wrote Curzon in 1902 about this same engagement, suggesting that,

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The Foreign Office have passed through a great fright during the last few days by the ominous telegrams that they received from Somaliland. It certainly looked as if Swayne with all his force would be cut off; … Swayne is, I believe, a good man, but I do not think he ought to have been allowed to have gone hunting the Mullah so far away from home.28

A week later, Hamilton was more generous. The War Office was pleased by Curzon’s speedy offer of assistance and Swayne, ‘a very good fighting man’ (and, of course, an officer of the Indian Army), had ‘covered his retreat well.’ 29 At the same time, Curzon clearly underestimated the fighting capacity of the Mullah’s forces and stiffened as increased demands for more troops grew. Writing Hamilton in early 1903, he protested, I say frankly that the Government at home are breaking our backs in their demand for officers from India. Whether it is South Africa, or the West Coast, or Uganda, or Somaliland, or Egypt, or China, or Siam, we are being increasingly called upon to run the Empire. I have pushed complacency to the point of what many people would call folly. I am face to face everywhere with depleted establishments; and in the event of war, I should be confronted with positive danger.30

Ironically, Lord Curzon generally exhibited pride in India’s ability to constitute a military reserve for the Empire and routinely lauded India’s contributions to imperial defense. The viceroy seldom had much to say about Somaliland, however, and clearly did not see it as a priority. Nevertheless, India continued to supply troops to the campaign. Typically, they just made the arrangements to provide the requested men. Occasionally, however, they did give their advice. General O’Moore Creagh, the future Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army following the tenure of Lord Kitchener, was the political resident at Aden when the conflict began. In 1899, he expressed his concern about the lack of ‘reliable intelligence…of the Mullah’s force and previous experience teaches that it is not safe to allow small bodies of Native Infantry to operate away from their base in Somaliland,’ and subsequently wrote to the Bombay command suggesting that the FO plan to pursue and capture the Mullah in one month with 100 cavalry and 300 infantry to be ‘very sanguine’ given the dry country and the enemy’s ability to move 40–50 miles a day. Creagh believed a more powerful force, with maxim guns, was advisable.31 Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were the inevitable setbacks in these early campaigns

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which led to criticism of the arrangements and tactics utilized. The divided authority did little to mitigate such second-guessing. Mostly, the troops sent were native regiments of the Indian Army. Other than officers, there were no English troops available for dispatch until the end of the South African War. And then the troops came from Aden. The Empire, therefore, had to maximize the disparate resources of the Empire. Many of these troops were African. The first troops raised were native levies of Somalis. With 17 British officers commanding about 1500 infantry and at the end of the first year’s campaigning Col. Swayne commended their performance, especially given the fact that ‘No attempt had been made to teach the men in the limited time available anything except generally to obey orders, to shoot and to learn the formations and movements for general cohesion.’ As long as they were ‘treated with the same consideration as is used in the native army in India,’ they were loyal and amenable to discipline despite a language barrier with their officers.32 Somali troops, stiffened with more British officers brought from home or seconded from native units in India or Africa, provided the bulk of troops for the 1902 Expedition as well, but ultimately better-trained troops were necessary. In 1903, the British, with more time and the end of the war in South Africa, found native troops in India and Africa to strengthen the British forces facing the Mullah. Units of the King’s African Rifles were brought in from British Central Africa (Malawi) and British East Africa (Kenya), including contingents of Indians recruited into KAR units. The polyglot nature of the force created some difficulties with regard to language, supply of specific diets, and the like, but the force was now both better trained and stronger. This enabled the British to contemplate more ambitious movements such as the landing at Obbia in Italian Somaliland to cut off a retreat of the Mullah into that territory. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the highest level of Indian Government (in both London and Calcutta) was unexcited about the new obligations the campaigns placed upon them. As demands increased, Lord Percy, the UnderSecretary at the India Office, wrote that ‘This Somaliland business looks rather serious…meaning, I suppose, that the force allowed them was quite inadequate for the job. It is a good thing that Indian troops are going there, for the native levies appear to be quite inadequate,’ and anticipating that there would soon be a call for more military resources from India.33 The Secretary of State, Lord George Hamilton suggested to the viceroy that,

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The Foreign and War Offices are likely to make a considerable requisition upon us for troops to take part in the Somaliland expedition. … and it seems pretty clear to me that any troops that go to Somaliland will…be required to remain there for some time to come … [and] the demand which these two Departments are sure to make, not only for troops, but for some of our best troops[.]34

A week later he suggested discussions had continued regarding the measures to be undertaken to protect Somaliland and punish the Mullah. The Secretary of State wrote, I cannot say that they have been satisfactory. The fact is we have been too hasty in the past in establishing protectorates in places where the trade return is small, and were from the fanaticism and roving habits of the nomad tribes, they are always liable to some wholesale fanatical outbreak…. But the War Offices generally is in the most unsatisfactory state, and I am afraid the relations between the Secretary of state and the military are very strained.35

He concluded ‘The fact is we have been running a great Empire on far too small military establishments.’36 In spite of Hamilton’s lamentations, troops were found, but from diverse forces. English officers were seconded from across the Empire, even the West Indian Regiment, although undoubtedly language difficulties were enhanced as new officers were introduced to native units. One peculiarity was the use of Imperial Service Troops, raised and paid for by the independent princes, but supposedly trained to the standard of the Indian Army and available for imperial service. Henceforth, these had been used exclusively on the Indian frontier, with the one exception of the inclusion of some units in the expedition to China to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. Now units were sent to Somaliland, partly for need and partly for politics. Normally, Curzon was an advocate for the use of these troops; he would soon be in the process of increasing their numbers— something which the India Office in London was ambivalent about. But here he observed problems and declined to sanction the use of the Maharaja of Jaipur’s Transport Corps, as the War Office had apparently requested. He defended his decision thusly: Till I came to India no Imperial Service troops had ever been employed outside these shores….I took the strong, but I think wise[,] step of sending the pick among them to China; and this action…excited nothing but enthusiasm

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and gratitude. But it by no means follows that, because I accepted the offers of the Chiefs for an Imperial campaign of that description, we are therefore entitled to indent upon them for all our petty campaigns in Africa or Asia. On the contrary, if they are to be sent off to inglorious battlefields like those in Somaliland, whence few of the animals and perhaps not too many of the men, return alive, a feeling may arise whether the game is worth the candle, or whether the defence of India (which is the raison d’etre for which the force was created) is identical with squalid combats in the sands of Africa.37

Clearly, the Somaliland campaign did not, to the viceroy, seem a significant one—certainly not a glorious one and he worried about the political cost in India of failure in Africa. Nevertheless, the Bikaner Camel Corps was sent as it was ‘peculiarly suited’ to the Somali style of fighting, while Jaipur’s pony carts were not. Indeed, the army favored Indian camels to the local ones, as being stronger.38 The use of the unit did, however, create some difficulties. The unique organization of the Imperial Service Troops meant that while the training of the units was overseen by British officers, there were only Indian officers leading the units. In Somalia, however, the system would be adapted and two British officers were lent from the Indian Army to ‘supervise’ the unit.39 A few regiments of British regulars were deployed after the South African War was finished, but the main call upon Britain was for officers, and these men arrived from all over the Empire, having previously served in the regular army, the Indian Army, but also with the Gurkhas, even one from the West Indian Regiment. Just to provide an insight into the diversity of forces, in 1902, the landing at Obbia, in the northern part of Italian Somaliland, included Boer Mounted Infantry, Punjabi Mounted Infantry, King’s African Rifles, the Bikaner Camel Corps, Bombay Grenadiers, and artillery, pioneer, sapper, miner, and hospital units from India. Only a Telegraph Section of the Royal Engineers and a second field hospital were English, and, of course, all the officers. These forces totaled about 3000 men.40 The Obbia episode also demonstrated the need for the British to cooperate with foreign powers, in this case the Italians and the Abyssinians. This was not something that ordinarily had to be done in colonial campaigns. Indeed, in 1901, the FO had declined Swayne’s request for the British to cross the border into Italian Somaliland, because of Britain’s tenuous international position during the Boer War.41

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Britain, however, had to cooperate with other powers as the Mullah easily drifted across the boundary between the British and Italian zones, as well as into Abyssinia. Cooperation with the Abyssinians had begun early and continued throughout the campaign. Indeed, the serving Consul-General, Lt. Col. J. Hayes Sadler, an Indian Army officer with long experience in Somaliland, was originally tasked with this mission, leaving his deputy, Lt. H. E. S. Cordeaux, in charge of the political administration.42 The appointment of such a senior officer to this task suggests the weight the British placed on building this cooperation with Emperor Menelik. It appears the effort was successful as Abyssinia contributed 5000 troops to the Obbia plan.43 The Secretary of State for India, Lord George Hamilton, expressed his frustration in 1902 at the Mullah’s ability to escape and wondered about the viability of the whole campaign. Even if ‘the elusive Mullah’ was caught, ‘The expense does not seem to me worth the result.’ But clearly, the Mullah’s mobility constituted one of the key difficulties in campaigning against him. How was this to be overcome? He could either retreat to forts deep in the desert or cross into Italian or Abyssinian territory. Continuing to address the viceroy, He [the Mullah] goes 500 miles into the interior, outside our Protectorate (into Italian Somaliland or Abyssinia) leaving a waterless desert of 120 miles in his rear and the result of his failure will probably necessitate a considerable expedition being sent inland, and it will be months before they will be able to either catch this elusive Mullah, or inflict upon his forces any serious defeat.44

Hamilton clearly saw less strategic advantage in East Africa than his colleagues in the Cabinet, but he also identified some of the difficulties of campaigning in the inhospitable terrain. Others obviously came to the same conclusions. Lt. Col. Swayne had identified the same problem earlier, asking if ‘he should proceed against the Mullah in Italian territory or now leave matters alone… If we withdraw now there will be no finality & the Mullah may at any time return & dominate Dolbahanta again.’45 Col. Hayes Sadler thought that they needed to act with the Abyssinians to drive the Mullah further from British territory. While Britain communicated with both France and the Ottoman Empire to keep them generally informed of British actions, the cooperation with Italy was more essential, if problematic. By the end of 1902, officials in London and Ambassador Rennell Rodd in Rome worked to obtain Italian

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cooperation and permission to land a few hundred men at Illig, on the eastern coast of Italian Somaliland. The British force would then advance north as a second force came south from British territory, trapping the Mullah in the middle.46 Originally skeptical, Italy did consent to a British gunboat, accompanied by an Italian one, to scout prospective landing sites.47 Ultimately, a conference in Rome in December 1902 was held at which the plan for British action in the Italian zone was accepted. Nevertheless, there was little confidence in the Italians to hold the Mudug oasis, although they were advised to try and avoid driving the Mullah ‘south into the Benadir hinterland’ of Italian Somaliland.48 While the war in South Africa and heightening tensions in Europe were causing Britain to rethink its century-old policy of ‘splendid isolation,’ it was in Somaliland that this new approach was first demonstrated. Perhaps, a particularly noteworthy event given that Fashoda was only 5 years in the past. Before the talks with Italy had developed, the officials in London had met to examine their strategic options in Somaliland. Three main options were contemplated: general withdrawal to the coast, a passive defense of the frontier, or continued offensive action. Despite some skeptics, the committee determined to pursue aggressive action, contemplating cooperative action with the Abyssinians and the Italians. The estimated £3 million necessary to carry on brought few smiles however.49 Concurrently, new administrative structures were put in place to try to streamline planning and cooperation. A few weeks later, it was decided to alter the responsibilities of government departments in overseeing the campaign. Instead of the Foreign Office being solely responsible and other departments merely offering advice, a new scheme was adopted in which the War Office was responsible for the military conduct (and finance) of the campaign, issuing orders through the Director General of Military Intelligence; political (and diplomatic) questions would continue to be the purview of the FO. A committee of a representative of the War Secretary, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the DGMI, and the Military Secretary at the India Office would meet to discuss policy and actions.50 This organization did lead to more regular paperwork and coincided with the replacement of Lt. Col. E. J. E. Swayne, who returned to England due to illness, as the field commander with Brigadier General Egerton.51 While it seems the WO was more content with Egerton, coordination seems to have improved and regular meetings of the committee, with proper minutes, were maintained until campaigning ended in summer 1904.

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British authorities also showed a willingness to adapt to new technical possibilities during the conflict. Not all were implemented, but a variety of options were considered. Telegraph service had already been established to Aden, but serious consideration was given to laying a cable to Berbera to eliminate the need to dispatch communications via steamer or Royal Navy gunboat. Heliograph units were sent. Transport in the hostile, arid region was a constant issue. In July 1903, as the third campaign was getting underway, Curzon wrote Lansdowne that ‘I hope that the Foreign Office have not dropped the idea’ of a railway. Not only would it enhance relations with the Abyssinian emperor (too the disadvantage of the French), but ‘It will cost a great deal less than a campaign against the Mad Mullah; and its political influence…may be worth the price many times over.’52 At the same time, Maj. Gen. Egerton, then the commanding officer, ‘strongly recommend[ed] construction by earliest opportunity line of railway [from] Berbera [inland]…. This line of railway will be of great importance from a military point of view and also politically for the future occupation and pacification of the Protectorate.’53 Ultimately, no railway would be built as it was deemed too expensive, although substantive engineering estimates were undertaken. Other expedients such as improved roads and motor lorries were also contemplated. Ultimately, however, camels—a lot of camels (both local and Indian)—were the most reliable option. A report in early 1904 suggests that at that moment, 8040 fighting men and 10,934 followers were present in Somaliland, but 11,477 camels and another 8000 other beasts of burden were on hand. Although some efforts to make shipments more efficient were undertaken, this was sometimes difficult given the mixture of troops present and their varied dietary and other needs. Worcestershire sauce, however, was deemed ‘heavy, expensive and wasteful.’54 Other expedients were also utilized, mule trains were helpful in the more mountainous areas, some coolie labor (Arab or Indian, not Somali) was introduced, and a light tramway was installed on the Berbera docks to make unloading more efficient.55 On another occasion, the use of motor lorries was contemplated upon an improved road. Further mechanization, however, would only come in the later campaigns against the Mullah. There was some evolution of military technology. Gatling guns were, of course, used. There is a lovely picture of one strapped to the back of a camel in the Official History of Operations in Somaliland.56 But they were not a cure-all. At Zariba, a British detachment, despite having 2 gatlings, was overwhelmed and the guns lost.57 The maxims had been rendered unusable before loss, but the episode and the ‘fanatical bravery’ of the ‘dervishes’

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in the presence of the Mullah led to a debate over the issuance of ‘dumdum’ bullets that were soft-tipped and flattened on impact causing greater damage. Brig-Gen. Manning, in command by 1903, suggested that ‘the service Bullet has not enough stopping power for use in fanatical rushes and that the use of expanding bullets is advisable.’ A month later, these were issued, despite the fact that international treaties prohibited their use against civilized persons.58 But again, the army was open to new solutions to perceived problems. By mid-1904, a peace of sorts would be concluded with the Mullah and he retreated to the interior while the British held the coast. Hostilities would recommence after 1907 and continue fitfully through the Great War. British victory would only come in 1920 when aircraft were used to destroy the Mullah’s forts, eliminating his safe havens for raiding, and his subsequent death of influenza soon thereafter.59 The early campaigns in Somaliland, while perhaps neither the militarily nor strategically most significant ventures of the British Empire, remain noteworthy because of the context and difficulties in which they took place. When the first steps were taken, the South African War was still underway, as was the expedition to subdue the Boxer Rebellion in China; imperial military resources were stretched. This would remain the case throughout this period of involvement, so military resources would be scraped together from across the Empire. The variety and resiliency of imperial military resources became evident. Due to the administrative organization for the Somali Coast Protectorate even more substantive cooperation between the War, Foreign, and India Offices was required than the usual colonial campaigns, as well as a novel degree of interaction with the other powers, especially the Italians. Somaliland did not cause Britain’s reconsideration of its traditional diplomacy; arguably, it did demonstrate the benefits of a more cooperative policy, at least on a small scale. Tactically, the campaigns followed on the irregular warfare of the Boer War, but it also provided experience operating in an arid climate. Finally, both the nature of the terrain and the timing of the campaign saw the importance of technological advances and the consideration, and sometimes use, of new weapons and modes of transportation and communication. The Great War would see many of these challenges recur, on an even greater scale, but in Somaliland, diverse resources had been gathered, novel forms of organization and management implemented, and administrative obstacles managed as the British authorities adapted to the trials and circumstances of the new century.

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Notes 1. John P. Slight, ‘British and Somali Views of Muhammad Abdullah Hassan’s Jihad 1899–1920,’ Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies 10 (2010): 16–35, provides the best modern account of Hassan’s rebellion and its causes. The reference to Sadler’s quotation is on p. 19, note 18. 2. See Slight, pp. 20–21 for a summary of these British attitudes. Slight, pp. 25–31 and I.M. Lews, The Modern History of Somaliland: From Nation to State (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), pp. 63–65, provide brief accounts of Hassan’s religious beliefs and the Sufi influence. Jardine, p. 48, gives a more contemporary British perspective of Hassan’s doctrines and their local reception. Slight quotes Richard Corfield, Somali Camel Constabulary, as asserting that Hassan was ‘little better than a raiding cattle thief,’ p. 21. Slight also quotes D. Jardine describing the Mullah as ‘Tyrant and cut-throat, slayer of innocent women and children, cattle-thief, profligate, and libertine.’ Douglas J. Jardine, The Mad Mullah of Somaliland (New Delhi: Isha Books, 2013, reprint of London: Herbert Jenkins, 1923), p. 314. 3. HES Cordeaux, Counsel-General, Berbera, to Foreign Secretary, 18 December 1901, #168, IOR R/20/A/1213, ff. 7–8. 4. HES Cordeaux to Foreign Secretary, 24 December 1901, #170, IOR R/20/A/1213, f. 29. 5. Jardine, p. 48. 6. Slight, pp. 25–27. Considering Hassan’s preaching and poetry, Slight, points to their criticism of ‘Somali’s lack of Islamic fervor in struggling against their imperial overlords.’ 7. Roy Irons, Churchill and the Mad Mullah of Somaliland: Betrayal and Redemption, 1899–1921 (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Books, 2013), pp. 24–25. 8. See Lewis, pp. 69–70, for the usage of the term Dervish. Slight, p. 21, suggests that ‘This superficiality [of attitudes of people like Jardine toward Hassan and his beliefs] extended to Hassan being compared to that other Muslim “fanatic,” the Mahdi, and easy analogy for the British to make.’ 9. Military Report on Somaliland (London: HMSO, 1907); Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, 2 vols. (Delhi: Facsimile Publisher, 2017, reprint of London: HMSO, 1907). 10. There are about a dozen contemporary books published by participants/observers of the campaigns. The most significant are Harald George Carlos Swayne, Seventeen Trips Through Somaliland and a Visit to Abyssinia, with Supplementary Preference on the ‘Mad Mullah’ Risings (London: Rowland Ward, 1903; downloaded from internet archive: https://archive. org/details/cu31924013974229), 3rd ed. This book is largely a travelogue and description of the authors big game hunts, but the 2nd

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11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

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ed. contains a preface on the recent conflict. H.G.C. Swayne was the older brother of Lt. Col. E.G.E. Swayne, who would serve as the commissioner and military commander in Berbera during the 1st and 2nd expeditions. Capt. M. MacNeill, In Pursuit of the ‘Mad’ Mullah: Service and Sport in the Somali Protectorate (London: C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., 1902; downloaded from internet archive: https://archive.org/details/ inpursuitmadmul00dixogoog/page/n18). Douglas J. Jardine, The Mad Mullah of Somaliland (New Delhi: Isha Books, 2013, reprint of London: Herbert Jenkins, 1923). Roy Irons, Churchill and the Mad Mullah of Somaliland: Betrayal and Redemption, 1899–1921 (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sward Books, 2013). I.M. Lewis, The Modern History of Somaliland: From Nation to State (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963), pp. 40–45. Lord Ismay, ‘Lectures on Somaliland,’ p. 3, TNA CAB 127/1. Quoted in R.J. Blyth, The Empire of the Raj: India, Eastern Africa and the Middle East, 1858–1947 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 71. Northbrook was suggesting it was better for the area to be controlled by the Egyptians than another European power. Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, v. 1, p. 46. Lewis, pp. 45–47. Lord George Hamilton to Curzon, 4 December 1902, India Office Records, British Library (IOR), F.111/161, #99. Later in the month, Hamilton wrote, ‘I do not believe there will be any really serious fighting in Somaliland, and the later information which has reached us confirms the theory that, if we had left the Mullah alone, he and his following wd have burst up from internal dissensions,’ 31 December 1902, IOR, F.111/161, #106. During the early campaigns, the British administrators did try to find resources in Somaliland that might be exploited to help pay for the costs undertaken. The two most notable were the collection of the local sheep or the mining of mica. Neither proved a viable option. Blyth, pp. 68–69. This work gives the most complete account of British/Indian involvement on the Red Sea, but the account does not discuss how the arrangements settled upon in the 1880s worked during the Somaliland conflict. Blyth, pp. 76–77, quoting Lord Harris, the governor of Bombay. Blyth, p. 78, quoting Elgin’s dispatch to London. The Order in Council effecting the transfer was issued in 1899. IOR, R/20/E/222, f. 105. Blyth, p. 81. Foreign Office to Consul-General J. Hayes Sadler, resident in Berbera, 1 & 21 March 1900, TNA FO 2/312. Throughout the early campaigns in Somaliland, careful accounts were kept and the archives are replete with vouchers and receipts indicating the transfer of moneys from imperial

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24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

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accounts to either local ones in Berbera or Aden, or reimbursements to the Government of India. Adjutant-General in India to Lt. General-Commanding, Bombay, 3 October 1899, printed, p. 5. IOR L/MIL/7/14510. Curzon to Hamilton, 19 August 1903, Curzon Papers, IOR, F.111/162, #61. The official history of Lord Curzon’s viceroyalty notes that ‘Aden was, in their opinion, the natural base for the government and support of the Somaliland Protectorate, while Somaliland was the natural source for the food-supply of Aden; moreover, Aden must be of ever increasing importance as a port of call for the North and East African trades, the needs of which it was impossible to estimate from India.’ The transfer of the SCP alone was, therefore, impracticable and the account continues that Lord Curzon, therefore, came to the conclusion that there existed an urgent necessity for the immediate relief of India from the burden of administering a station [Aden] lying far outside the limits of the Indian continent. The FO was not interested in the transfer. Summary of the Principal Events and Measures of the Viceroyalty of His Excellency Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, in the Foreign Department. Volume III. Aden and Dependencies (Simla: Foreign Department Press, n.d.), part II, pp. 38–39. IOR V/27/230/52. The similar history for Lord Elgin’s viceroyalty notes ‘The only interest India had in the Somali Coast was the security of the food supply of Aden, which would not be endangered by the proposed transfer’ and so there was no reason to oppose the transfer of the SCP to the FO. Summary of the Principal Measures of the Viceroyalty of the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine in the Foreign Department, January 1894 to January 1899 (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1899), p. 223. IOR R/1/5/3. Curzon to Hamilton, 23 January 1902, Curzon Papers, IOR, F.111/161, #9. Lord Percy to Curzon, 22 October 1902, Curzon Papers, IOR, F.111/161, #88a. Lord George Hamilton to Curzon, 23 October 1902, IOR, Curzon Papers, F.111/161, #89. Sir Arthur Godley (Permanent Undersecretary at the IO) to Curzon, 1 October 1902, IOR, Curzon Papers, F.111/161, #92. Curzon to Lord George Hamilton, 23 January 1902, IOR, Curzon Papers, F.111/161, #9. Brig.-Gen. O’M. Creagh to Deputy Adjutant General, Bombay Command, 15 Sept 1899, No 23, Section B. Field Operations, p. 13. IOR, L/MIL/7/14510. Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, v. 1, pp. 56, 80–81.

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33. Earl Percy to Lord Curzon, 22 October 1902, Curzon Papers, IOR F.111/161, #88a. 34. Lord George Hamilton to Curzon, 27 November 1902, Curzon Papers, IOR F.111/161, #98. 35. Lord George Hamilton to Curzon, 27 November 1902, Curzon Papers, IOR F.111/161, #99. 36. Lord George Hamilton to Curzon, 19 December 1902; Curzon Papers, IOR F.111/161, #99. 37. Curzon to Hamilton, 30 April 1903, IOR, Curzon Papers, F.111/162, #47. 38. Curzon to Hamilton, 30 April 1903, IOR, Curzon Papers, F.111/162, #47. Official History of Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, v. 2, pp. 492–93. 39. Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, v. 2, p. 425. This would herald a similar adaptation in World War I in which British ‘Special Service’ officers were attached to each IST unit and acted in a practical sense as the commanding officer. Capt. W.G. Walker, VC, of the 4th Gurkha Rifles was appointed to the position. 40. E.A. Altham, AQMG, for DCMI, to Brig. Gen. Manning, Commander, Somaliland Field Force, 18 December 1902. TNA FO 2/814, ff. 167–68. The ‘Somaliland Burgher Contingent’ was a volunteer unit ‘consisting of Afrikaans and English-speaking South Africans,’ as well as volunteers from Britain, Rhodesia, and the dominions. Some British officers did resist leading the unit until reassured that the ‘Boers’ present were not ones who had recently been fighting the English in South Africa. G. Genis, ‘Die Somaliland Burgher Contingent,’ Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 26, no. 2 (1996): 74–97. 41. Irons, pp. 37–38. 42. Later, Sadler was replaced by Col. A.N. Rochefort. The staff diaries of both men are in the India Office Records, L/MIL/5/701, as well as the National Archives. 43. Maj. J. Willes Jennings, With the Abyssinians in Somaliland (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1905), p. 6. Jennings was a medical officer. 44. Lord George Hamilton to Curzon, 30 October 1902, IOR, Curzon Papers, F.111/161, #91. 45. Consul General Hayes Sadler, Telegram No. 34, 20–22 June 1901. Handwritten decipher. IOR, L/MIL/7/14512. Hayes Sadler thought that they needed to act with the Abyssinians to drive the Mullah further from British territory. 46. Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, v. 1, pp. 111–12. 47. Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, v. 1, pp. 114–15. 48. Sir R. Rodd (ambassador to Rome) to Lansdowne, 25 and 26 February and 15 March 1903. Printed telegrams. IOR, L/MIL/7/14515. It was

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49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

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suggested that some Italian troops might accompany the British advance and support a new native leader in the area, but that ultimately suppression of the Mullah was in the interest of both nations. Paramount were Lansdowne, LGH, SJB, & Roberts with appropriate permanent officials and undersecretaries. ‘Notes of a Meeting at the Foreign Office to consider the Situation in Somaliland, and the Measures to be adopted in regard to it, held on November 18, 1902.’ A long memo by Lord Cranborne, the Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, summarized the arguments presented. 22 November 1902, printed version and corrected typed draft. TNA, FO 2/813, ff. 12 and 13–27. ‘Control of Somaliland Expedition,’ corrected tss. Memo, TNA FO 2/813, f. 190. ‘Control of Somaliland Expedition,’ tss. Memo, 2/11/02, TNA FO 2/813, f. 190. Capt. Swayne (with local rank of Lt. Col.) was an Indian Staff Corps officer had, like his brother Harald, served in Somaliland before and travelled (and hunted) the region extensively. The WO requested Egerton to make a thorough report on the posts to be defended, the force needed and its composition, the transport and supplies necessary, improvements to water supplies and other questions. Telegram, WO to Maj-Gen. Egerton, 27 June 1903, in TNA WO 32/8436. Curzon to Lansdowne, 20 June 1903, IOR, Curzon Papers, F.111/162, #42. G.o.C. Somaliland to S. of State, 25 July 1903. TNA, WO 32/8436. ‘Memorandum on Report of Director of Supply and Transport, Somaliland Field Force,’ Lt. Gen C.C. Egerton, Commanding, SFF, 21 May 1904. Under Egerton, all Supply and Transport operations were consolidated under one officer, rather than split between British and Indian units and separate supply and Transport authorities. In a separate memo, Egerton does suggest that ‘The Indian Silladar Camel Corps, with their magnificent camels, were the admiration of everyone, as has been the way in which they have shown their superiority both in endurance and in carrying capacity to the indigenous animal, in spite of all prognostication to the contrary.’ Camel carts were also introduced. All in TNA, WO 32/21906. TNA, WO 32/21906. Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901–04, v. 2, plate 23. WO 32/8424. Irons, pp. 61–62. Irons, pp. 68–69. WO 32/8424. Irons is the best source for the later campaigns against the Mullah and the involvement of Winston Churchill, as Colonial Secretary, in the concluding phase.

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Bibliography Blyth, R.J. The Empire of the Raj: India, Eastern Africa and the Middle East, 1858–1947 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Genis, G. ‘Die Somaliland Burgher Contingent.’ Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 26, no. 2 (1996): 74–97. Irons, Roy. Churchill and the Mad Mullah of Somaliland: Betrayal and Redemption, 1899–1921 (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Books, 2013). Jardine, Douglas J. The Mad Mullah of Somaliland (New Delhi: Isha Books, 2013, reprint of London: Herbert Jenkins, 1923). Maj. Jennings, J. Willes. With the Abyssinians in Somaliland (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1905). Lews, I.M. The Modern History of Somaliland: From Nation to State (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965). Capt. MacNeill, M. In Pursuit of the “Mad” Mullah: Service and Sport in the Somali Protectorate (London: C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., 1902). Slight, John P. ‘British and Somali Views of Muhammad Abdullah Hassan’s Jihad 1899–1920.’ Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies 10 (2010): 16–35. Swayne, Harald George Carlos. Seventeen Trips Through Somaliland and a Visit to Abyssinia, with Supplementary Preference on the ‘Mad Mullah’ Risings (London: Rowland Ward, 1903). Military Report on Somaliland (London: HMSO, 1907). Official History of the Operations in Somaliland, 1901– 04. 2 vols. (Delhi: Facsimile Publisher, 2017, reprint of London: HMSO, 1907).

India Office Library and Records, British Library India Office Records: R/20/11213, R/20/E/222, L/MIL/5/701, L/MIL/7/14510, L/MIL/7/14512, L/MIL/&/14515, V/27/230. Lord Curzon Papers, F.111/161-162. Summary of the Principal Events and Measures of the Viceroyalty of His Excellency Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, in the Foreign Department. Volume III. Aden and Dependencies (Simla: Foreign Department Press, n.d.), part II. R/1/5/3.

TNA Cabinet Office Papers: Lord Ismay, ‘Lectures on Somaliland,’ CAB 127/1. Foreign Office Papers: FO 2/312, FO 2/813, 814. War Office Papers: WO 32/8424, WO 32/8436, WO 32/21906.

Legislating Gender in Mandate Palestine: Colonial Laws on Midwifery, Employment, and Marriage Elizabeth Brownson

‘To help the poor by giving them direct assistance; teaching them gradually to do away with harmful quackery and charm treatment, and rid themselves of the prejudices against trained attendance and hospital’ is how one midwifery superintendent identified as a major objective of her position in the British Mandate government’s Health Department.1 Her statement reveals much about how British authorities stereotyped non-elite Palestinians under their control from 1920 to 1948, considering them superstitious and ignorant. Both Health Department correspondence and the Midwives Ordinance from the period indicate similar, consistent attitudes toward Palestinian midwives. The colonial law also illustrates British preoccupations with ensuring that Western-trained, male doctors oversaw health care and that the working classes were controlled. In addition, along with employment and marriage age legislation, the Midwives Ordinance not only well exemplifies British cultural constructs of the colonized, but it also restricted women’s independence and opportunities and was intended in part to justify British rule of Palestine.

E. Brownson (B) University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Kenosha, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_8

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From the beginning of Britain’s civilian administration in Palestine in 1920, the vast majority of its subjects, the indigenous Palestinians, were opposed to British rule, particularly because of Britain’s unequivocal support for Zionism. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration had pledged Britain’s support for a Jewish ‘national home’ (read: eventual state), as did the Palestine Mandate itself, the founding document outlining Britain’s powers and promises to the League of Nations. Indeed, this document included the Balfour Declaration verbatim and explicitly recognized Jewish political and national rights while making no mention of those rights for Palestinians. Therefore, not only did the Mandate government employ direct rule to better control the Palestinian population, quite atypically,2 but it also restructured much of the legal system to further its overall goals, introducing legal mechanisms to support Zionism, such as land, immigration, and commercial legislation.3 While Mandate officials held diverse views, and many objected to London’s pro-Zionist policies, it is worth noting that the first high commissioner was a dedicated Zionist, as was the first attorney general.4 The latter’s memoirs describe how he took full advantage of his powerful position, doing a great deal to establish the legal framework that accelerated Zionism.5 But not all of the Mandate’s legislation was constructed with the object of furthering Zionism; rather, much of it focused on controlling the subject population, particularly Palestinians. The Midwives Ordinance was just one of a broad array of colonial laws that affected Palestinians during this period, thanks to the British being prolific promulgators. When the Mandate government’s legislation specifically targeted women, it tended to affect non-elites, particularly workingclass and marginalized women, such as prisoners, so-called lunatics, and sex workers.6 British authorities considered these women subordinates needing male supervision and disciplinary regulations. This was especially true of traditional Palestinian midwives, as health officials seemed to have a particular disdain for them. Indeed, the government was far more concerned about regulating and controlling Palestinian midwives per the Midwives Ordinance than with expanding greatly needed health services. Employment ordinances also affected working-class women, treating them as minors instead of legal adults, under the guise of protecting them from dangerous jobs. Finally, British authorities established a minimum marriage age that was several years younger than the age advocated by Muslim leaders. This chapter examines colonial laws on midwifery, employment, and marriage, showing that they represented British constructions of gender and class regarding the colonized, while infringing on Palestinian women’s

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autonomy and economic opportunities. It also argues that the Mandate government largely promulgated these laws to appear enlightened and to justify its rule, particularly to the League of Nations.

The Midwives Ordinance7 Public health policy during the Mandate period reflects a number of overlapping objectives. The ostensible purpose of healthcare regulations was to improve health standards, but regulations were also mechanisms of control, as even a cursory reading of the 1929 Midwives Ordinance will confirm.8 Furthermore, improved health statistics helped demonstrate good governance and therefore provided a justification for mandatory rule, as evidenced by the annual health reports that Britain submitted to the League of Nations.9 What the impotent League of Nations might have done about Britain’s lack of progress remains moot, as was the case when child mortality rates in the 1920s fluctuated rather than showing steady improvement.10 By the interwar period, however, Western countries had come to the conclusion that the professionalization, or institutionalization, and medicalization of health care were aspects of public health for which the state was responsible, and in the context of the League of Nations-endorsed mandates, public health became ‘a litmus test of good governance.’11 The upshot of these trends in Mandate Palestine was a great deal of regulation that oversaw and disciplined health workers, both traditional and Western-trained midwives, as well as doctors, pharmacists, and dentists.12 Beyond Palestine, Britain’s colonial health policies had wide implications for the status and autonomy of colonized female health practitioners. As Elise Young observes speaking of Palestine, although she also describes a broader imperial trend, ‘Health became a vehicle for imperial politics as the British health system appropriated the sphere of women’s health, particularly through medicalizing reproduction.’13 As a result, Western, maledominated, text-based medical knowledge on childbearing ‘delegitimized’ the practical knowledge of traditional midwives in Palestine, a trend typical of colonial encounters.14 In Egypt, Hibba Abugideiri describes the colonial process as disempowering formally trained midwives (and attempting to eliminate traditional ones) who previously performed a range of medical services as ‘independent medical practitioners’ until ‘colonial reforms…reconstituted the position of the [Western-trained midwife] so that her assigned medical roles were not simply subordinate to the doctor, but were premised on woman’s medically rationalized nature: nurturing, care-

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taking and maternal.’15 Thus Western patriarchy and constructs of gender restricted women’s medical roles a great deal more than had Egyptian patriarchy prior to the colonial period.16 The struggle under the Mandate between the experience-based knowledge of traditional midwives and the male-dominated medical establishment’s textbook-based learning reflected a trend underway in Europe since the late seventeenth century.17 Western medical workers and officials employed the same stereotypes for Palestinian midwives as they did for their European counterparts, often considering them ‘ignorant’ and ‘dirty,’ and blaming high infant and maternal mortality rates on midwives in both Europe and Palestine.18 Another parallel was the personalized birthing experience that midwives provided their clients, compared with obstetricians. Midwives attended women throughout their labor, rather than at the delivery only, offering psychological support as well as physical care, and they were far less likely to use invasive procedures.19 Whether in Europe or in Palestine, women valued midwives for ‘provid[ing] a wealth of practical guidance on everything from inducing conception to curing breast infections… [and for their] knowledge of herbal remedies that could hasten a protracted labor, reduce the pain of childbirth, and inhibit the chances of miscarriage; many of these herbal concoctions are still used today in modern pharmacology.’20 Finally, just like their European counterparts, Palestinian midwives encountered unfamiliar health methods and outlooks in new government regulations that sought to eliminate non-conforming practices. Before examining Mandate policy on midwifery, it will be useful to consider the central cultural constructions that informed it and midwives’ status prior to British rule. British constructs of gender and class pertaining to Palestinian midwives included a consistent set of stereotypical assumptions. Above all, British officials assumed that traditional midwives were ignorant, unclean, and superstitious, constructing them as the very opposite of Western-trained medical professionals, whom they considered knowledgeable, hygienic, and rational. These stereotypes also reflected British attitudes toward the nonelite classes in Palestine, and particularly women, as the quote at the beginning of the chapter well demonstrates. Also, British officials and other Europeans often blamed midwives for high maternal and child mortality rates, neglecting to consider that ‘mortality or morbidity was frequently unavoidable, arising as it did from social, economic, and medical conditions…[as well as] poverty, bad housing, [and] uncontrolled infectious disease.’21 What was particularly unfortunate about such stereotypical constructions of

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class and gender was their perpetuation by Western-trained Palestinian doctors who internalized them. Dr. Shihada, a Jerusalem-based medical officer for the government, reports being ‘astonished at the response of such ignorant, poor, or rather destitute mothers to advices on sanitary measures and methods of cleanliness undertaken by them at their dim, unventilated, low type of dwellings….’22 Although the doctor at least acknowledged their efforts and the challenges inherent in poverty, his attitude toward these women is revealing. His self-avowed astonishment that they were willing to go to great lengths to improve their children’s health reflects a common bias of medical officials at the time.23 Another main construct of gender that British officials espoused is reflected in their perception of what they called ‘harim conditions’ among Palestinian Muslims.24 While gender separation may have been held up as an ideal custom by certain Palestinians in this period, few could have afforded to practice it, particularly given unfavorable economic conditions resulting from the Great Depression and the influx of Jewish immigrants in the 1930s. Over two-thirds of the Palestinian population (67.3%) still lived in rural areas by the end of the Mandate.25 Typical villagers’ lifestyles were hardly conducive to gender separation because women did most of their work outside and were usually responsible for selling the family’s products at market, where they likely interacted with unrelated men.26 Despite the infrequency of strict gender separation in Palestine, British administrators were rather fixated on this singular aspect of elite Palestinian Muslim culture. Indeed, given the importance they attributed to it and its frequent appearance in government records, British officials who created government programs for women seemed to assume that gender separation was Palestinian Muslims’ primary concern. From Girl Guide programs to nurse and midwifery training courses, administrators repeatedly used the term ‘harim conditions’ in their descriptions of government initiatives targeting women, viewing this as a way of incentivizing participation by Palestinian women and girls.27 Perhaps some Palestinians felt reassured that the ‘harim’ environments of these programs would not corrupt their daughters’ morals. But such surroundings apparently failed to persuade many families, considering the poor enrollment of the nurse training course.28 The experiences of traditional Palestinian midwives prior to British rule, and especially their interactions with the state, were very different than under the Mandate. The Ottomans had imposed no laws, regulations, or other restrictions on midwifery in Palestine, and midwives throughout the Middle East had been traditionally significant members of their com-

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munities, performing essential services in obstetrics (literally the science of midwifery, in Latin), gynecology, and pediatrics.29 Although midwives rarely appear in medieval Arabic texts, scholars distinguished between professional midwives and women who offered their unpaid services to assist family members and neighbors during childbirth.30 Professionals were recognized by the apprentice training they underwent, their methodical practices, the fact that they were remunerated for their services, and their concerns for their reputations, as well as for possible competition from others.31 Midwives also appear in court registers because judges relied on their testimony as expert witnesses.32 In nineteenth-century Morocco, shari‘a courts required testimony from midwives on questions concerning female bodies in a range of cases.33,34 Finally, the great sociologist Ibn Khaldun highly respected the work of midwives. In a chapter entirely devoted to the subject in his esteemed al-Muqaddima, he associates midwifery with honorable professions such as writing and medicine and credits midwives with the continuation of the human race.35 Some medieval Muslim writers, however, scorned midwives for what they saw as their use of magic, as well as their perpetuation of superstition and their greed.36 Although Mandate officials clearly concurred with much of the latter sentiment, traditional midwives continued to be important members of their communities under British rule in Palestine. Instruction was informal and practical, and usually an established midwife would train one of her daughters in the profession.37 John Rose discusses the stature of his ancestor in mid-nineteenth-century Jerusalem, describing her as a ‘midwife in the old tradition. All her knowledge was gained by experience but though she had no formal training she was much revered in the community.’38 Granqvist’s late 1920s research well illustrates the village midwife’s enduring prestige into the Mandate era: ‘Often the midwife is an imposing personality who understands how to win respect for her wish and arrangements, so that her orders are obeyed…The midwife keeps order among the women. They may not be noisy. They may not talk about their own sufferings. They may not quarrel or curse.’39 Not only could a midwife expect her instructions to be followed, but she was also held in considerable respect. As Granqvist relates, ‘The entrance of the midwife has the same effect on the women assembled as the arrival of a doctor generally has. She stood there upright with a smile on her lips and the calm which great experience gives.’40 And after the delivery, no one partook of the celebratory meal until the midwife had indicated that she was ready to eat.41 Further evidence of midwives’ enduring importance can be gleaned from

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the politicization of their positions. In 1941, one medical officer deemed it prudent to appoint three midwives for the Ras Abu Ammar village because there were ‘three opposing families’ in the village, which suggests that the village midwife was a sought-after position and indicates just one respect in which the government intervened in midwives’ work.42 The government established policies regulating all Palestinian female health workers, including licensed midwives, hospital nurses, and Infant Welfare Center (IWC) nurses, all of whom were supervised, inspected, and punished by the Health Department when noncompliant. But the voluminous correspondence on the subject of inspecting and disciplining traditional midwives (d¯ ay¯ at, sing., d¯ aya) suggests that they were monitored far more vigorously than other health providers. As a result of such regulation, and of competition from government hospitals that were increasingly sought out for their obstetric care, numerous midwives, whether traditional or licensed, faced severe underemployment and growing impoverishment. Another effect of the government’s restrictive policy was to deny many rural Palestinians access to health practitioners altogether. Despite the Orientalist trope of indigenous women refusing Western medical care, Palestinians took advantage of the increased, albeit insufficient, number of clinics during the Mandate,43 and philanthropic hospitals thus continued to provide far more care to Palestinians than the government.44 The government, however, somehow managed to devote ample resources to regulating and supervising health workers even though it was unable to provide sufficient health facilities to the majority of the population in Mandate Palestine. The focus on controlling indigenous Palestinian midwives is clear in the 1929 Midwives Ordinance, which encroached significantly on midwives’ autonomy. The government appropriated the Arabic word for midwife, d¯ aya, redefining it as an ‘unqualified person practicing midwifery’ because traditional d¯ ay¯ at lacked formal training. In fact, d¯ ay¯ at were forbidden to ‘use the name of midwife (either alone or in combination with any other word or words).’45 British officials infused the English word midwife with specific meaning, including that of being trained, qualified, and superior, whereas they degraded the equivalent word in Arabic, imbuing it with the opposite connotations. As evidenced by their correspondence, many officials were openly hostile toward d¯ ay¯ at, disparaging them for being illiterate, elderly, superstitious, and in need of supervision. Accordingly, the ordinance required all midwives to be inspected annually at a minimum. In urban areas, a midwife needed a license to practice, which required her to pass a six-month government course or its equivalent. Because of the

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shortage of midwives outside what were termed ‘prescribed’ urban areas, the government could not exclude all d¯ ay¯ at, and midwives without licenses were thus initially registered and allowed to practice in villages and rural areas.46,47 Although the Health Department had supposedly begun issuing new permits only to licensed midwives by the 1930s,48 the enforcement of midwifery regulations was not without problem for the government. D¯ ay¯ at answered to a Health Department whose own director described its powers of control over them as ‘despotic.’49 In addition to restricting traditional midwives to ‘prescribed areas,’ the ordinance forbade all midwives from treating abnormal cases, practicing gynecology or any other branch of medicine, and possessing unauthorized drugs.50 Barring midwives from other medical fields and irregular cases may have been reasonable had there been sufficient numbers of doctors in Palestine, but as already noted the ratio of doctors to population was 2.4 doctors per 10,000 outside the Yishuv, and rural areas had little access to Western-trained practitioners.51 In addition, advertising of any kind was banned: all that midwives could do in that regard was to state their name, qualification, and hours of operation on a sign.52 This particular restriction probably had less to do with midwives running amok with elaborate advertisements and more to do with the broader regulation of health care, as it replicated the stipulations of the Dentists and Medical Practitioners Ordinances.53 The Mandate government’s efforts to control and regulate midwives were part of a larger imperial trend: Britain had instituted registration schemes and midwifery courses in Sudan and Malaya before Palestine, and in India, most provincial legislatures would enact midwifery regulations by the mid-1930s.54 Although the common aim was to eventually replace traditional midwives with formally trained ones, Britain employed distinctive methods and strategies in different parts of the empire. In Sudan, the training was culturally sensitive for the period. The remarkably enlightened Matron attempted to recruit traditional midwives whenever possible and involved their communities in the selection process. Consequently, midwifery students’ ages ranged from twenty to sixty,55 students’ children were allowed to live on site during training, and the local sheikh was asked to verify that the candidate was respectable and village-vetted.56 While licensing, registration requiring inspections, and training were more consistent imperial trends, beginning with Britain’s own 1902 Midwives Act,57 in Palestine the Mandate government required licensing and registration under the Midwives Ordinance but severely restricted training. The Health Department director refused to allow traditional village midwives

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into training courses, and the department would not consider applicants over age forty.58 Promoting modern health care and eradicating disease were common indicators for Western countries to gauge domestic progress, and public health programs established in Britain were then simulated in the empire. Interwar Britain became inundated with voluntary health organizations such as the Health and Cleanliness Council (with its appealing motto, ‘Where there’s dirt, there’s danger’) and the Social Hygiene Council, which worked with the government to combat communicable diseases. In Palestine, the Health Department distributed posters with similar messages as instructional aids in the IWCs59 and it sought to educate non-elite mothers in so-called modern parenting techniques. Domestically, such practices were promoted by the National Baby Week Council (which incidentally sponsored Imperial Baby Week) and the Association of Maternal and Child Welfare Centres, via prolific publications and campaigns complete with ‘mothercraft’ competitions. The government in Palestine emulated metropolitan ways, seeking to sanitize and instill modern domestic practices among the working classes, establishing IWCs, school programs, and health campaigns to do so. Health officials also subscribed Palestine’s IWCs to the English parent organization and borrowed its literature. Finally, the administration appropriated English legislation, partly basing the Midwives Ordinance on the domestic Midwives Act of 1902. Midwives’ resistance to government regulation emerged in several ways. Mostly, it took the form of stonewalling, as many d¯ ay¯ at simply continued to practice even after the government had revoked their permit or they had moved to another location without permission. The Health Department generated a great deal of correspondence about d¯ ay¯ at who had received multiple warnings from the government to stop practicing in a certain area or to stop working entirely. But, as already noted, enforcement proved difficult. One superintendent was particularly incensed by a simple maneuver around the system wherein the father of a newborn, or a village leader (mukhtar), would inform the authorities of the birth of a child and collect the birth certificate rather than let the midwife do so, which was the normal ay¯ at sometimes instructed their clients practice.60 Similarly, unregistered d¯ to report to the government that they had delivered alone.61 Resistance also took on other forms: d¯ ay¯ at would refuse to attend weekly lectures, usually held at the nearest IWC, prompting one 1937 monthly report to state, ‘The attendance of the dayahs [at] weekly lectures has been most unsatisfactory…both dayahs and midwives appear to have concluded that

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the Department of Health do[es] not attach much importance to their supervision.’62 The superintendent wanted her superior officer to take ‘action’ to rectify this situation, something she requested rather frequently. Sometimes midwives tried to instigate change from within. A group of eleven licensed Palestinian midwives from Jerusalem, who had already brought their plight to the government’s attention twice before, banded together in 1937 to petition the director of the Health Department for permission to work inside hospitals. Urban women were increasingly favoring hospitals for childbirth in preference to home deliveries, and the midwives proposed that the government hospital only admits cases with complications, thus helping them get more work in the city; they pleaded with the director to address ‘the bitter fact that very few of us are able to gain [our] livelihood with great difficulty and suffering.’63 The midwives brought up other excellent points in their letter: most hospital nurses performing deliveries lacked midwifery licenses; expecting women often saw midwives for prenatal care, but since they delivered in hospital the midwives ended up receiving no payment; and, finally, the midwives had ‘incurred large expenses, great energy and loss of time until we succeeded to complete our professional studies….’64 The letter was so persuasive that the superintendent not only admitted that they had ‘cause for complaint,’ but that the government actually intended to make a policy change, as the director had instructed the government hospital to stop admitting normal childbirth cases. The intention did not actually materialize, however, and, eight years later, the hospital was overcrowded and admitting a great number of normal cases.65 Perhaps the d¯ ay¯ at ’s most effective strategy was to simply continue their customary practices, including treating women for ailments and conditions that the regulations prohibited and performing ‘gynecology.’ It should be noted that the government’s definition of gynecology included providing ‘tampons, douches, massage and plasters,’ per the superintendent’s numerous reports.66 Also, midwives continued passing down their positions to their daughters. In at least one district, al-Khalil, the government seemed to accommodate this practice with midwives’ daughters beginning to practice and the government issuing them permits after the fact.67

Employment and Marriage Laws Despite its rhetoric about liberating so-called native women, the Mandate government made few legal changes that actually improved the status and rights of any woman, Palestinian, Jewish, or British. Palestinian women,

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however, often found their status or rights further curtailed than Jewish or British women. We have seen how the Midwives Ordinance and its enforcement had a far greater impact on traditional Palestinian midwives than those with Western-training, and most likely to be Jewish or British, as the government targeted them with the most tenacity. Another example of bias against Palestinian women can be seen in the uneven application of women’s right to practice law in Palestine. After the Jewish women’s lawyers association conducted a long campaign with the support of the Zionist and only English-language daily, The Palestine Post, female lawyers won the right to practice in civil and rabbinical courts.68 The Mandate government, however, denied the same right to Palestinian Muslim women when it excluded women from practicing law in shari‘a or tribal courts.69 Considering that a common justification for imperialism was the improvement of women’s status in so-called undeveloped societies, it is ironic that many laws the government enacted disadvantaged indigenous (and other) women. This section explains how two labor ordinances reduced women’s employment as well as their legal status and why another work law concerning girls’ labor did nothing to improve indentured girls’ work conditions. It also shows that the minimum marriage age established in the 1936 Criminal Code is a further example of toothless legislation given its significant loophole. Employment Laws While the Mandate government was extremely frugal in its funding for development and social services for Palestine, it managed to find resources to regulate the behavior of non-elite women, particularly workers and those on the margins of society. It passed legislation to control the actions of these women, including a series of labor laws that claimed to protect women but in fact curbed their autonomy, effectively treating women as minors. First, the Industrial Employment of Women and Children Ordinance of 1927 prohibited women and children from engaging in certain industrial work, specifying a handful of banned ‘trades’ including those using white lead, manufacturing asphalt, cleaning moving machinery, or, curiously, making mirrors.70 It also forbade women from working between ten p.m. and five a.m. (which was slightly less restrictive than the hours prohibited for children of 7:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.) and from working eleven consecutive hours.71 In 1936, the Employment of Women and Children Ordinance expanded the list of ‘dangerous trades,’ in which women and children could

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not work, to include jobs that used phosphorus, explosives, or three other hazardous substances, while the manufacturing of mirrors was apparently now considered safe.72 Most significantly, the 1936 law extended women’s restricted working hours in industrial work to non-industrial jobs including ‘shops, hotels, restaurants and places of public entertainment.’73 In short, the ordinances curtailed women’s economic opportunities by decreasing their employment and reducing working women’s legal status to that of minors.74 This was not lost on the Jewish Women’s Equal Rights Association in Palestine, which challenged the law for its treatment of women as children and how it disadvantaged many women working in the service sector.75 To justify maintaining or creating gender inequality in the law, the Mandate government often asserted its reluctance to tamper with traditions or religion. In the labor laws discussed above, however, British administrators likely appropriated gendered constructs and assumptions they had about women in general, including those in Britain, to rationalize treating women as second-class subjects in Palestine. Perhaps the most significant influences on British officials when they created the employment laws discussed above, apart from domestic legislation, were the convictions that women should be protected and that the state should provide legal protections for them (and eventually for men as well).76 In part, this mindset likely stemmed from Victorian ideals encouraging women to wholly embrace their domestic roles in the home and assuming they were the so-called weaker sex. Thus, when women did enter the workforce, they were expected to need workplace protections in the law that were considered not as critical for men. These social constructs were not only dominant in British society during the early twentieth century, but also in Britain’s labor and feminist movements. Both British feminists and female union organizers initially opposed protective labor laws in the 1870s, but by the turn of the twentieth century, women in labor unions largely supported them.77 Labor activists beyond Britain were also supportive of protective legislation, as the first International Labor Conference (1919) ratified several conventions that included provisions protecting women in the workplace.78 British feminists eventually became divided on the issue, with key feminist groups joining forces to advocate against protective work legislation in 1927 amid great controversy. Afterward, however, the feminist movement in the UK was generally more supportive of protective legislation for women, rather than equal rights, up until the 1960s.79 Thus, the positions and activism of unions, and, by the

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1930s, many feminists, facilitated the passage of protective labor laws for British women in the early to mid-twentieth century, which affected laws enacted in Palestine. Numerous provisions in the Mandate’s ordinances on women’s employment closely resembled Britain’s laws, particularly the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act of 1920. The Mandate government enacted one other employment ordinance concerning indentured girls, most of whom were domestic workers, in the 1930s. Despite full knowledge that girls of African descent, the children of former slaves of Bedouin, were being ‘hired’ for very long periods that could last decades (between seven and twenty-five years), the Mandate government and the Colonial Office did almost nothing about it. The extent of the government’s action in the Employment of Females Ordinance of 1933 was its toothless statement that contracts employing girls under age seventeen and exceeding a year would be ‘unenforceable’ after July 31, 1934.80 Assaf Likhovski argues convincingly that this ordinance was passed entirely for its international appeal because the Colonial Office wished to get the League of Nations off its back.81 The League of Nations was at least ostensibly concerned about the perpetuation of child slavery and anxious for mandate powers to eradicate it. But apparently the League’s committee on slavery was satisfied with the Mandate government’s 1933 girls’ employment law, as useless as it was, because it did not take up the issue.82 One could argue that the best way of ending the practice of indenturing girls was to improve economic circumstances for the impoverished Bedouin involved, as did one government inspector who examined the problem. The Mandate government appeared to take no such action in helping poor Bedouin communities, however, because government documents do not mention the indentured girls again after 1933.83 Fortunately for women and unhappily for children, however, the employment laws for women and children appear to have been enforced haphazardly at best; even certain departments within the government were known to employ children, at least up until 1929.84 Furthermore, the 1936 ordinance was put on hold during the Palestinian Revolt (1936–1939) and World War II. It was not actually promulgated until 1945; therefore, it was only in effect for three years (until the 1948 War). The government enacted the ordinance as two laws that seemingly separated women and children’s employment. But while the 1945 law contained stricter rules for child workers, it still treated women far more like minors than legal adults.85

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The Minimum Marriage Age Allowing marriage at a young age was another way in which the Mandate government restricted women’s independence and limited their job opportunities. The government not only established the minimum marriage age at merely fifteen years for girls, but it also enabled the law to be easily maneuvered. A marriage law for Palestine originating in the 1917 Ottoman family code (the Ottoman Law of Family Rights) had stipulated the minimum age as seventeen for females and eighteen for males, also with a loophole allowing younger marriages, but the British preserved it for the Muslim community only. Government enforcement of the law was weak at best and dependent on subjects’ self-policing; however, there are indications that Palestinians were promoting and conducting older marriages that aligned with the Ottoman code, as we will see. Even so, a minimum marriage age that applied to all was clearly needed. Hilma Granqvist, an anthropologist who conducted extensive research in a Palestinian village in the late 1920s, describes the typical age in that village as ‘shortly after puberty,’ and cites the age range in Palestine from twelve to seventeen for girls.86 Similarly, girls could be married at twelve years of age in Jewish communities.87 It was not until 1936 that the government established a minimum marriage age in its Criminal Code, by banning marriage for girls under age fifteen. There was, however, a proviso that legalized younger marriages, allowing a girl under fifteen to marry if her parents consented, she had reached puberty, and a doctor verified that consummation would cause her ‘no physical ill effects.’88 Participants (and celebrants) in the marriage of a girl under fifteen without meeting those terms could face a sixmonth prison sentence. There was, however, no mention of punishments for those involved in underage boys’ marriages, and, in fact, the Criminal Code made no mention of boys at all in its articles on child marriage. British cultural constructions regarding females in general and Palestinian-Arabs in particular may explain why the Mandate government’s Criminal Code was silent on the issue of boys’ early marriage, at least in part. As we have seen with the employment ordinances, women and girls were expected to need more protections than men and boys. British stereotypes about Arab women probably played some role as well. When Westerners began escalating their visits to Palestine and the Middle East in the nineteenth century, an abundance of their travelogues, letters, and other writings also emerged. These accounts were full of disparaging remarks about Arab culture and tended to describe Middle Easterners as ignorant and

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uncivilized.89 The writings on Muslim women in Palestine, and beyond, often fixated on the institution of seclusion, despite its relatively infrequent practice among Palestinians, as discussed, and women’s appearance, considering those in so-called native dress to be oppressed and backward and those who adopted Western garb to be enlightened and modern.90 These constructions likely influenced how the 1936 code criminalized marriage under fifteen for girls but not for boys, although it certainly did not go far enough for girls either. Perhaps British authorities also assumed that child marriage among boys was not widespread. Granqvist suggests, however, that early marriages among boys were also prevalent in rural areas.91 In any case, because the aforementioned proviso allowed girls younger than fifteen to marry, it is likely that this law was largely intended to appeal to an audience beyond Palestine. As we have seen with the other laws in this chapter, and particularly the girls’ employment law, the Mandate government established the minimum marriage age with international observers in mind rather than with the intent to effect meaningful change. The 1931 and 1932 Permanent Mandates Commission was concerned about child marriage in Palestine, as in other mandates, requiring a report from the Mandate government on the issue.92 Because the government owed its very existence to this League of Nations-created body and required its ongoing sanction to uphold the Mandate’s legitimacy in the west, the government had little choice but to accommodate the commission’s requests and concerns. The government also sought the approval of British citizens by setting a minimum marriage age in Palestine, largely because Member of Parliament Eleanor Rathbone brought the issue of child marriage to the public’s attention. Rathbone had fought to raise the marriage age in England and India, and in the early 1930s, she also took on the issue for Palestine. In 1933, she grilled the Secretary of State for the Colonies in the House of Commons about draft legislation of Palestine’s Criminal Code, which set the minimum age for girls at thirteen, asking ‘whether he is aware that the proposal to fix so low a marriage, and even then to make it subject to a wide range of exemption, is arousing dismay among many in Palestine who are anxious for the suppression of child marriage; and what action he proposes to take about it.’93 She also proposed a committee to examine ‘the extents and effects, physical and social, of child marriage’ in Palestine, as well as information on the minimum age of marriage and consent in all the Empire’s colonies and territories.94 After Rathbone raised the issue so publically in England, the Mandate government likely sought to satisfy domestic and international

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concerns by setting the minimum marriage age at fifteen for girls. But as we saw with the girls’ employment law, the British did not enforce the law with much persistence. Indeed, they relied on the Palestinian community’s self-enforcement of the law via religious court judges. The imperial context also played an important role in Britain’s decision to establish a minimum marriage age for Palestine in 1936. Other parts of the empire had enacted similar laws by the late 1920s. The British-created emirate of Transjordan established its minimum age at sixteen years for both sexes, and India set it at fourteen years for girls and eighteen for boys.95 Indians must be credited for passing the law, however, as an Indian legislature promulgated the law after much campaigning by Indian (and some British) activists. Indeed, the British were initially against the law because they wished to avoid antagonizing the Indian public.96 British officials in India were anxious about being blamed for the law, particularly because the Queen had promised not to meddle in religious affairs per her 1858 proclamation.97 Some Indian politicians, however, suspected that British authorities, while denouncing harmful social practices and seemingly sympathizing with activists, actually found such customs useful because they justified British rule and feared that ending them would hasten India’s complete independence.98 It is worth noting that Indian reformers had two main goals in the law: ending child marriage, with an emphasis on protecting girls, and demonstrating to Europe that India was fully capable of self-rule.99 After gaining independence in domestic affairs in 1923, Egypt fixed the minimum marriage age at sixteen for girls and eighteen for boys. Similarly as in India, Egyptian civil society played a major role in fomenting this family law reform, as the Egyptian Feminist Union’s extensive campaigning was largely responsible for raising the marriage age. The Palestinian women’s movement did not demand a child marriage law with much energy, however, because their foremost concerns were British rule and Jewish colonialism. Palestinian activists did attend international Arab women’s summits during which the need for marriage age laws was raised, but there was an understanding among Palestinian women leaders that the national cause must remain paramount.100 The Mandate government often claimed that it wished to avoid interfering with religion as an excuse for establishing laws that did little to improve women’s status or degraded women’s position. Indeed, the government depicted its decision to establish a young minimum marriage age as a reaction, or even a concession, to the Palestinian Muslim community. In doing so, it characterized the Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) as a reac-

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tionary group that clung to backward traditions and was ultimately responsible for the law. Certain scholars have tended to perpetuate the Mandate government’s perspective and propaganda on the topic without considering sources that challenge it.101 Certainly the Muslim community and the SMC were resistant to any measures the government suggested that would strip power from them. But what such accounts fail to acknowledge is that the SMC actually set a minimum age of eighteen years for girls for the Muslim community, which was three years older than the government’s law. Rather, Likhovski asserts that the government worked ‘in consultation with’ the SMC to produce an even younger minimum marriage age of thirteen in a 1933 draft of the criminal ordinance.102 How extensively could the Mandate government have ‘consulted with’ the SMC when its draft adopted a minimum marriage age that was five years younger than the SMC’s? Moreover, Ruth Woodsmall, a researcher on Muslim women’s changing status and General Secretary of the World YWCA, reported in 1936 that the SMC was active in enforcing its own regulation of eighteen and twenty years, which ‘was regarded by the common people as practically a law, and hence, was followed to a large degree.’103 She goes on to describe ‘the Grand Mufti and SMC as an effective instrument for reform…creating a public opinion against early marriage, and is, thus, effectively pushing up the marriage age.’104 The SMC’s efforts appear to have been more successful, or at least more ambitious, in effecting social change than had it merely supported conservative government legislation. Furthermore, orthodox Jewish groups also opposed the law, presumably because it weakened their religious authority. One Jewish group advocated a minimum age of fifteen and argued that the law should allow younger ages in exceptional cases.105 Their recommendation, like the government’s law, was three years younger than the age set by the SMC. Finally, it is interesting that Likhovski does not acknowledge the SMC’s minimum marriage age even though he includes Woodsmall in his bibliography. There are other indications that Palestinian leaders were working to encourage older marriages and that they were in fact succeeding at promoting this social change. According to a Palestinian doctor in Ramallah in 1923, judges in shari‘a courts throughout Palestine refused to register marriages for girls less than sixteen years old.106 Families could evade this requirement by misrepresenting the girl’s age, but it appears that judges were at least trying to encourage reform. Also, Granqvist mentions a local skaykh who refused to marry underage children because he feared the government’s penalty.107 She cautions against expecting much social change

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from top-down reforms in discussing government efforts to end forced marriages, however: ‘The central government now demands that the consent shall be concerned with the bridegroom, so there appears a new possibility and an attractive outlook for a woman who does not approve of her bridegroom…[But] so long as the forms of society remain unchanged, so long will the demand for the woman’s consent to her own marriage be purely formal…When a woman in the last minute is asked as to her will she is already prepared by her people who have talked to her on the subject until she feels there is nothing else for her to do but to bow to the inevitable…If she does not wish to be expelled from society she cannot, nor will she, break with them who are and will remain all her life her natural protectors, her father and her brother.’108 Thus Woodsmall’s account of the SMC promoting social change is all the more significant, since it was a means of effectively doing so, while government efforts that did not involve local community leaders’ partnerships were unlikely to succeed. Then why did the Mandate government enact fifteen years for the minimum marriage age, given that the SMC set it at eighteen years and when the British justified their rule with rhetoric about (ostensibly) liberating its female subjects? The age that the government selected may have been connected to Britain’s domestic affairs. England had recently passed the Age of Marriage Act in 1929, which raised the marriage age to sixteen for both girls and boys, previously having been twelve and fourteen, respectively. The minimum marriage age set in England was therefore one year older than in Palestine, per the Mandate’s 1936 Criminal Code. Had the government followed the SMC’s recommendation, Palestine would have had an older minimum age than England by two years. As the colonizing power, most government officials considered themselves to be culturally superior to their colonized subjects, whom they stereotyped as being ‘ignorant’ and ‘uncivilized,’ as discussed. Consequently, it was unlikely for them to enact an older marriage age for Palestinians and others under British rule.

Conclusion Government legislation that disadvantaged Palestinian women during the British Mandate disproportionately affected non-elites, including ordinances regulating midwives, women’s employment, and the minimum marriage age for girls. In all of these laws, the government’s treatment of Palestinian women revolved around perpetuating British constructions of gender regarding the colonized and controlling its colonial subjects. Indeed,

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we have seen how British health officials were far more concerned about restricting and monitoring Palestinian midwives than with expanding access to greatly needed health care. All of these laws harmed Palestinian women’s status because they restricted their autonomy and infringed on their economic opportunities, while doing little to advance women’s or girls’ interests. Enforcement of the laws typically took place when regulation or discipline was in order, but not when it would have benefited the colonized, as with the girls’ employment or minimum marriage laws. It appears that British authorities were more concerned about presenting a positive image of their rule to the League of Nations and British citizens than with effecting change that actually improved women’s or girls’ position. Finally, it is clear that domestic legislation influenced most of these laws, which also suggests that being perceived as beneficent rulers was a major goal of Mandate officials.

Notes 1. Memo to SMO, July 31, 1929, ISA RG10 66/5. 2. The British tended to use indirect rule throughout the empire, the notable exceptions being India post-1857 and Mandate Palestine. 3. For Zionists’ exploitation of the Mandate government’s land laws, see LeVine, ‘Conquest Through Town Planning,’ 36–52. The 1920 Immigration Ordinance gave the High Commissioner tremendous and highly subjective powers to determine which immigrants were allowed to stay and become citizens. See Official Gazette, 2–3. 4. Smith, Palestine, 104, 107–9 and Wasserstein, The British, 92. 5. Bentwich, My Seventy-Seven, 67. 6. Fleischmann, The Nation, 32–33. For a similar trend in Egypt, see Bruce Dunne’s dissertation Sexuality and the ‘Civilizing Process,’ which discusses how the British administration in Egypt regulated prostitutes, homosexuals, and other marginalized sectors of society. 7. The midwifery section of this chapter was previously published in a similar form as ‘Enacting Imperial Control: Midwifery Regulation in Mandate Palestine,’ Journal of Palestine Studies XLVI, no. 3 (Spring 2017). 8. ‘Midwives Ordinance,’ 260–64. 9. Borowy, ‘Health in Interwar Palestine,’ 430. 10. Young, Gender, 84. 11. Borowy, ‘Health,’ 429. 12. Department of Health, Annual Report for 1928, ISA RG10 66/6, 64. 13. Young, Gender, 106. For an analogous trend in British Malaya, see Manderson, ‘Women,’ 154–77. For Sudan, see Bell, ‘Midwifery Training,’ 293–312.

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14. Young, Gender, 106. 15. ‘The Scientisation of Culture,’ 89. 16. However, Mervat Hatem argues that Western-style medical institutions, namely Muhammad Ali’s midwifery school, disempowered women even before the British arrived. See ‘The Professionalization of Health,’ 67. 17. Young, Gender, 23–24 and Fleischmann, The Nation, 54, 243 n. 168. 18. Dalmiya and Alcoff, ‘Are “Old Wives”,’ 223 and Woodsmall, Moslem Women, 288. 19. Dalmiya and Alcoff, ‘Are “Old Wives”,’ 222. Rogers, the Mandate’s midwifery superintendent, describes a few non-invasive techniques. See ‘Midwifery Work,’ 103. 20. Dalmiya and Alcoff, ‘Are “Old Wives”,’ 222. This quote refers to European midwives, but it is true of Palestinian midwives as well. See Giacaman for herbal treatments, along with other methods, still used in Palestine in the late 1980s, Life and Health, 143–49. 21. Young, Gender, 80–81. 22. Letter to SMO, August 29, 1929, ISA RG10 66/5. 23. Young, Gender, 80–81. 24. Humphrey Bowman, ‘Review of Education Policy 1920–1933,’ Bowman Papers 2/2/13. 25. Khalidi, The Iron Cage, 17. 26. Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, 149, 293. 27. Bowman, ‘Review of Education,’ 13. On the nursing course, see Greenberg, Preparing, 180. 28. Greenberg, Preparing, 180–81. 29. Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, 15; Davis, The Ottoman Lady, 33; and Giladi, Muslim Midwives, 160–61. 30. Giladi, Muslim Midwives, 59–61. 31. Ibid., 59. 32. Ibid., 18, 163. 33. Amster, Medicine and the Saints, 144, 146. 34. Midwives in early-modern France also served as expert witnesses on matters pertaining to women’s bodies, such as virginity, rape, or the ability to have children. Broomhall, Women’s Medical Work, 34–36. 35. Giladi, Muslim Midwives, 1, 4. 36. Ibid., 7. 37. Memo from Superintendent to SMO, October 22, 1942, ISA RG10 75/4 and Giacaman, Life and Health, 74–76. 38. Rose, Armenians, 15. 39. Granqvist, Birth and Childhood, 61–62. 40. Ibid., 66. 41. Ibid., 96.

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42. Memo from a Medical Officer in Bethlehem to the SMO, February 4, 1941, ISA RG10 75/4. 43. For example, IWC visits were up nearly 44,000, from 118,583 in 1927 to 161,881 in 1928. Department of Health, Annual Report for 1928. 44. In 1928, philanthropic hospitals together could accommodate 1717 beds, versus government hospitals’ 305. Ibid. 45. ‘Midwives Ordinance,’ 261. 46. Letter from Superintendent (of Midwifery) to SMO, October 10, 1940, ISA RG10 75/4 and Bentwich, ‘Explanatory Note of the Draft Midwifery Ordinance,’ October 24, 1928, PRO CO 733/162/20 12. 47. A d¯ aya could obtain a town permit if she had been working there before the promulgation of the Midwives Ordinance, subject to the director’s approval. 48. Letter from Superintendent to SMO, May 7, 1942, ISA RG10 75/4. 49. Letter to Chief Secretary, July 14, 1928, PRO CO 733/162/20 15. 50. ‘Midwives Ordinance,’ 262. 51. Khalidi, The Iron Cage, 15. 52. ‘Midwives Ordinance,’ 262. 53. Bentwich, ‘Explanatory Note,’ 11–12 and ‘Dentistry Ordinance,’ 276–79. 54. Manderson, Women, 157; Bell, ‘Midwifery Training,’ 302; and Forbes, ‘Managing Midwifery in India,’ 167. 55. Bell, ‘Midwifery Training,’ 299. It likely also helped that most Westerntrained doctors in Sudan were non-Europeans. 56. Ibid., 300. 57. Ibid., 302. 58. Letter from SMO to Superintendent, December 9, 1946, ISA RG 10 75/4. 59. Memo from Nursing Sister Fielder to Jaffa SMO, June 16, 1935, ISA RG10 66/2. 60. Memo from Superintendent to SMO, June 9, 1941, ISA RG10 75/4. 61. Memo from Superintendent to SMO, May 22, 1944, ISA RG10 75/4. 62. Jaffa IWC Monthly Report, April 1937, ISA RG10 66/6. 63. Letter from licensed midwives to Superintendent, June 1, 1937, ISA RG10 75/4. 64. Ibid. 65. Memo from Matron to SMO, March 9, 1945, ISA RG10 66/5. 66. For example, see memo to SMO, June 18, 1937, ISA RG10 75/4. 67. Memo from Superintendent to SMO, October 22, 1942, ISA RG10 75/4. 68. ‘Women Win,’ 1. The Palestine Bulletin became The Palestine Post in 1932. It eventually would become The Jerusalem Post in 1948. 69. Ibid.

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70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

‘Industrial Employment of Women and Children Ordinance,’ 830. Ibid., 831. ‘Employment of Women and Children Ordinance,’ 136. Ibid., 137. Landes shows how restricted work hours reduced women’s participation in the workforce in the USA. See ‘The Effect of State Maximum Hours Laws.’ ‘Employment of Women and Children: Memorandum,’ 2. Shanley, ‘Suffrage, Protective Labor,’ 67. Ibid., 69. ‘International Labor Conference,’ 243–47. Shanley, ‘Suffrage, Protective Labor,’ 69. ‘Employment of Females Ordinance,’ 818. Likhovski, Law and Identity, 92. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 99. See the ‘Employment of Women Ordinance,’ and the ‘Employment of Children and Young Persons Ordinance,’ 87–112. Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, 38–39, n. 1. Likhovski, Law and Identity, 93. ‘Criminal Code Ordinance,’ 1010. There is a great deal of scholarship on this topic See, for example, Stockdale, Colonial Encounters. Fleischmann, The Nation, 34–35. Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, 38. Likhovski, Law and Identity, 95. ‘Marriage Laws in Palestine,’ 7. Ibid. Likhovski, Law and Identity, 238, n. 62. Mukherjee, ‘Using the Legislative Assembly,’ 222. ‘Proclamation, by the Queen in Council,’ 1–2. Mukherjee, ‘Using the Legislative Assembly,’ 223. Ibid., 220–21. See Fleischmann, The Nation, 188–89. See, for example, Likhovski, Identity and Law, 93–96. Ibid., 95. Woodsmall, Moslem Women, 100. Ibid., 101. Likhovski, Identity and Law, 95. Report on polygamy, from Dr. Hamzeh, Medical Officer of Health, Ramallah, to Director of Health, Jerusalem, May 23, 1923, ISA RG10. Granqvist, Marriage, 41. Ibid., 56.

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Bibliography Archives Israel State Archive, Jerusalem Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford National Archives, Public Records Office, London

Government Documents ‘Criminal Code Ordinance, Articles 182–183.’ Palestine Gazette. September 28, 1936, 1010–11. ‘Dentistry Ordinance.’ Official Gazette. June, 1, 1926, 276–79. ‘Employment of Children and Young Persons Ordinance.’ Palestine Gazette. July 11, 1945, 87–100. ‘Employment of Females Ordinance.’ Palestine Gazette. June 29, 1933, 818. ‘Employment of Women Ordinance.’ Palestine Gazette. July 11, 1945, 101–12. ‘Employment of Women and Children Ordinance.’ Palestine Gazette. February 6, 1936, 134–37. ‘Immigration Ordinance.’ Official Gazette. September 16, 1920, 2–3. ‘Industrial Employment of Women and Children Ordinance.’ Official Gazette, November 29, 1927, 829–31. ‘International Labor Conference: First Annual Meeting.’ October–November 1919. https://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/P/09616/09616(19191).pdf. Accessed September 26, 2018. ‘Midwives Ordinance.’ Official Gazette. April 1, 1929, 260–64. ‘Proclamation, by the Queen in Council, to the Princes, Chiefs, and People of India (published by the Governor-General at Allahabad, November 1st, 1958),’ London: George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1–2. https://www.bl.uk/ collection-items/proclamation-by-the-queen-in-council-to-the-princes-chiefsand-people-of-india#. Accessed September 20, 2018.

Other Published Primary Sources Bentwich, Norman. My Seventy-Seven Years: An Account of My Life and Times, 1883–1960. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962. ‘Employment of Women and Children: Memorandum on New Government Bill.’ The Palestine Post. April 6, 1936, 2. ‘Marriage Laws in Palestine.’ The Palestine Post. July 23, 1933, 7. Rogers, Vera. ‘Midwifery work in Palestine.’ International Nursing Review 9 (1934). ‘Women Win.’ The Palestine Bulletin. July 17, 1930, 1.

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Woodsmall, Ruth. Moslem Women Enter a New World. New York: Roundtable Press, 1936.

Secondary Sources Abugideiri, Hibba. ‘The Scientisation of Culture: Colonial Medicine’s Construction of Egyptian Womanhood, 1893–1929.’ Gender & History 16, no. 1 (April 2004): 83–98. Amster, Ellen. Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877–1956. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Bell, Heather. ‘Midwifery Training and Female Circumcision in the Inter-War Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.’ Journal of African History 39, no. 2 (1998): 293–312. Borowy, Iris. ‘Health in Interwar Palestine: Ethnic Realities and International Views.’ DYNAMIS, Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam 25 (2005): 423–50. Broomhall, Susan. Women’s Medical Work in Early Modern France. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Brownson, Elizabeth. ‘Enacting Imperial Control: Midwifery Regulation in Mandate Palestine.’ Journal of Palestine Studies XLVI, no. 3 (Spring 2017): 27–42. Dalmiya, Vrinda and Alcoff, Linda. ‘Are “Old Wives” Tales’ Justified?’ In Feminist Epistemologies, eds. L. Alcoff and E. Potter. New York: Routledge, 1993. Davis, Fanny. The Ottoman Lady. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986. Dunne, Bruce. ‘Sexuality and the “Civilizing Process” in Modern Egypt.’ Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1996. Fleischmann, Ellen. The Nation and Its ‘New’ Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1920–1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Forbes, Geraldine. ‘Managing Midwifery in India.’ In Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India, eds. D. Engels and S. Marks. London: British Academic Press, 1994. Giacaman, Rita. Life and Health in Three Palestinian Villages. London: Ithaca Press, 1988. Granqvist, Hilma. Birth and Childhood among the Arabs: Studies in a Muhammadan Village in Palestine. Helsingfors: Söderström, 1947. ———. Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village. Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 3, no. 8. Helsingfors: Centraktryckeri Och Bokbinderi, 1931. –——. Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village II. Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 6, no. 3. Helsingfors: Centraktryckeriet, 1935. Giladi, Avner. Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Greenberg, Ela. Preparing the Mothers of Tomorrow: Education and Islam in Mandate Palestine. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.

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Hatem, Mervat. ‘The Professionalization of Health and the Control of Women’s Bodies as Modern Governmentalities in Nineteenth Century Egypt.’ In Women in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Madeline C. Zilfi. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Landes, Elisabeth. ‘The Effect of State Maximum Hours Laws on the Employment of Women in 1920.’ Journal of Political Economy 88, no. 3 (June 1980): 476–94. LeVine, Mark. ‘Conquest Through Town Planning: The Case of Tel Aviv, 1921–48.’ Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 4 (Summer 1998): 36–52. Likhovski, Assaf. Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Manderson, Lenore. ‘Women and the State: Maternal and Child Welfare in Colonial Malaya, 1900–1940.’ In Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare, 1870–1945, ed. V. Fildes. London: Routledge, 1992. Mukherjee, Sumita. ‘Using the Legislative Assembly for Social Reform: The Sarda Act of 1929.’ South Asia Research 26, no. 3 (2006): 219–33. Rose, John Melkon. Armenians of Jerusalem: Memories of Life in Palestine. London: The Radcliffe Press, 1993. Shanley, Mary. ‘Suffrage, Protective Labor Legislation, and Married Women’s Property Laws in England.’ Signs 12, no. 1 (Autumn 1986): 62–77. Smith, Charles D. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2013. Stockdale, Nancy. Colonial Encounters Among English and Palestinian Women, 1800–1948. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2007. Wasserstein, Bernard. The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917–1929. London: Royal Historical Society, 1978. Young, Elise G. Gender and Nation Building in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.

Introduction to Part IV

Despite the mistakes made in Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, and other areas of the empire, the need for their support became increasingly apparent during the Second World War. Stefanie Wichhart delves into these attempts to inspire sympathy for the British people as they stood alone against Nazi Germany. Despite centuries worth of fighting and belief that Muslim people were inferior to the British people, the British government saw the need for help from the Islamic world and the attempts to arouse compassion for Britain in Shia-controlled Iraq were as much about continued control in Iraq as it was about its need for wartime support. The conceptualization of the Islamic World as one with Britain came to represent a challenge for British policy because of years of unattractive policy designed to control the Muslim territories. The Islamic World continued to provide Britain with strategic challenges after the Second World War. Britain struggled to accept an increasingly contracting empire. Decisions to leave the Palestinian Mandate and the newly formed state of Israel were matched with decisions to maintain a military presence in Egypt and military-backed Federation in Malaya. These postwar problems were not necessarily new, but a weakened Britain provides an easy target for the forces of secular nationalism. As Pippa Catterall points out in her chapter, even though Britain maintained a shaky hold on its Middle Eastern holdings, Islam itself proved to be much more challenging to hold. The importance of the Islamic World to Britain required it to attempt to harness the

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conservative forms of Islam that were contrary to British interests. This experience would lead to the loss of prestige and its Islamic holdings. The role of Britain in the Islamic World is complex. As the British Empire came to an end, it became remarkably easy for former colonial subjects to travel to the Metropole leading to an increase of Muslims in the UK and, eventually, the election of a Muslim Mayor of London in 2016. The growth of Islam in Britain is a clear indication of the influence Muslims have had on the empire and Britain. The crisis of national identity that has developed is a mix of continued governmental policies toward Muslim countries and a fear that traditional Englishness was under threat by Muslims. Dr. Catterall addresses this growing sense of unease and how British imperial techniques were used to control identity politics at home.

‘What Britain Has Done for Islam’: British Propaganda to the Islamic World During World War II, 1939–1942 Stefanie Wichhart

In July 1939, planners for the precursor of the Ministry of Information divided up the Islamic world for propaganda purposes. A series of handwritten sheets outline the distribution of 209 million Muslims across the regions of the world, drawing on statistics from popular almanacs.1 Next to the name of each territory and the size of its Muslim population, from the colonies of West and North Africa, across Southeast Europe, through the Middle East and Central Asia to India and all the way to Oceania was added the name of the British planner assigned responsibility for propaganda to the Muslims of that area. These handwritten notes provide a quantitative reflection of the extent to which the British Empire was a Muslim empire and, for propaganda planners, a sobering indication of the formidable propaganda challenges the British faced in reaching the Muslim populations under its control from both an organizational and a conceptional perspective.2 The lessons left by the Ottoman Empire’s declaration of jihad at the outbreak of World War I led both British and German propagandists, on the eve of this new global conflict, to develop publicity campaigns that

S. Wichhart (B) Niagara University, Lewiston, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_9

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projected their states as sympathetic to Islam and protectors of the Islamic tradition, while simultaneously working to undermine their enemy’s claim to this same allegiance.3 Axis propagandists seized the opportunity to harness Islamic rhetoric to anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism. The Axis campaign in the Arab world has been well documented, with recent scholarship that examines the ties between Arab leaders and the Axis powers and the central role of the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in propagating a pro-Axis and anti-Semitic message on Axis Arab radio broadcasts.4 This chapter highlights Britain’s attempt to appropriate the language and institutions of Islam in the early years of the war from 1939–1942.5 As one British propagandist described it, the objective was to draw attention to ‘What Britain has done for Islam,’ highlighting Britain’s role as the protector of Islam in the areas under its control while also exposing the anti-religious dimension of fascism.6 Britain’s vision of Islam was shaped by the experience of empire and ruling large swathes of the Islamic world, which British planners viewed as, on the one hand, a monolithic entity that would act in unity against outside threats and, at the same time, diverse in local practice and politically divided.7 Britain mobilized Orientalist scholars from the worlds of academia and colonial administration to develop propaganda lines that appropriated religious language and imagery of both “official” Islam and “popular” Islam to try and convince Muslim populations that there was an affinity between the ideals of the Allied powers and Islam. This task was particularly challenging for Britain at a time of growing nationalist and anti-British fervor in the Arab world and in India. In addition to traditional overt print and media propaganda, such as BBC Arabic broadcasts and program bulletins, the British adopted less conventional tactics to inspire and propagate pro-British propaganda by Muslims for a Muslim audience. Rumor and whispering campaigns that incorporated elements of religious prophecy and astrology were designed to reach populations outside of official channels. Acts of pilgrimage, including the annual Hajj to Mecca and the travel of Shii religious scholars to the shrine cities of Karbala and Najaf, provided unique opportunities to plant messages that returning pilgrims might help spread to the far reaches of the empire. These methods provide insight into the ways in which the British navigated these complex realities of the local and global, simultaneously targeting the sensibilities of local communities while taking advantage of shared religious identities and imperial information networks. While the question of local reception of these campaigns is difficult to answer, the nature of the message itself

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and the modes of delivery provide insight into the British conceptualization of the Islamic world at this key turning point in the history of the British Empire.

Pre-war Planning for the Muslim World, 1939 The handwritten notes that the pre-war propaganda planners used to divide up the world’s Muslim population assigned the area that stretched from North Africa to Afghanistan to H. A. R. Gibb, a scholar of Islamic history and Professor of Arabic at Oxford and Chairman of the Ministry of Information Middle East Planning Committee.8 In the summer of 1939, Gibb drafted a document to guide British propaganda efforts toward the Islamic world that tackled a key question that would resurface throughout the war: To what extent could it be dealt with as a single entity, and to what extent would propaganda efforts need to focus on regional differences? Gibb anticipated a number of challenges in tackling this task, the first of which was that of geography. The report acknowledged the diversity of the Islamic world, spread across a number of geographic regions, and yet Gibb argued that while not politically united, Muslims “show an extraordinary unity in sentiment. They react in an identical manner and almost spontaneously to any question which affects the treatment of Moslems in any country.” It would be extremely difficult for Britain to foster opposition between Muslims in different locations. However, he concluded that the Near East was the “nerve-centre of the Moslem world.”9 In light of this assumption, Gibb articulated the principle that would drive British propaganda efforts: “The Moslem leaders and press of Egypt and Syria exercise a profound influence on Moslem feeling from Singapore to Morocco. The converse applies only to a very limited extent. The main thrust of our Moslem policy must consequently be directed to the Near East, and the same general principles be applied in other Moslem territories with due regard to local conditions.”10 Gibb recommended that regional experts should be consulted at every step before propaganda designed for the Near East was used in other areas, and at the same time, propaganda experts in those regions should keep in mind the impact that their regional efforts might have on the Near East. Planners assumed that propaganda in the Arab countries would radiate out to the rest of the Islamic world and thus needed to be constructed with an eye to both the local and the global, balancing universal messages with very specific local concerns such as sectarian, ethnic, and class identities. Propaganda had to appeal to elites

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and religious leaders, such as the scholars of Al-Azhar University in Egypt and the shaikhs of religious orders, but also resonate with the general population. It needed to bridge the generation gap and speak to the younger members of the emerging Islamist groups which were growing in popularity as well. The second challenge was that of British policy toward the Middle East, which Gibb admitted raised a number of “awkward questions.” British propagandists faced the formidable dilemma of formulating attractive propaganda lines despite decidedly unattractive policy commitments. Much of the Islamic world was under British imperial control, providing the Axis powers with an opportunity to exploit anti-British sentiment in these territories. Gibb’s response was to argue that if Britain had not taken control of these Muslim territories other less tolerant European powers would inevitably have done so instead, and they would not have benefitted from Britain’s commitment to self-government. The resulting propaganda line was to highlight the hardships Muslims faced under Axis rule. Gibb urged Britain to demonstrate that the allies did not intend “to thwart or limit the natural desire of Moslems to be masters in their own homes.” Along these lines, Britain projected an image of itself as protector of Islam and religious freedom for Muslims. It was important to demonstrate that Britain pursued a policy of noninterference in religious affairs, leading Gibb to warn that topics such as the caliphate, which the Egyptian monarchy had recently taken an interest in, “should be left severely alone” as “an internal matter which concerns Moslems alone.”11 Palestine was the most insurmountable of the “awkward questions” posed by British policy. Axis radio propaganda took advantage of these unpopular policies, crafting both secular and religious arguments that exploited anti-British and anti-imperial sentiment surrounding the Palestine Mandate. Anti-Semitic charges that World War II was “a Jewish war” and the Allies were collaborating with world Jewry provided the most consistent theme of Axis propaganda, but the Allies found it difficult to directly refute these arguments in a way that would convince Arab audiences, given the limitations and unpopularity of British policy.12 The impact of this anti-British propaganda surrounding events in Palestine reached beyond the Arab world; the High Commissioner for India noted in April 1939 that public opinion among Indian Muslims, which until recently had been loyal to Britain, was being undermined due to British policy in both Palestine and the Northwest Frontier Province. British officials in London and in the Middle East frequently stated throughout the war that the impact

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of their propaganda in the Islamic world would be limited until Palestine was addressed.13 Gibb’s analysis was significant as it anticipated, even before the outbreak of war, some of the key propaganda challenges the British would face in reaching Muslim audiences. Professor Laurence Rushbrook Williams was charged with formulating the propaganda lines in London that would tackle these issues. After a long academic and government career in India, during which he developed expertise on Islam and Sufism, he was tapped to organize propaganda for Palestine in the Colonial Office (CO). Impressed by his work, and also recognizing the centrality of the Palestine question to any efforts to win support in the Middle East and the Islamic world more widely, in summer 1939 he joined the News Department of the Foreign Office (FO) and became head of the FO Publicity Department while also keeping his seat at the CO to serve as a liaison.14 These experiences left Rushbrook Williams uniquely positioned to formulate a propaganda plan for the Middle East while remaining sensitive to the broader implications for the rest of the Islamic world. Gibb was in touch with Rushbrook Williams as propaganda plans were developed, but the liaison work was not always easy, as there was suspicion between the FO, the CO, and “the Planners.”15 With the outbreak of the war in September 1939 all of these pre-war plans were mobilized. In November, Rushbrook Williams circulated a list of 11 desirable and 4 undesirable propaganda themes for the Middle East: Desirable: 1. The material strength of the Allies. 2. The growing martial strength of the Allies. 3. German weaknesses, internal and external. 4. Britain as the protector of small nations. 5. The idealism of the Allied cause. 6. The identity between this idealism and the fundamentals of Islam. 7. The irreligious and pagan aspects of Nazism. 8. The racial aspects of Nazism. 9. The difference between Hitler’s dictatorship and the religiously-and popularlysanctioned position of an Islamic Ruler. 10. Triumphant feats of Allied arms. 11. Revolts of discontented elements in Germany. Undesirable: 1. Atrocitystories which imply Germany’s strength and her victim’s weakness. 2 The devastating effects of modern weapons. 3. Stories of heroism in disaster. 4. Jewish persecution.16

These broad themes could be tailored to fit local contexts, and the desirable themes fit into two main categories: the projection of British strength in wartime and the complementary nature of British and Islamic ideals and values, as contrasted with Nazi paganism.

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Pilgrimage and Propaganda, 1939–1940 Gibb’s pre-war publicity plan emphasized the importance of the pilgrimage to Mecca as a unifying act for Muslims and suggested that the “moral fervor which it generates gives added importance to the impressions which the pilgrims carry home with them.”17 As a result, Britain’s historic role in facilitating the Hajj for its Muslim subjects presented a unique opportunity to project the image of Britain as a protector of Islam.18 Pre-war planners also saw the potential of pilgrimage networks to serve as conduits of British propaganda to all corners of the Islamic world and suggested supplying short pamphlets to Arab pilgrims traveling to Mecca on British ships for the 1939 pilgrimage.19 At the same time, any failure to ensure the smooth execution of these rights provided a powerful propaganda opportunity that the Axis powers could exploit. With the outbreak of war, the Government of India announced in September 1939 the postponement of ships leaving for Jeddah for the pilgrimage. Due to the public outcry the London Times issued a follow up statement noting that this was a “precautionary measure” and only a temporary halting of some of the voyages: “Both his Majesty’s Government and the Government of India are alive to the great importance of providing adequate facilities for the safe transport of Moslems wishing to undertake the pilgrimage.”20 For Britain, facilitating the pilgrimage for its subjects was a way to substantiate its claim to serve as a protector of the religious freedom of Muslims living under its control. For Saudi Arabia, the continuation of the pilgrimage in wartime had profound economic implications as Ibn Saud remained heavily reliant on the revenue derived from the pilgrimage and the legitimacy that it conferred. As Reader Bullard at the Legation in Jeddah warned in October 1939: “if there is no pilgrimage the Hejaz starves and becomes even more discontented than usual.”21 The Axis powers saw the propaganda potential of the Hajj as well, and both German and Japanese representatives timed visits to Saudi Arabia to coincide with the 1939 pilgrimage.22 Japan sent a diplomatic mission to Saudi Arabia in spring 1939 and asked to open a legation in Jeddah to demonstrate that the Japanese “were great friends of Islam” and “would be the friends and guardians of the Moslems in China,” a message that Chinese students from Al-Azhar University in Cairo worked hard to counteract during the 1939 pilgrimage.23 The Italians were aggressive in their attempts to use the Hajj to distribute propaganda in the 1930s, and the British were particularly concerned by anti-British propaganda on the Palestine

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question being distributed via pilgrimage networks. These efforts led the Saudi government to institute a ban on all propaganda and political statements during the Hajj.24 From the British perspective, this helped to limit the extent to which their adversaries could use the pilgrimage for propaganda, but it also hindered their own efforts. With the outbreak of war, there were numerous suggestions that the Hajj provided unique opportunities for wartime propaganda, but in the end, the FO concluded that the political risks were too serious. If they distributed propaganda and pamphlets during the Hajj itself, they would be unable to protest any Axis attempts to do the same as well as acting against Ibn Saud’s resolve to keep politics out of the pilgrimage.25 Overt propaganda during the pilgrimage was out, but Britain saw great opportunity in reaching out to returning pilgrims because, as MI7 calculated, they would “(a) return to all parts of the Moslem world, and (b) on their return home command as Hajjis a respectful hearing and a measure of authority for their views.”26 The Ministry of Information developed a “memento card showing photo of mosque of Mecca with Arabic inscription describing card as gift of King George.” The Government of India sounded out local Muslim leaders to ensure that such a gift would not be deemed offensive and also arranged for the returning pilgrim ships to stop in Aden to pick up the souvenirs for distribution to the pilgrims on board starting with the 1940 pilgrimage.27 MI7 also saw great potential in oral propaganda, suggesting that in addition to these memento cards the returning pilgrims should be accompanied by “primed traveling-companions” who could reinforce the message in the printed materials.28

“The Worst Enemies of Islam”: Italy in the Middle East, 1940–1941 Italy’s declaration of war on Britain and France in June 1940 changed the calculus of the war in the Middle East. Mussolini’s ambitions for Italian domination of the Mediterranean and the presence of Italian troops in Libya and East Africa brought the war to Egypt’s borders and threatened the security of the Red Sea shipping routes. The propaganda war heated up as well with Britain turning Mussolini’s famous claim to serve as the “protector of Islam” against him by portraying the Italians as “the worst enemies of Islam.”29 The London Times announced in September 1940 that, in response to Italy’s invasion of Egypt and bombings “of holy places in Haifa” Muslim leaders were calling for a jihad against Italy. The Times

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presented this development as a sentiment tying together the Islamic world, originating with “the Mullah Sahib of Bhutan, in Peshawar, India” and then taken up by a wide array of prominent religious leaders including Said Idriss of the Senussis in Libya, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, and the Supreme Moslem Council in Palestine. It cited the Palestinian Arabic newspaper Falestin, which declared: “Rome is the enemy of Islam. The Italian attempt to terrorize the Arabs will galvanize us to oppose Fascist aggression with our full force.”30 The 1940 Hajj became a focal point of this propaganda war. Italy used the pilgrimage to showcase the Italian-built roads in Italian-controlled Libya that ensured smooth transportation to comfortable steamers for Libyan pilgrims and, for Libyan dignitaries, air travel. The Italian press agency Stefani reported that “The Moslem communities of Libya and Italian East Africa have expressed their profound and devoted gratitude for the lively interest shown on this occasion by the Italian Government in the form of continuous assistance rendered to the pilgrims with the object of facilitating their journey to Mecca.”31 In reality, Italy drastically limited the number of pilgrims due to concerns about the shortage of foreign currency and spread the word that Britain was stopping the Hajj, which the British interpreted as an attempt to cover the fact that Italy could not easily facilitate the transportation needs of large numbers of pilgrims from areas under its control. They were also organizing an alternative pilgrimage to the shrines of Harar in Italian-controlled Ethiopia. Britain tried to call Italy’s bluff by “preparing publication of citations from the Quran showing Mecca is the sole pilgrimage shrine.”32 The British propaganda campaign highlighted Italian violations of the sanctity of the pilgrimage and the cities of Mecca and Medina, from Italian efforts to initiate whispering campaigns in Mecca in violation of Ibn Saud’s prohibition on political activity during the Hajj, to bombing Egyptian cities during Ramadan, to flying Italian planes directly over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, an affront to Saudi sovereignty and the special status of these cities.33 The entry of Italy into the war made sea travel particularly dangerous for pilgrims from India. For the 1941 pilgrimage, Britain provided convoys to accompany pilgrim vessels and financial assistance to cover the additional costs incurred by undertaking the pilgrimage during wartime, such as insurance for pilgrim ships and subsidized ticket prices to counteract inflation.34 The publicity lines surrounding these efforts highlighted Italy’s inability to offer transport to pilgrims in contrast to the fact that “this year’s pilgrimage is only possible because of British command of the seas against Italian

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interference.”35 Hafiz Wahba at the Saudi Legation in London expressed his thanks to the British for offering this support for the 1941 pilgrimage, particularly for the Muslims of India. He expressed his pleasure at having heard of these arrangements in the London press and also in the British Arabic broadcasts, noting that “These arrangements cannot but remind us of the traditional wise policy of Great Britain towards the Muslims.”36 Political propaganda might be prohibited from the pilgrimage itself, but the British saw a great opportunity in publicizing their work to facilitate the Hajj to the wider Islamic world.

Prophecy as Propaganda All of these official publicity efforts surrounding the Hajj were characterized as “white” propaganda, highly public campaigns that either directly responded to Axis propaganda attacks or aimed to foster pro-British sentiment. Many of Britain’s propaganda officials did not believe that this was enough to counter Axis influence or to sway Arab audiences. Gilbert Mackereth, the British Consul in Damascus and a vocal critic of these propaganda efforts, urged London to adopt a broader definition of propaganda and warned that government officials, preoccupied with policy and protocol, might not be the best agents for this work: “Propaganda, like its twin-War, can never be run on debating society lines.”37 After a summer 1940 fact-finding trip to the Middle East Rushbrook Williams returned to London with a commitment to develop “black” propaganda in the form of “whispering campaigns” for countries where “‘white’ propaganda did not possess sufficient bite.”38 Whispering campaigns offered a number of potential benefits for propagandists. The secretive nature of this form of communication aligned with the British orientalist conception of religious traditions in the Islamic world. Rumors were designed to appear as if they organically emerged from and spread through the information networks of local communities, obscuring their British origin. In addition, they were a way to get around the roadblock of British policy which limited the scope of traditional white propaganda lines, particularly with respect to Palestine. A Whispering Campaign Committee in London was charged with ensuring that whispers that had significance beyond merely local matters adhered to policy lines, and yet, because the British source was hidden, these lines could, if necessary, deviate from official British policy in their implementation.39

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While overt propaganda remained under the supervision of the Ministry of Information, there were numerous organizations engaged in covert propaganda, including military organizations based at GHQ Middle East and the new SOE, formed in summer 1940.40 Rushbrook Williams served as the bridge between policy makers in London and the men on the spot, as well as occupying the middle ground between white and black propaganda. He was responsible for overt propaganda in the Middle East through his post at the Ministry of Information, but at the same time also developed black propaganda lines for SOE which were then disseminated throughout the Islamic world.41 Both Britain and the Axis powers made use of aspects of popular Islam in their oral propaganda, including prophecy and astrology. A February 1941 memo from the German Embassy in Tehran, for example, identified potential opportunities to exploit religious sentiment in Iran by spreading rumors that tied Shii expectations of the return of the 12th imam to Hitler and German victory. In these prophecies: “The Führer appears to them as their idea of a saint who will not only free them from their difficult social worries but will also, despite all Iraqi resistance, return to them the greatest of Shi’ite holy places, the mosque in Karbala.”42 Gibb had urged, early on in the planning stage for wartime propaganda to the Islamic world, that successful propaganda would require harnessing local networks for dissemination. The best tactic was “to build up a British publicity organization manned and carried out by Moslems themselves,” drawing on those in Egypt and India in particular “who look upon the British Empire as the strongest guarantee for Moslem liberty in the world as it is today.” This would be a key goal of British propagandists, to generate propaganda by Muslims for Muslims.43 Successful oral propaganda also required local experts on the ground who were attuned to the unique context in which they worked, could generate rumors and whispers that would resonate with the community while hiding the British source and could tap into local networks for distribution. In Cairo military authorities at GHQ turned to Dr. James Heyworth Dunne, an Arabic language instructor at SOAS, to provide this unique expertise. A frequent visitor to Cairo where he maintained a home, he prepared reports for the Ministry of Information on Egypt before the war started. In addition to his academic expertise, he was a convert to Islam with an Egyptian wife, and these personal ties meant that, as British Ambassador Sir Miles Lampson observed, “His contact with Egyptians is therefore on a different footing from that of an official Englishman and for that reason

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of special interest.”44 Heyworth Dunne’s February 1940 report on the Muslim Brotherhood attracted the attention of officials in London and in May he took a leave of absence from his post at SOAS and travelled to Egypt to undertake propaganda and intelligence work under the supervision of Brigadier Iltyd Clayton, with a focus on the Arabic-speaking Muslim countries that fell under GHQ Middle East, particularly Egypt.45 Heyworth Dunne concluded that Ministry of Information propaganda was ineffective because “We can only deal with Egyptian and Moslem propaganda with Egyptian and Moslem technique.” For him, the use of rumor was a means of drawing on local tradition, as he noted that Muslims had been using this method of propaganda for 13 centuries, and that the Arab literary tradition included a number of works on the topic. He attributed the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood partly to their mastery of this ancient skill.46 Heyworth Dunne found it difficult to disseminate his messages in the formal institutions of Al-Azhar and the mosques, due to the influence of the Egyptian Prime Minister Ali Maher. Instead, he focused on the shaykhs of religious orders as “rivals of the Ulama of the mosques” who were “clever masters in the art of propaganda and this so-called old-fashioned ‘whispering’ method. They follow up the older tradition which has stood the test of ages and they know how to make the best and most effective appeal to their supporters.” These shaykhs were particularly effective since they had adherents across the country, not just in Cairo, and he claimed to have recruited over 200 of them to participate in this work.47 Heyworth Dunne classified rumors as “Local whispers” dealing with politics, the economy, religion, or rumors about public officials or Egypt’s role in the war. Middle East whispers addressed the relations of other Muslim countries with Egypt or with the European powers, and “General ‘whispers’ about the war” covered the war’s impact on Britain, America and the war, or Germany’s long-term plans. In addition to the shaikhs, Heyworth Dunne built a network of famous astrologers associated with the religious orders in Egypt who would transform the whispering lines into prophecies. Not only could they influence their own followers through oral transmission of their message but their horoscopes would be picked up by the press and also circulated throughout the Islamic world. Heyworth Dunne boasted that through this work he was able to influence the three largest almanacs in Egypt. This work required not only specialized knowledge of Arabic, but unique contacts and the ability to influence the whole stream of production, from conception to distribution on the street.48

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Heyworth Dunne was particularly proud of the “Hitler Horoscope,” 700,000 copies of which were printed for distribution throughout the Arab world. His work contributed to an SOE initiative to orchestrate in New York an “astrological campaign by inspiring prophecies of Hitler’s death and downfall by local soothsayers and seers in Western Africa and Egypt” that would eventually reach the American press through open channels. In June 1941 famed Egyptian astrologer Sheik Youssef Afifi issued a prophecy and it was published, in different formats, in Egyptian and Nigerian newspapers. SOE in Cairo confirmed in June 1941 that correspondents in Egypt were cabling the prophecy to the United States.49 The Hitler Horoscope campaign is significant for the way in which it mobilized traditions and networks of popular Islam, but also as a reflection of Gibb’s pre-war assumption that propaganda in the Middle East would radiate to the broader Islamic world and beyond. While Heyworth Dunne was valued for his propaganda and intelligence work, he was also a difficult personality and fiercely protective of his role as an expert on Islam and his deep local knowledge. His reports on his work were accompanied by attacks on SOE leadership in which he complained to London about having to work with “absolute freshers from England” who were “turned on to read files on Islamic politics and affairs and are expected to become experienced on Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt in a few days and then provide the experts with ‘ideas.’”50 British officials who monitored Heyworth Dunne’s efforts acknowledged that black propaganda campaigns had the potential to reach new audiences outside of official circles, but they were also fraught with potential pitfalls. They were, by their very nature, less regulated than white propaganda initiatives and therefore more difficult to control and assess for impact. As Ambassador Lampson warned after working with Heyworth Dunne, “his enthusiasm sometimes exceeds his discretion,” making him a potential liability despite his valued expertise.51

Exploitation of Sectarian Divisions During the Rashid Ali Coup in Iraq, 1941 British planners had warned that until policy makers could address Palestine, it would be difficult to formulate effective propaganda lines. Rushbrook Williams, in surveying the vastly different local circumstances in the Arab world in early 1941, admitted that “We shall have to confine ourselves, in the absence of the appropriate Cabinet directives on post-war policy, to religion and philosophy in a number of cases.”52 This warning

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was particularly apt for Iraq which had been subject to years of anti-British propaganda from Syrian and Palestinian teachers, a situation exacerbated when the Mufti of Jerusalem fled to Iraq at the beginning of the war. Britain became increasingly concerned about the pro-Axis sentiment of military and political leaders in Iraq over the course of 1940, even contemplating the dispatch of British and Indian troops multiple times, but given the dire state of the war in other theaters had to rely on non-military responses. As the situation became increasingly unstable in Iraq in the early months of 1941, Britain sought to exploit religious differences in the country. The British viewed Shii Iraqis as potential allies against the pro-Axis Sunnidominated government of Rashid Ali. Rushbrook Williams, working from London, drafted whispering campaign lines for Iraq to be implemented on the ground through D Section/SOE with the goal of “Exploitation of the anti-Sunni feeling among the Shias of Kerbala and Nejef, with the idea of bringing into unpopularity in those quarters the existing tie-up between the Bagdad Sunni leaders and the Axis.” These campaigns highlighted the anti-religious nature of fascism, spreading documents that showed “the desire of the Berlin and other German museums to acquire traditional Muslim relics for exhibition, e.g. the Black Stone at the Kaaba; the footprint of the Prophet’s horse in the Haram-as-Sharif in Jerusalem etc.”53 British-inspired rumors also capitalized on Shii tribal leaders’ resentment of conscription and an encroaching central government. Rushbrook Williams suggested rumors “backed up possibly by leaflets of mysterious origin” that combined sectarian arguments with political and economic ones, instructing whisperers in tribal areas to add the following point: “Government conscripts our men to make them good soldiers, but all army leaders do is intrigue to support Sunni factions in Bagdad and turn young Shiahs into Sunni partisans. Army commanders by intrigue with Gailani and Axis are ruining country. It is the British who protect Shiahs and put money into the country.”54 Rushbrook Williams also developed a series of whispers for use throughout the wider region attacking the Mufti of Jerusalem, then present in Iraq. These whispers exposed divisions between the Mufti and his supporters over his acceptance of Italian money, his autocratic methods, and his profligacy with funds given to support the Arab cause in Palestine. The whispers were also further targeted by region: Egyptians, Palestinians and Iraqi Sunnis were to be told that “in order to fulfill his personal ambitions the Mufti is trying to persuade the Iraqi Govt to follow a policy of extreme pan-Arabism, which is contrary to the national interests of Iraq.”55 An

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additional point, to be targeted to the Shiis and Kurds in Iraq, was that “Such a policy if carried through, would make life unbearable for all but the Sunni elements.”56 Rushbrook Williams formulated these propaganda lines in London, but there remained the challenge of disseminating them on the ground in Iraq. The situation became increasingly serious in 1940–1941, as the porous Iran-Iraq border meant that instability in Iraq had the potential to undermine the British presence in Iran as well. Khan Sahib Tahir Hussain Qureshi, the Indian Shii Vice Consul at Baghdad, proved particularly valuable at mediating between the British and the Shii population of Iraq. He saw limited opportunities for exchange between Iraqi and Iranian Shiis due to poor relations between the two communities, particularly in the period after Reza Shah shut off the pilgrimage traffic to Karbala and Najaf as part of his anti-clerical campaign. He did, however, see great potential in building ties between the Indian Shii community and the Iraqi Shiis.57 Building on Gibb’s assertion that propaganda by Muslims for Muslims would be most effective, Rushbrook Williams supported the facilitation of Indian Muslim visitors to Iraq, taking advantage of the status of Karbala and Najaf as sites of pilgrimage for Shii Muslims from throughout the Islamic world. These visitors would appeal to Iraqi amour propre and “would be able to congratulate the Iraqis upon the progress made in their country” and reinforce the message of Axis anti-religious sentiment by contrasting the hardships Muslims experienced under Axis rule in Libya and Abyssinia to the religious freedoms afforded Muslims under British rule.58 He worked with both the Government of India and SOE to implement this plan to recruit “Indian Shia’ gentlemen” to travel to Iraq and Iran “in the guise of traders, who would be planted in the bazaars in various key positions” in order to “encourage and fortify the Shia’ community” in Iraq.59 As officials in Tehran noted in October 1940, “A propaganda campaign in Nejef and Kerbela would eventually filter through to Iran, and such an infiltration could be expedited by arranging visits of Muslims from Kerbela and Nejef to Iran.”60 Some of these Indian visitors, such as the Nawab of Bahawalpur, the Sunni ruler of one of the Indian princely states, travelled to Iraq on official visits; others, like the Shii religious scholar Maulvi Mohammad Bashir, kept their ties to Britain hidden.61 The Maulvi later provided a detailed account of his work that offers a glimpse into the way in which these religious networks were developed, the mobilization of the traditions of both popular and institutional Islam, as well as the potential vulnerabilities in

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these programs. He reported that he began his trip with a week of visiting with Shii ulama in Karbala and Najaf, earning certificates of ijtihad to give his oral propaganda greater authority: “Armed with these certificates my dignity and integrity was established amongst the people of Iraq and whatever I said in my sermons and speeches was accepted with the authority of religious Fatwahs.”62 In his report, the Maulvi echoed the critique of British propaganda efforts put forth by many others and provided an indication of the success of certain Axis propaganda lines. While Rushbrook Williams argued that the British had an advantage in using religion to mobilize support, the Maulvi stated that the ulama in Iraq had described the British as “the enemies of Islam and had thereby aroused a general feeling of religious resentment against them,” citing “the problem of Hejaz, destruction of shrines in Madina and Mecca, the assistance rendered to the Jews in Palestine and general tyranny upon the Mussalmans, to the British.”63 His propaganda lines, which he claimed were developed without any British input, emphasized the way the British Government allows subjects in India to freely practice their religion. He also worked to shape prophecy into propaganda, using similar practices to those of Heyworth Dunne. He appropriated Shii millenarian expectations to provide a justification for British rule, citing prophecies that Christians would be ruling India at the time of the return of the Mahdi and foreshadowing the punishment of Rashid Ali and his government in Iraq.64 The visits of both the Nawab of Bahawalpur and Maulvi Mohammad Bashir were interrupted by the pro-Axis Rashid Ali coup in April 1941 and the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi hostilities the following month. When Iraqi troops surrounded the Habbaniya Air Base and failed to respond to British ultimatums to withdraw, British forces fired on them and sent in reinforcements to remove the pro-Axis government from power and restore the Regent.65 In the month-long conflict that followed Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali tried to frame the conflict as a Holy War with regional implications, with himself as the head of a movement that would unite not only Arabs but all Muslims. He disseminated propaganda that portrayed his regime “as champion of Moslems against the Jews and the British” and also exploited anti-Jewish sentiment, for example, by spreading rumors in Kuwait that British officials in Basra were replacing Muslim employees with Jewish ones.66 The Iraqi government publicized the names of religious leaders who had issued fatwas declaring the struggle a jihad, and tried to mobilize the broader Islamic world in this regard. The Iraqi chargé d’affaires in Kabul attempted to get communiqués published that portrayed

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the conflict in Iraq as a Holy War, including messages of support from Indian Muslims and descriptions of the bombardment of holy sites in Iraq, but the Afghan Government refused to issue the call for jihad.67 Britain mobilized religious support as well, utilizing personal religious networks to undermine Rashid Ali’s reputation by publicizing rumors that brought into question his credentials as a member of the Gilani family and associating him with misuse of money from the Gilani charitable trusts.68 The British gathered statements from Indian and Egyptian leaders to counteract any attempt by Rashid Ali or the Germans to frame the conflict as the beginning of a larger war between the Arab world and the British.69 The Government of India recruited prominent Indian Muslims to refute this message and arranged for travel for additional “Indian Shia Divines to Nejaf and Kerbela to use position of Indian Shia Mujtahids in Iraq for both propaganda and intelligence.” Not only would this moderate opinion in Iraq, but they hoped it would also improve the views of the Shiis in India toward the events in Iraq.70 At the end of May, the Rashid Ali government fled the country for neighboring Iran and the situation in Iraq was transformed. There were now British troops in the country and Iraq fell under Indian military influence. General George Molesworth had “pointed out the necessity of ensuring that in any propaganda in or connected with Iraq, due regard should be paid to Moslem susceptibilities in India itself and in such areas as Iran, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, which were of special interest to India.” As a result, the Embassy agreed that GHQ India should provide a liaison officer for the Embassy Publicity Section to monitor Indian interests.71 With the new sense of order, Ambassador Cornwallis reported to India that “Despatch of divines from India can now be continued but they should be prepared to face possibility of unfriendly reception in Holy Cities where there is still much hostile feeling.”72 One of their first goals would be to convince local religious leaders to rescind their anti-British fatwas. During the military conflict in May Maulvi Mohammad Bashir had been arrested and questioned by police due to suspicions of British ties. After his release, he resumed his work in Karbala and “rebuked” religious leaders there for the fatwa against the British but, he reported, “They told me that they had done so because they were afraid of Rashid Ali but that they had deliberately included the word ‘self-defence’ in the Fatwah.” He defended their actions as purely protective measures meant to deflect suspicions that they were British agents.73

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The Nawab of Bahawalpur also resumed his official visit in August–October 1941, visiting the Indian troops who were a key part of the post-1941 wartime British occupation of Iraq. Ambassador Cornwallis reported that “The Nawab also did his best to correct the misunderstandings current in this country about the political position of the Princes and people of India and strove to dispel the idea that India is staggering under the heavy yoke of British Imperialism.” The British were pleased by the outcome of his visits to Karbala and Najaf where he held conversations with Shii leaders and publicized “the religious freedom enjoyed by all Muslims in India” and Anglo-Indian cooperation to further the war effort.74 He also dispersed financial gifts to the Shii shrines and met with politicians in Baghdad “and expounded to them untiringly his conviction that Islam must hold on to British friendship and his firm belief that Britain would emerge victorious from the war.”75 Indian visitors in both official and unofficial capacities pressured the religious leaders of the holy cities to rescind their fatwas against the British, with Vice Consul Bagley reporting in November 1942 that all but one mujtahid had done so.76 Maulvi Mohammad Bashir reported that he crossed the border to Iran in June 1941 to continue his propaganda work and counter the rumors of British destruction of important Shii shrines in Iraq. He reassured his Persian contacts that the shrines “were all intact” and that Rashid Ali had taken German bribes and stolen money when he fled: “I added that he is now in Tehran eating, drinking wine and taking part in un-Islamic music and dances.” He contrasted the way in which Rashid Ali’s forces and government mistreated Indians residing in Iraq with the humane British treatment of Iraqi prisoners. The Maulvi provided insight into the roots of Iranian anti-British sentiment, noting that Persians believed all the restrictions on Islamic religious practices in Iran under the Shah “such as the removal of purdah, liberty to sell wine and pigs meat in open shops and restrictions upon ceremonies of Muharram and Mata’ have been introduced at the instigation of the British.” In response, he highlighted the freedoms Muslims had in India under British rule and told his Persian contacts that Germany and Turkey, rather than Britain, had been responsible for inspiring these religious restrictions in Iran. To support this line of argument he shared that Hitler was not Christian, he was “anti-God and therefore your religion enjoins you not to trust him” and “Hitler is a Dictator and Islam forbids dictatorship and enjoins the rule of Parliament upon Muslims.” He also spread the prophecies predicting a British victory that he had found effective in Iraq and used his certificates of ijtihad from Iraq, as well as those

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he received in Iran, to give credence and weight to his interpretations of the prophecies.77 The operation against the Rashid Ali government was only the first of many important developments in the Middle East during 1941. It was quickly followed by military action against Vichy-controlled Syria in June and against Iran in August, leading to the removal from power of Reza Shah and his replacement by his son.78 After the Rashid Ali coup, the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini fled Iraq and in October 1941 arrived in Berlin, where he became a prolific radio broadcaster, lending his religious and political authority to Axis propaganda. His deep-rooted opposition to Zionism and his anti-Semitism based on a selective reading of Islamic texts fueled the broadcasts.79 As Maulvi Mohammed Bashir’s reports indicated, these Axis radio broadcasts frequently included accounts of purported Allied looting or destruction of important religious sites during the course of the war.80 By contrast, the Axis presented themselves as protectors of Islam and its holy sites and deeply respectful of Islamic tradition as demonstrated by the commitment of German Orientalist scholars.81 The Government of India was so concerned by the potential damage to British prestige if the rumor of the destruction of the Shii shrines in Iraq spread that they proposed dispatching Indian journalists to corroborate the Allied reports that they were safe. They also suggested sending them to witness the damage Axis air raids had caused to Salahuddin’s tomb in Damascus, but this had to be balanced against political concerns, and “the possible wrong impressions regarding the Syrian situation generally” that might result.82 British officials in Iraq were skeptical of the value of these visits. While Heyworth Dunne’s detailed account of his propaganda work in Egypt was a vehicle for his critique of SOE operations in the Middle East, Maulvi Mohammad Bashir’s report of his travels in Iraq and Iran was designed to make the case for additional payments as compensation for the hardships he endured during the Rashid Ali Coup and as reimbursement for the expenses he had accrued in his work on behalf of the British. The British Embassy in Baghdad reported that Maulvi Mohammad Bashir was “a clever and fluent talker and made the most of his talent” but at the same time complained that “He seemed to be grasping and malicious and much given to back-biting,” a reflection of “the ceaseless currents of intrigue which swirl through the fetid alleys of the Holy Cities.”83 His financial requests frustrated the British Oriental Counsellor in Baghdad, leaving him less than enthusiastic about any future visits of Shii religious scholars “on special

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missions from India.”84 As the Embassy in Baghdad explained to London in a 1942 report on Indian visitors to Iraq: it is more difficult to report on a visit by one of these divines than it is to report on a tour made by a personage such as the Nawab of Bahawalpur. The divines eschew all contact with the Embassy and insist that any suspicion of their having come to work on behalf of His Majesty’s Government is fatal to their usefulness; they work furtively and in dark places… In these circumstances we have to rely much on hearsay for knowledge of what the divines do whereas the comings and goings of the Rajahs and Nawabs can be seen by all.85

As this warning indicates, whispering campaigns were particularly difficult to monitor given the informal and fluid nature of the networks used to spread them. The heavy veil of secrecy designed to ensure that the British point of origin remained hidden served as both their greatest strength and greatest weakness.

Pilgrimage and Propaganda, 1942–1943 In light of growing Axis rumors of Allied destruction of religious sites, it was increasingly important to continue to facilitate the Hajj for Muslims living in areas under Allied control. The Free French, now in control of Syria by fall 1941, saw the propaganda benefits of supporting the Syrian pilgrimage to Mecca in 1942. Fall 1941 military operations in Persia also led British officials to reexamine the former Shah’s policy which had prohibited the Hajj. The FO saw the lifting of this ban as a way to bolster Britain’s image as well as that of the new Persian government. The Government of India pointed out that in the past Persian pilgrims tended to gravitate toward the Shii shrines in Iraq, but they saw the potential value in the return of Persian pilgrims to Mecca for the 1942 pilgrimage as a way to help build sympathy for Britain in India and in other parts of the Islamic world.86 The war affected all aspects of the pilgrimage, not only the safety of the voyage itself but also the availability of currency exchange, ground transportation, and food supplies. Axis propaganda capitalized on any failures to ensure a smooth pilgrimage, spreading rumors among the returning pilgrims in 1942 that Britain would be unable to protect their ships on their return journey and they would be stranded in Jeddah until hostilities ended. The Indian Vice Consul in Jeddah handled the resulting panic and

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the Government of India provided an allowance for the pilgrims waiting to return home.87 The official Indian pilgrimage was canceled during the middle years of the war due to the dangers of sea travel, but Allied wartime offices were mobilized to meet the logistical challenges of the Hajj and the needs of pilgrims from other regions. Convoys provided safety for the pilgrim ships, US silver from Lend-Lease was provided to meet the demands for local currency, and the Middle East Supply Center ensured additional food supplies for the influx of pilgrims.88 All of these efforts in the midst of the war reflect the great importance that the British placed on facilitating the pilgrimage to Mecca as a way to secure its reputation as a protector of Islam. These efforts were rewarded when Ibn Saud expressed his gratitude for British assistance in providing steamers to transport pilgrims as well as additional food and supplies to cover the pilgrims in a December 1943 speech during the Hajj: I must also refer to the behavior of the British towards Us which has throughout been good. As a proof of this is the attitude they and their Allies adopted as regards Our neutrality and their efforts to make the Holy Places safe from danger thus saving Our country from a dire fate. They did not, as I have already said, oblige Us to take any action contrary to Our attitude of neutrality out of respect for the Holy Lands. We here, with God’s help and power, are doing what We can to preserve and protect Our country and We have noticed that Our Allies entirely agree with and approve Our action.89

The turning tides of the war in 1943 led to a reexamination of these British propaganda lines. As an Allied victory became increasingly likely, the focus moved away from convincing the Islamic world that Britain had the strength to win and was the best protector of their interests. Instead, the Ministry of Information’s 1943 revised propaganda directives for the region reflect a shift toward building cooperation with the United Nations by convincing Muslim audiences that the democratic principles for which the Allies were fighting were compatible with the values of Islam, with an eye toward a transformed post-war world.90 Ibn Saud’s son Amir Faisal took up these themes in a 1944 speech to the pilgrims on the Hajj, declaring: “The greatest champion of the principles of Freedom, Justice and Equality among men is Islam whose doctrines are pledged to establish them. All nations are today fighting for the cause of freedom which is already ours through Islam and which we have but to adhere to.”91

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The secrecy surrounding the rumor and whispering campaigns outlined above stand in stark contrast to the very visible print and media efforts to project an image of Britain as a protector of Islam. Britain’s policy toward the Hajj in the war years straddled this line, as on the one hand Britain publicly mobilized the resources of the Allies to help ensure a successful Hajj while also working behind the scenes to encourage pilgrims to bring proBritish propaganda lines with them when they returned home. The Middle East remained central to these efforts, but planners were also deeply cognizant of their implications in India and elsewhere. Taken together these case studies provide glimpses of the ways in which British propagandists mobilized information networks across the Islamic world in the early years of World War II, from pilgrimage traffic to the circulation of religious scholars and rumors, with the assumption that localized propaganda lines could be packaged for export to Muslims living in other regions via these religious networks. While it is difficult to measure the impact of these campaigns, as British planners recognized at the time, the records that remain of Heyworth Dunne’s efforts in Egypt, Rushbrook Williams’ targeted whispering lines for Iraq, and the Maulvi Mohammad Bashir’s account of his work in Iraq and Iran are valuable microhistories from the imperial archive that reveal the larger currents at work in British propaganda toward the Islamic world. The content of the message was reflective of British Orientalist assumptions about the Islamic world and the key British architects of these wartime propaganda campaigns examined here went on to careers in academia or journalism, shaping the emerging fields of Islamic and Middle East studies. They took the lessons learned in war, as well as all of their assumptions of a culturally monolithic Islamic world, as Gibb had articulated in his pre-war memo, with them into the post-war world.92

Notes 1. Handwritten sheets (July 1939), INF1/407, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA). 2. For the concept of the British Empire as a Muslim Empire, see John Slight, The British Empire and the Hajj , 1865–1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), pp. 1–4 and 325–26, footnote 1; Francis Robinson, ‘The British Empire and the Muslim World,’ in The Oxford History of the British Empire Vol. 4: The Twentieth Century, ed. Judith M. Brown and Wm. Roger Louis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 398–420; and Faisal Devji, ‘Islam and British Imperial Thought,’ in

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3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

Islam and the European Empires , ed. David Motadel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 254–68 explores the evolution of this concept and the role of India in shaping British assumptions about Islam. Cemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 99–101 and 163–72. Jeffrey Herf demonstrates in his study of Axis propaganda to the Arab world the ways in which German radio broadcasts used both secular and religious arguments to win support, “asserting that there was an elective affinity between Nazism and what the Nazis claimed Islam to be.” Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. xx. For the Mufti of Jerusalem’s role, see Philip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin Al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). For examples of British Ministry of Information print propaganda aimed at Muslim audiences and the way in which it appropriated religious themes, see David Welch, Persuading the People: British Propaganda in World War II (London: The British Library, 2016), pp. 178–86. R. Leeper, 6 January 1939, FO 395/650, TNA. Cemil Aydin offers a critique of the concept of a “Muslim world” and explores the historical roots of this idea, including the role that the European powers played in its development, in The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). For Gibb’s career, see A.K.S. Lambton, ‘Obituary: Sir Hamilton Alexander Roskeen Gibb,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 35, no. 2 (1972): 338–345. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/614407. Accessed 19 September 2018. Ministry of Information, Planning Section, Memo No. 321 ‘The General Principles of Publicity Among Moslems,’ 16 August 1939, INF1/407, TNA. Ibid. Ibid. For interwar debates on the caliphate, see Aydin, pp. 136–41; for growing Egyptian interest in the caliphate in the late 1930s, see Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), especially Chapter 7. For analysis of Axis appropriation of religious rhetoric in its early wartime propaganda and the role of Palestine, see Herf, pp. 44–55 and pp. 71–72 and 87 for the British and American debates on how to respond to this line of attack. For one of many examples of this conclusion, see ‘Meeting in Lord Lloyd’s Room to Discuss Possibilities of Propaganda in Moslem Countries,’ 14 April 1939, FO 395/650.

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14. Leeper, FO to Shuckburgh, CO, 13 May 1939, and enclosure: Memorandum ‘Propaganda in the Middle East,’ FO 395/650, TNA. For Rushbrook William’s career 1936–1944, see IOR/L/I/1/1547, British Library. 15. For the tensions between these two groups and attempts to establish a liaison, see Waterfield (Civil Service Commission) to Leeper, 12 July 1939; Leeper to Waterfield, 25 July 1939; and Minute by Rushbrook Williams, 11 July 1939, FO 395/650, TNA. 16. Ministry of Information Circular communicated by Rushbrook Williams, 25 November 1939, FO 371/24548, TNA. 17. Ministry of Information, Planning Section, Memo No. 321 ‘The General Principles of Publicity Among Moslems,’ 16 August 1939, INF1/407, TNA. 18. For the history of Britain’s policy towards the Hajj during World War II, see John Slight, The British Empire and the Hajj , 1865–1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), pp. 302–6. 19. R. Leeper, 6 January 1939, FO 395/650, TNA. 20. ‘The Mecca Pilgrimage,’ The Times (London, UK), 20 October 1939, p. 7. 21. Bullard to Halifax, 29 October 1939, in Records of the Hajj : A Documentary History of the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Vol. 7: The Saudi Period (1935–1951) (Chippenham, UK: Archive Editions, 1993), 351–52 (hereafter Records of the Hajj ). 22. 1939 pilgrimage report, Records of the Hajj , p. 314. 23. 1939 pilgrimage report, Records of the Hajj , p. 317 and Bullard to Halifax, 20 April 1939, Records of the Hajj , pp. 343–44. For Japanese propaganda towards the Islamic world during the war, see Kelly A. Hammond, ‘Managing Muslims: Imperial Japan, Islamic Policy, and Axis Connections During the Second World War,’ Journal of Global History 12 (2007): 251–73. 24. MI7, ‘Note for Propaganda The Hajj al Akhbar,’ 22 October 1939, Records of the Hajj , pp. 355–56. 25. Minute by Eyres, 2 November 1939, Records of the Hajj, p. 354. 26. ‘Note for Propaganda The Hajj al Akhbar,’ 22 October 1939, Records of the Hajj, pp. 355–56. 27. Secretary of State for India to the Government of India, External Affairs, 7 December 1939 and reply, 27 December 1939; Governor of Aden to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 15 January 1940, Records of the Hajj, pp. 357–59. 28. ‘Note for Propaganda The Hajj al Akhbar,’ 22 October 1939, Records of the Hajj, pp. 355–56. 29. Rushbrook Williams to Pearson, 19 March 1941, FO 898/113, TNA. For Italian propaganda, see Manuela A. Williams, Mussolini’s Propaganda Abroad: Subversion in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 1935–1940 (New York: Routledge, 2006). 30. ‘Arab Call to a Holy War,’ The Times (London, UK), 26 September 1940.

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31. Sir P. Loraine (Rome) giving text of Stefani communique, 13 February 1940, Records of the Hajj , pp. 406–7. 32. Stonehewer Bird, Legation Jedda, to Halifax, 28 September 1940, Records of the Hajj, p. 396 and OAG Aden to Secretary of State for Colonies, 19 October 1940, Records of the Hajj, p. 414. 33. ‘Arab Call to a Holy War,’ The Times (London, UK), Thursday, 26 September 1940; ‘An Affair of Outposts,’ The Times (London, UK), 21 October 1940, p. 4; and ‘Cairo Bombed,’ The Times (London, UK), 23 October 1940, p. 3. 34. Government of India External Affairs Department to Political Resident, Bahrain, 27 October 1940, p. 416 and 1941 Pilgrimage Report, p. 423, Records of the Hajj . 35. Undated telegram (October 1940), FO 371/24585, Records of the Hajj , p. 415. 36. Hafiz Wahba, Saudi Legation London to Horace Seymour, 1 November 1940, Records of the Hajj, p. 417. 37. MacKereth to MacMichael, 20 May 1939, FO 395/650, TNA. 38. Rushbrook Williams Memorandum for Colonel Pollock, enclosure 6 January 1941, FO 898/113, TNA. 39. Rushbrook Williams memorandum, 6 January 1941; SOE Middle East and Balkans-Activities of Directorate of Special Propaganda, 10 April 1942; and Pearson to Stephens, 6 December 1941, FO 898/113, TNA. 40. SOE in the Middle East: Saul Kelly, ‘A Succession of Crises: SOE in the Middle East, 1940–45,’ Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 1 (2005): 121–46. 41. Minute for Leeper, 6 December 1940, FO 898/113, TNA. 42. Quoted in Herf, pp. 154–55. 43. Ministry of Information, Planning Section, Memo No. 321 ‘The General Principles of Publicity Among Moslems,’ 16 August 1939, INF1/407, TNA. 44. Lampson to Halifax, 5 February 1940, FO371/24623, TNA. 45. ‘A report on the political tendencies in Egypt drawn up from observations made during the period December 27th, 1939 to February 3rd, 1940 by Dr. Heyworth-Dunne, Senior Lecturer in Arabic, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.’ FO371/24623, TNA. 46. Ibid. Bernard Lewis explores propaganda traditions in Islamic history, including what came to be known as black propaganda, in ‘Propaganda in the Pre-modern Middle East,’ in From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 78–91. 47. ‘Propaganda and Intelligence Work Carried Out by Dr. J. HeyworthDunne for the Arab-Moslem Area of the Middle East Command During March–May 1941,’ FO 898/113, TNA.

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48. Ibid.; ‘Report on Moslem Propaganda and Intelligence,’ FO 898/113, TNA. 49. For Heyworth Dunne’s work on astrological campaigns see ‘Propaganda and Intelligence Work Carried Out by Dr. J. Heyworth-Dunne for the Arab-Moslem Area of the Middle East Command During March–May 1941,’ FO 898/113, TNA. The SOE astrological campaign in the United States is described in the SOE Executive Committee Progress report for weeks ending 31 May, 25 June, and 28 May 1941, HS8/217, TNA. 50. ‘Propaganda and Intelligence Work Carried Out by Dr. J. HeyworthDunne for the Arab-Moslem Area of the Middle East Command During March–May 1941,’ FO 898/113, TNA. 51. Lampson to Halifax, 5 February 1940, FO371/24623, TNA. 52. Rushbrook Williams to Warren, 8 March 1941, FO898/113, TNA. 53. Rushbrook Williams memorandum for Pollock, 6 January 1941, FO 898/113, TNA. 54. Rushbrook Williams to Lampson (for Pollock), 28 March 1941, FO 898/113, TNA. 55. Rushbrook Williams to Pearson, 19 March 1941, FO 898/113, TNA. 56. Rushbrook Williams to Warner enclosed in Memo to Pearson, 29 January 1941, FO 898/113, TNA. 57. Secretary to the Government of India in the External Affairs Department to Newton, 16 July 1940, FO 371/24548, TNA. For the history of the shrine cities of Karbala and Najaf, see Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially pp. 163–83 and 205–37. For ties between the Indian Shiis and Iraq, see Justin Jones, Shi’a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 58. Enclosed: 6 January 1941, Rushbrook Williams Memorandum for Colonel Pollock, FO 898/113, TNA. 59. C.J. Hambro to Warner, 6 February 1941 and Rushbrook Williams, 22 February 1941, FO898/113, TNA. 60. Roberts to Halifax, 3 October 1940, FO 371/24548, TNA. 61. Cornwallis to Governor General of India, 10 June 1941, FO624/23, TNA. 62. ‘Translation of Maulvi Mohd. Bashir’s Report. Report on Iraq and Iran.’ Enclosed in Letter from Maulvi Mohd. Bashir, 15 August 1941, to Major Shah, FO 624/23, TNA (hereafter Maulvi Mohd. Bashir report). 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. For the details of these events in Iraq, see Reeva Spector Simon, Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Militarist Origins of Tyranny, updated edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), Chapter 6. 66. Halifax to FO, 10 May 1941, FO 371/27069, and Political Resident Persian Gulf to Secretary of State for India, 21 May 1941, FO 371/27072, TNA.

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67. C in C India to C in C ME, 8 May 1941 and Knatchbull Hugessen to FO, 12 May 1941, FO 371/27069; Fraser Tytler, Minister Kabul, to S of S for Foreign Affairs, 27 May 1941, FO 371/27073, TNA. 68. De Gaury to Government of India, 21 May 1941, FO 371/27072, TNA. For his own credentials, Batatu describes him as coming from a “Middle landowning ashraf class; son of a landed mudarris from an obscure branch of the family of Naqib al-Ashraf.” Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 181. 69. Secretary of State for Colonies to MacMichael, 12 May 1941, FO 371/27068, TNA. 70. Secretary of State for India to Government of India, 7 May 1941 and Viceroy to Secretary of State for India, 8 May 1941, FO 371/27069, and C in C India to General Basra, 30 May 1941, FO 371/27074, TNA. 71. Cornwallis to Lyttleton, 13 July 1941, FO 624/26. 72. Cornwallis to Simla, 29 June 1941, FO 624/26, TNA. 73. Maulvi Mohd. Bashir report. 74. Nawab of Bahawalpur to Linlithgow, 15 December 1941 and Linlithgow to Nawab of Bahawalpur, 24 January 1942, FO 624/28; Cornwallis to Governor General of India, External Affairs Department, New Delhi, 21 October 1941, FO 624/23, TNA. 75. Cornwallis to Governor General of India, New Delhi, 21 October 1941, FO 624/23, TNA. 76. ‘Report of Vice-Consul Bagley on visit to Karbala and Najaf with Khan Sahib Tahir Hussain Qureshi, British (Indian) Vice-Consul at Bagdad, in November 1942,’ FO 624/33, TNA. 77. Maulvi Mohd. Bashir report. 78. For an overview of these crucial events, see Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), pp. 145–70. 79. Herf, p. 74. For an examination of the discourse surrounding anti-Semitism and the Islamic world see two contributions to the 2018 American Historical Review roundtable “Rethinking Anti-Semitism”: Daniel J. Schroeter, ‘“Islamic Anti-Semitism” in Historical Discourse’ and Ethan B. Katz, ‘An Imperial Entanglement: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Colonialism,’ American Historical Review 123, no. 4 (October 2018): 1172–89 and 1190–1209. 80. Herf’s detailed account of Axis broadcasts to the Arab world includes multiple examples, including an October 1942 radio broadcast that alleged that: “The British, in fact, ‘have shown their hatred of Islam’ by allegedly preventing Indians from traveling to Mecca, attacking mosques in the Arab world, destroying many mosques in Palestine.” Herf, p. 151. 81. Herf, pp. 47 and 129 for two of many examples.

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82. Government of India, Simla, to Cornwallis, 30 September 1941, FO 624/23, TNA. 83. Holman to Governor General of India, External Affairs Department, New Delhi, 27 December 1941, FO 624/23, TNA. 84. Minute by Holt, 26 September 1941, FO 624/23, TNA. 85. Chancery to Eastern Department, 10 March 1942, FO 624/28, TNA. 86. FO to Tehran, 23 October 1941 and Government of India External Affairs Department to Secretary of State for India, 30 October 1941, Records of the Hajj , pp. 444–45. 87. 1942 Pilgrimage Report, Records of the Hajj , pp. 467–68. 88. 1943 pilgrimage report, Records of the Hajj, pp. 492–95. 89. Jordan to Eden, 28 December 1943 enclosing Extract from Umm al Qura 8 December 1943 text of Ibn Saud’s 3 December 1943 speech, Records of the Hajj, pp. 515–19. 90. See, for example, the Overseas Planning Committee Plan of Propaganda for Iraq, 1943, FO371/35014 and Plan of Propaganda for Egypt, 1944, FO 371/41368, TNA. 91. Extract from ‘Umm al Qura’ No. 1051 of 1st December 1944, text of speech by Amir Faisal to pilgrims at Muna 26 November 1944, in Records of the Hajj , p. 565. 92. See, for example, Timothy Mitchell, ‘The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science,’ in The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, ed. David Szanton (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 79–81.

British Encounters with the ‘Islamic World’ 1921–1989 Pippa Catterall

Victory in the First World War saw British power advance over large swathes of the Middle East. Even before 1914 Britain ruled more Muslims than any other power and many imperial troops—from places like Nigeria and India—were Muslim. By 1919 more than half the world’s Muslims were subjects of the empire and a British system of client states extended across what were—notwithstanding sometimes substantial Christian and other minority religious populations—the historic heartlands of Islam, including the Holy Places of Mecca and Medina. Britain’s position as the pre-eminent power broker in the Middle East was consolidated through the elaboration of that system at the Cairo conference of 1921. It thus stepped into the power vacuum resulting from the largely British-engineered demise of the Ottoman Empire. With that demise came as well the question of the Ottoman claim to the Caliphate and their historic spiritual as well as political leadership of Islam, a claim acknowledged far beyond Ottoman frontiers. The Great War thus not only led to much greater British power-projection and cultural penetration into Muslim lands, but also robbed Islam of a declining but historic symbol of power and, as a result, of its last Caliph.

P. Catterall (B) University of Westminster, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2_10

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For Britain, it ended with imperial over-extension. This was clear from the motives its prime mover, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, brought to the Cairo conference. His overriding aim was to cut military costs in the Middle East and somehow maintain empire on the cheap. In contrast, for figures like Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, it was a moment of Muslim humiliation. In particular, he regarded the ending of the Caliphate as a ‘calamity’ constituting an attack on Islam as a whole.1 This paralleled the social, political and cultural impact of the British colonisation of Egypt. The search for Islamic renewal that he and others embarked upon would have long-term, and eventually domestic, consequences for Britain. One of al-Banna’s intellectual and spiritual descendants, via the thought of Sayyid Qutb, was Kalim Siddiqui, who played a pivotal role in the Rushdie affair in 1989. By then there had been an organised Muslim presence in Britain for around 100 years, greatly supplemented by large-scale immigration, particularly from South Asia, in the 1950s to 1970s. The Rushdie affair, however, was the moment that crystallised for the British public that Britain’s encounters with Islam had relocated from far-flung imperial provinces onto the streets of British cities. Not that the imperial map-makers who gathered with T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell to advise Churchill at Cairo necessarily thought themselves dealing with a unified ‘Islamic world’. Notional form might be given to this concept by the ideal of the Ummah, the unified Muslim community. Similarly, the concept of the Dar al-Islam is embedded in Islamic cultural geography, though it proved sufficiently flexible for the British Empire to be included within by the Meccan ’ulem¯ a during the Great War. An ‘Islamic world’ existed in principle, but not as a lived reality for most Muslims in the early 1920s. The risk that some charismatic figure akin to John Buchan’s Greenmantle (1915) might emerge to unite Islam and rouse its feared fanaticism against the empire meanwhile remained a work of fiction. Muslim disunity, confusion and weakness faced with the advance of the West were more palpable. By the 1880s, figures like Jamal al-Afghani were already responding to the perceived political and cultural threats posed by Western colonialism. His vision of a pan-Islamism that would provide a unified resistance constituted an imagined and idealised Islamic world, albeit one overly defined by what it was not. Beyond the efforts of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the late nineteenth century to use such ideas to bolster his own position and finances, constituting these ideals in practice proved challenging. The very idea of the Caliphate, influentially talismanic

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though it was, indeed itself proved divisive once there was no longer agreement over the claimant. Furthermore, Muslims at the end of the Great War inhabited a patchwork of territories characterised either by alien European rule—predominantly British, French, Russian, Dutch or Italian—or by local rulers in client relationship with these Europeans. These latter, from Ibn Saud to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, were generally more interested in pursuing their own ends than wider Islamic ones. This naked self-interest was apparent in the attempts based on descent from the Prophet by the hard-pressed Sherif Hussein of the Hejaz in 1924 to claim the Caliphate vacated after the new Kemalist government in Turkey had abolished both the Ottoman dynasty and this title. Although he had been offered the Caliphate ten years earlier by the British,2 these efforts did not succeed, nor did they save Hussein’s kingdom from conquest by Ibn Saud the following year. This conquest gave Ibn Saud control of the Holy Places and the muchneeded revenue from pilgrims that went with it. Problems with the management of the Hajj had been one reason why the British dropped support for Hussein in favour of their other client, Ibn Saud. The notionally universal experience of the Hajj was one common culturally transnational factor linking all Muslims. It was also potentially a radicalising experience, spreading ideas of Islamic revival across the North Africa route as exemplified by the Nigerian communities who picked up Mahdist forms of revivalism during their passage through Sudan. In 1927, for instance, an ADC in northern Nigeria was killed by a group returning from the Hajj. Facilitating the Hajj and cooperating with the local ’ulem¯ a was both a means of preventing such problems and part of Britain’s justification for ruling Muslim lands. This facilitation was carried out with everything from financial to consular support.3 Not that they succeeded in preventing the pilgrims from being fleeced when they arrived at their destination, at least until the discovery of oil in his kingdom in 1936 gave Ibn Saud a more significant source of income. The Hajj was a rare example of the British official mind conceiving of Islam as a unity. Otherwise, mindful of the potential threat posed by panIslamism to a thinly stretched empire, imperial officials were reluctant to see Islam in this way. The brief efflorescence of the Khilifat movement in India at the start of the 1920s demonstrated the risk of Islam being used politically to rally opposition against them.4 Similar anxieties about Western attacks on the Ottomans and the Caliphate were also potent motives for some eminent British converts to Islam, most notably the novelist Mar-

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maduke Pickthall, who as editor of the Bombay Chronicle was active in the Khilifat movement. Even among Muslim elites in India, however, such causes still did not prompt effective Muslim unity. Anger at the treatment by the Western allies of the defeated Turks at Sèvres could lead to them making common ground with nationalist anti-British activities by Hindus in 1919–1920. The Sèvres terms, however, were first defeated on the battlefield by Kemal Atatürk and then swept away when the British backed down in the October 1922 Chanak crisis, causing the fall of Lloyd George’s belligerent coalition government. Notwithstanding this British humiliation, such far-off events henceforward ceased to provide a unifying factor for Muslim political activity in India. The Khilifat movement petered out. Muslim elites thereafter focused on political goals specific to India, either in alliance with the Congress party or through specific political organisations such as the Muslim League. Conceptions of a coherent ‘Islamic world’ in the early twentieth century thus centred on the Ottomans and did not long survive their demise. Those like Pickthall, who converted in part due to admiration for the Islam he encountered in travels around the Ottoman Empire, had to adjust to this new reality. For him, Lloyd George’s government exemplified a Turcophobia nurtured by the animosity of late nineteenth-century Nonconformity against the Ottomans. Pickthall was also appalled around the time of his conversion by the tone of Lloyd George’s speech celebrating Allenby’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1917 as ‘the last and most triumphant of the crusades’. Islam, he emphasised in an article the following year, avoided such nationalism. Indeed, the perceived inclusiveness of the Ottoman Empire seems to have been one factor in a conversion that, while no doubt sincere on the part of a future translator of the Qu’ran, was also political in nature. In the absence of that empire Pickthall by the end of his life in 1935 was increasingly drawn to Sharia as an alternative overarching Islamic social framework. He shared a patrician view of Islam as a source of order and stability with fellow Tory converts such as Lord Headley, though not the latter’s lax approach to Islamic practices and law. Such laxity meant that coherence was not readily apparent within the small, little-noticed British Muslim community then largely confined to immigrant seafarers and their wives in certain ports, various well-to-do converts and a proselytising group of heterodox Ahmadis centred on Woking. These last, like their founder responding to British Christian missionary activity in India in the 1880s, could be said to be reacting to the impact of Britain on Islam in ways similar

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to the contemporary rise of pan-Islamism, by imagining a revived Islamic world, rather than articulating one that already existed.5 This impact was considerable. Indeed, Islam generally throve under the empire. Its centrality to indirect rule consolidated its place in local political identity. Imperial economic stability and the challenge of often insensitive Christian missions also had effects, the latter prompting organisational development, such as the Young Men’s Muslim Association founded in Cairo in 1926. Imperial views of Islam as a source of social stability and order also meant that local officials sought to protect it and associated local customs, including slavery in northern Nigeria, to maintain the power of local rulers on whose collaboration imperial suzerainty rested. Such nonintervention with customs and Sharia also helped to ensure local ’ulem¯ a did not support rebellion. Neither in the colonial periphery nor in Whitehall was Islam primarily understood as a unifying belief system across this vast multifarious swathe of territories. It was as a cultural framework through the prism of India, the Ottomans, and a romantic attachment to the desert, the nomadic Arab and an austere, hierarchical lifestyle that it was a reference point for most British diplomats and officials,6 whose memoirs rarely featured Islam except as an underlying socio-religious framework used to bolster traditional authority structures. Managing religious tensions through local elites could nevertheless prove complex. For instance, the indirect rule the British operated in northern Nigeria via local amirs was complicated by the spread of ideas, notably Mahdist ones brought via the Hajj, which competed with the Sufist Qadiriyya school followed by these elites. Particularly in the early 1920s Islamic radicalism prompted anti-British plotting and risings from Sokoto to Somaliland, often reflecting these local tensions between schools of Islam or anti-missionary feeling as much as anti-imperial impulses.7 With the demise of the Caliphate and fears about pan-Islamism receding, Islam nonetheless was diminishingly seen as the principal threat to British hegemony. The forces released by the overthrow of the Ottomans, both among those who successfully created new states of their own and those like the Kurds whose aspirations were rebuffed at the Cairo conference, primarily seemed instead those of nationalism. This rise in nationalism was seen by the British as a significant factor in the failure to agree a new, Arab Caliph in 1924. Meanwhile, in the form of parties such as the Wafd in Egypt protesting at the lack of representation at the post-war peace conferences, it built upon the opposition to foreign—especially British—dominance of

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politics and finance already apparent at the time of the ‘Urabi riots in the 1880s. Religion was part of this reaction, but it was not the dominant force. What therefore impressed British officials in terms of the challenges of political management more often was the rise of these nationalist, broadly secular and urban-based movements. Liberal political elites who led these movements accordingly had to be contained in an imperial game of divide and rule. Hence in Egypt the British High Commission balanced the interests of the royal palace against the Wafd and the crowd,8 preventing concentrations of power and authority to challenge their own position. Islam’s role in this, insofar as it had one, was as a management tool. For these British officials Islam served three rather different purposes: 1. To divide and rule; 2. To bolster client collaborators; 3. To undermine perceived threats (which might come from forms of Islam not espoused by the local elites). Divide and rule was particularly deployed in locations like India where Muslims were a significant minority whose interests might be played off against Congress party nationalists. The most notable example of this was the bolstering of the Muslim League, despite its failures in the 1937 elections, in the new regional governments of India during the Second World War after Congress refused to support the war effort. This process culminated in the emergence of the Muslim-dominated separate state of Pakistan in 1947.9 The second technique was used with Muslim princes in India and throughout the Middle East. The British often had exaggerated expectations of this. For instance, the idea that descent from the Prophet would help Hussein in the Hejaz or his sons Faisal and Abdullah in Iraq and Jordan respectively, where the British established these branches of the Hashemites after the Cairo conference, proved over-optimistic. Sociopolitical rather than sacral authority had to be consolidated, either based on an overly narrow range of Sunni elites in Iraq or on Bedouin tribesmen in Jordan. Quasi-European, and unIslamic, concepts of kingship proved difficult to transplant. Religion could nonetheless support such traditional (if relocated) rulers in other ways. Territories with weak civil societies and strong, often regionally focused, tribal structures had few common mechanisms across them through which to legitimate authority other than religion. The latter

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could thus authenticate a ruler’s credentials. Its potential effectiveness was demonstrated by the alignment of the monarchist Itlihad party with the ’ulem¯ a in Egypt in the 1920s. It did not always work however, even for Ibn Saud, despite his dynasty’s historic links since the eighteenth century to austere Wahhabi forms of Islam. In 1927, his religiously inspired soldiery broke the treaty he had just signed with the British by raiding neighbouring territories that Britain controlled. The Ikhwan revolt had to be put down in 1929 with British help. Religion could thus be turned on the British and their client rulers. This was particularly the case when delicate internal relations were disrupted by imperial actions, as occurred when the British occupation of Buraimi oasis in 1955 undermined the autonomy of the Imamate of Oman, prompting a lengthy rebellion led by the Imam’s brother, Talib bin Ali. When such challenges were aligned with nationalism and significant internal and external supports were lacking or forfeited, even secular leftists could initially back a successful religious rising. The classic example was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979. British officials were aware of this threat to their position: that conservative Islam was not enough to contain the discontents fuelling nationalism and needed to be supplemented with reform.10 This still illustrates that nationalism, as a means to further the socio-economic advancement of disadvantaged groups, tended either to trump religion as a political factor or—as in Khomeini’s case—to co-opt it as an additional means of identification and mobilisation. Religion, in other words, operated as a subordinate political force supplementing either traditional rule or nationalism. The Kaum Muda movement in Malaya, which rejected the traditional Sufiinfused Islam of the Sultans through whom the British ruled, exemplified the latter, developing by the 1930s into a nationalist opposition.11 More radical examples were the activities of Izzedine Qassam in Palestine until killed by the British in 1935, or the Muslim Brotherhood involvement in the Arab Revolt that began the following year. Additionally, Islam could not be used to trump the grievances of the Kurds in Iraq in the 1920s held in check by policing from the air by the Royal Air Force. These grievances were more effective mobilising factors than negative integration promoted via religion. This was also apparent in the Cairo of the Second World War in which Gamal Abdel Nasser had his nationalist epiphany. Nasser was a sincere Muslim, but his seizure of power in the Free Officers coup of 1952 was a nationalist one. The dichotomy between nationalism and religion must not be overstated when considering

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which proved the prime political factor. Both are legitimating ideals around which support can be rallied against corrupt and failing elites, such as the regime of King Farouk. In the hands of a populist leader like Nasser, rather than the traditional rulers the British sought to use, religion could support nationalism. Not all Egyptians agreed. The Muslim Brotherhood did not aim primarily at changing the power structures of Egypt. Instead it articulated a radical critique of the decline of Islam as a civilisation back into the darkness of the ignorance of Jahiliyyah in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. It did not express the cautious pan-Arabism Nasser espoused and that his British opponents feared and exaggerated. Though largely confined to Arab territories, its ideology was pan-Islamic in nature, with branches formed in various Middle Eastern countries by the end of the Second World War. Its initial foundation and early development had been covertly supported by the British, while the branch in Iraq was founded by the British agent Freya Stark. The British originally intended to use it to counter the Wafdists, and their promotion of the spread of the movement in the 1940s was similarly anti-nationalist. Similar movements drawing on traditions going back to pan-Islamism emerged elsewhere. Despite a continued yearning for the now absent Caliphate, marked in the establishment of Hizb-ul-Tahrir in Jerusalem in 1953, the focus however became more on a dream of renewal, through a restoration of the Salafi order that had obtained at the time of the Prophet himself. Similarly, a rejection of the Westernising ideology of nationalism represented by Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s championing of the idea of Pakistan in Lahore in 1940 led Abdul Ala Maududi to found Jamaat-i-Islami the following year to campaign to replace such disorienting, secular errors with the purity of a totalitarian Islamic state. These bodies were therefore generally as opposed to secular nationalism as the British. In other settings with more monolithic elites the British sought to interdict the emergence of such radicalism through creating economic opportunities, indirect rule and ensuring a compliant ’ulem¯ a. These techniques were, for instance, deployed in Sudan using the Mahdist leader, Sayyid Abd al-Rahman successfully to contain millenarian rural protests either side of the Great War of the kind that had erupted under his father in the 1880s.12 Similar attempts were made to use the slippery Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, to contain Arab protests during the Palestine mandate. Ultimately in this incendiary situation neither he nor the British were able to control the discontents resulting from the growing Jewish settlement. That

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the attempt was made, in the absence of other viable authority figures on the Arab side, nevertheless shows that the British all too often understood Islam as a fundamentally conservative social and political force. Notwithstanding its universalist aspects, they saw Islam more as a means of maintaining the power of local traditional rulers. Indeed, they saw these universal features as helping to undermine and delegitimate nationalist movements conceived as secular and elitist, while recognising it could also pose a threat to their collaborators. With the onset of the Cold War it was this approach to Islam, supplemented if possible by socio-economic reforms, which became increasingly important for the British. The emergence of this new conflict with the Soviet Union was one of three new factors impacting on the encounters between Britain and Islam between 1945 and the late 1960s, the others being the advent of Nasserism and the rise of new forms of media and communications. Indeed, it originated in the Middle East with the crisis in 1945–1946 over Soviet reluctance to vacate northern Iran at the end of hostilities with Germany. The Cold War became the leading prism through which the British viewed the world. Jamaat-e-Islami were therefore seen by British intelligence as a usefully conservative, anti-Communist body.13 Conveniently, the Cold War also provided ideological justification for the British pursuit of often oil-related economic self-interest, particularly in their dealings with the Americans, who were increasingly active in the Middle East. This self-interest was apparent in the first significant post-war example of the Cold War impacting on British approaches to Islam, the Abadan crisis of 1951. Major British interests were at stake in the form of the AngloIranian oilfields nationalised by the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. That part of Mossadegh’s support allegedly came from the effective if outlawed Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh, gave the situation a Cold War dimension which British propagandists were quick to exploit. The threat of communism was also something they played on not just in their dealings with the Americans, but also with elites in Tehran, including the ’ulem¯ a and Ayatollah Abo-Ghasem Kashani, who the British paid to foment riots against Mossadegh. The Ayatollah was anti-British, but quite willing to make an alliance of convenience with them to overthrow Mossadegh. This, with his and the CIA’s assistance, duly occurred in 1953.14 As a non-Arab, Mossadegh’s brand of nationalism was not as exportable as that of Nasser was to become, although techniques such as nationalisa-

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tion were. It was Nasser who proved a thorn in the British side throughout the Arab Middle East. His popularity was marked by the pictures of him that sprouted throughout the region, particularly after his humiliation of the British in the 1956 Suez crisis. For the British there was a Cold War dimension to this as well, but as with Mossadegh, it was as a bogus stick to beat Nasser with. It was also less effective in mobilising religious and secular elites against the Egyptian ruler. Nasser was every bit as anti-Communist as his British protagonist, Sir Anthony Eden. His purchase of a large arms shipment from Czechoslovakia in 1955 was prompted in part by the British refusal to sell him larger consignments of weapons themselves, rather than a pro-Soviet alignment. Above all, his prime motivation in politics was to avoid the humiliation at the hands of the British he had observed meted out to Farouk in 1942. The British failure to respond effectively to the Cairo demonstrations led by religious students and the Muslim Brotherhood in January 1952 showed that circumstances had changed. This failure helped create the opportunity for the Free Officers coup a few months later. Thereafter handling the Egyptian situation proved ever more challenging for the British. There were now no counter-balancing forces that they could exploit, as in the interwar years, with the possible exception of religion. Nasser, however, carefully kept firmly under control that former protégé of the British, the Muslim Brotherhood. He suppressed it after a 1954 assassination attempt, as well as executing the influential Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutd in 1966. Nor, unlike his contemporary military ruler in Pakistan, Muhammad Ayub Khan, did he need to play on Islam to help legitimate his rule and unite, as the British at independence had recognised, an ethnically disparate state. Like traditional rulers, Nasser had a charisma of his own which, like theirs, did not derive primarily from Islam. This brand of street populism coupled with his overthrow of an unpopular and corrupt monarchy limited the space for populist Islamism to emerge. Its appeal elsewhere enabled Nasser to export his nationalism around the region. This was done, however, very much with an eye to the ways in which the apparent spread of Egyptian influence enhanced his standing at home. The British wilfully misread Nasser’s nationalism. Psychologically they were perhaps prepared to do so, having anticipated that the creation of Israel in 1948 might prompt the emergence of a Greenmantle style figure. Nasser, although they readily understood he was no pan-Islamist, instead became the subject of these fears. The British also misread his influence. They were inclined to see Nasser’s hand in every check, even when he

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was not involved, as in the Iraqi revolution that overthrew the monarchy and Britain’s long-term collaborator, Nuri al-Said, in July 1958. Qasim’s seizure of power in Baghdad, however, was a home-grown version of Iraqi nationalism, the (temporary) popularity of which was apparent from the public response. It was a sign that, particularly in larger and more urbanised Middle Eastern states, British indirect rule through collaborators, even ones embarked on ineffective modernisation such as Nuri or the Shah, was increasingly a problem rather than a solution for those rulers. The remaining Hashemite monarch, King Hussein in Jordan, had already concluded this in January 1956, removing Sir John Glubb from his command of the Arab Legion to Eden’s chagrin. Nor did a Cold War dimension necessarily help the British to maintain their influence. It could have the opposite effect. For instance, the British initiative of the 1955 Baghdad Pact—ostensibly to establish a Northern Tier of allies across the region to confront the Soviets—appealed to nonArab (but Muslim) states along the Russian border such as Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. However, in the one Arab state that the British prevailed upon to join, Iraq, this looked too much like another British attempt at manipulation. Street demonstrations in Amman ensured Hussein resisted the enormous British pressure to also join. The British misread how far the Cold War allowed them, through devices such as the Baghdad Pact, to reassert influence in the Middle East. This and another event of 1955, their successful expulsion of the Saudis from Buraimi oasis on behalf of their clients in Abu Dhabi and Oman, deluded them into an exaggerated sense of their continuing heft across the region. Yet their declining ability to project power regionally had been apparent since the scuttle in Palestine in 1948. This also dented British prestige in the Middle East. So did their entirely sensible negotiation with Nasser of withdrawal from the now obsolete (in Cold War terms) Suez Canal base in 1954. These new realities, however, were only to dawn on the British government with the Suez crisis two years later, when Nasser nationalised the Canal within two weeks of the last British soldiers departing. Declining British power in the Middle East should not be exaggerated. They could still deploy to support Hussein in July 1958 after the fall of his Hashemite cousins, or the al-Sabah dynasty in 1961 after Qasim had revived nationalist claims to a Kuwait then newly independent of the British but still hugely important to the sterling balances. Yet these, and the subsequent covert British support for Kurdish and Assyrian rebels against Qasim until his fall in 1963, were limited exercises. After the failure to undertake

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Operation Rodeo in Egypt in 1952 in response to the Cairo demonstrations there were no more large-scale British operations in the Middle East. Smaller, less urbanised states, particularly those of southern Arabia and the Gulf, were however a different matter. By the 1960s British oil interests, and the troops to protect them, were increasingly concentrated in these areas. Here Britain still exercised power with the collaboration of traditional rulers. The limits to such techniques were nonetheless becoming apparent in Aden, the most important city in that region, by the late 1950s. British-controlled since 1839, this port was increasingly difficult to manage as a result of urbanisation, the resulting population influx from Yemen, and unionisation. Radical discontents stoked urban riots and strikes and a growing Marxist movement. This gave the endgame of British Empire in Southern Arabia a Cold War flavour which, perhaps surprisingly, does not seem to have been strongly perceived by local British officials. They were instead more struck by the challenge from Nasser, whose intervention in support of the republican coup in Yemen in 1962 gradually had spillover effects in the neighbouring Aden Protectorate. Merging the port of Aden with the traditional sheikhdoms of its hinterland into a new South Arabian Federation proved ineffective in containing these radicalising tendencies. The Army mutiny in Crater in 1967, following Nasser’s allegations that the British had aided Israel in the Six Day War, showed how weak this successor state’s authority was. It collapsed shortly after the subsequent British withdrawal. The Marxists rather than the Nasserites seized power and the base that the British had expensively built up in Aden was soon instead being used by the Soviet fleet. In Aden, they undoubtedly suffered a significant Cold War defeat.15 This, however, was not the story elsewhere. Without the complicating factor of Aden, the British were able to assist the Sultan of Oman in defeating rebels inspired and abetted by their Adeni neighbours in the Dhofar War of 1965–1975. Collaboration with traditional rulers, with the charisma of monarchy bolstered by religion, largely worked in sparsely populated territories such as this. So much so that it was the British themselves who decided, shortly after the debacle in Aden, to withdraw from the Gulf, to the obvious concern of most of the local rulers. Some aspects of this demission of empire in the 1960s were complicated by Islam, most notably in Bahrein, with its large Shia population. The principal drivers, however, were metropolitan and financial, actuated by the cost-cutting on overseas spending that informed the 1966 and 1968 Defence White Papers. By the end of 1971 withdrawal from East of Suez

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was largely complete. Only scattered Muslim states remained under British protection, such as Brunei. This oil-rich Sultanate, notwithstanding the ineffective revolt of 1962, was another example of successful British Empire through indirect rule. Ninety-five years after a protectorate was established there it was finally granted independence in 1983. The formal British presence in Muslim lands was coming to an end. The encounter between Britain and Islam became qualitatively different as it was replaced by various other, still important, soft power relationships. These ranged from Commonwealth ties with countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia, through defence contracts and military training arrangements particularly with Saudi Arabia and Oman, to the continuing widespread role played by British finance capital and infrastructure engineering, not least in the Middle East. Accordingly, the failings of British divide and rule, rule through collaborators and informal cultural penetration in Muslim countries should not be exaggerated. Particularly in smaller, less urbanised states these proved largely successful. Where they did not it is too simplistic to attribute this failure to a rising nationalism, still less to the impact of Islam as a social category. It was only towards the end of this period that Khomeini demonstrated that religious leaders could themselves harness nationalism for their own ends, rather than the other way around. Until that happened, with Khomeini able—unlike the Grand Mufti—to seize such opportunities, Islam may have been pervasive but it was not a key independent variable in the sociopolitical dynamics of Muslim societies. Indeed, in some ways it was more of an element in British techniques of divide and rule. A nationalism based upon social and urban change, including reactions against the often corrupt power structures that supported British control, was from the 1920s to the 1970s a more significant dynamic. Such discontents were parted fuelled by the aforementioned changes in the media and information flows. The growing importance of these opinion-forming devices was such that during the Second World War covert British media propaganda even used subtle anti-British messaging to ensure a hearing. After all, media outlets form publics and create the banal nationalism through which they speak to these groups in their vernacular. Despite the weakness of civil society and lack of identification with the state in most Muslim societies therefore, the advent of modern media, at least at the elite level, prompted nationalistic discontent with existing power structures and the distribution of social goods. It also brought a new language of nationalism exploitable by a charismatic leader. Controlling the airwaves became

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as important as controlling territory: indeed, it was a means to control territory. In the form of Nasser’s Voice of Cairo Radio, it was also a threat to the British throughout the Middle East. Countering Nasser, according to the Foreign Office in 1956 therefore involved these new media alongside increased use of old media such as Friday sermons.16 Yet information flows could no longer be controlled by rulers and imams through traditional means such as the pulpit. These forms of authority were disrupted by the rise of the new media. As Nasser demonstrated, the new media also spilled over borders. In due course, this created an international competition for authoritative communication among various Muslim states, not least through state investment in controlling media outlets, including Saudi attempts to control the Arab press in London that, after the Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975, concentrated there.17 While London had long been a source of finance for Muslim countries, it also now began to attract banks originating in those countries. These included the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Founded by Agha Hasan Abedi after Bhutto nationalised the banks in Pakistan in 1972, it was wound up in 1991 in light of shady activities such as money laundering and arms-trading. In finance, media and arms-trading London offered Arab elites critical mass, ease of establishing a new institution (particularly compared to setting up a newspaper in the Middle East), geographical position and the advantage of the English language.18 Meanwhile, back in the Middle East, the growth of the media impacted upon society through the relativising nature of mass communications. Qutb may have been executed, but his Salafist message of the need to return to the purity and simple certainties of the founders of Islam found increasing receptivity in this changing environment, offering a totalising vision of a society purged of such insidious Western influences. It also had political resonance in societies long controlled by unaccountable elites. The first generation of nationalists in states which effectively became independent since the Second World War could be blamed for failures which would be cured by the Islamicisation of politics. Indeed, this critique could also be applied against those nationalists who failed to secure independence, as seen with the 1988 emergence of Hamas against Fatah in Palestine. These developments ensured that religion became a more important factor in sociopolitical relations in Muslim societies by the 1970s. This was not least because civil society under the nationalists was sometimes even more suppressed than under the traditional rulers they supplanted.

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Secular party systems, trade union structures and other means of expressing civil society were often absent. Islamic preachers and organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood, who had learnt to exploit the new media, were accordingly the default options for mobilising society and a new identity politics.19 Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, found that to his cost when he tried to use religion to bolster his power, only to be assassinated by Islamic radicals in 1981 after his deal with Israel. To these internal effects leading to Islam becoming a more important sociopolitical factor in Muslim societies from the 1970s onwards can be added significant geopolitical changes, not least those which reshaped the power balance between various Muslim states. A key catalyst was the Six Day War in 1967. The scale of the Egyptian defeat undermined Nasser’s appeal and prestige, impacted on Egyptian finances, forcing him to withdraw from Yemen, and suggested the limits of the Nasserite prescription for social and political renewal. The scale of the Israeli victory was to have even more momentous consequences. It for the first time revealed the scale of the power imbalance between Israel and its Arab neighbours. The consequent Israeli occupation of the West Bank also highlighted the unresolved Palestinian issue while the seizure of the whole of Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, gave an additional religious dimension to what became known as the Arab-Israeli conflict. Indeed, with Britain’s direct interests in the Middle East now effectively curtailed, British public understanding of the region and of issues in Muslim lands more generally came to be structured from 1967 to the late 1980s largely through that prism. Nasser’s declining prestige after 1967 was balanced by the rising importance of Saudi Arabia. Since the death of Ibn Saud in 1953 Britain’s relations with this state had been chequered. Relations soured under his successor Saud, not least because of Buraimi oasis, but improved again during the shared covert support for the doomed royalists in the 1962–1970 Yemen civil war, especially following British backing for Saud’s replacement by his brother Faisal in 1964.20 In addition to the close relations between the two royal families, a particular feature of the relationship was a series of substantial arms deals, culminating in the al-Yamanah agreements in the 1980s. Britain thus went from being the power broker in the Middle East to a somewhat grubby weapons salesman. Corruption, investigations into which were stopped by the Blair government in 2006, was only part of this. There was the related complicity in Saudi abuses of human rights. For instance, the Saudi diplomatic and commercial responses to the AngloAmerican drama-documentary Death of a Princess in 1980 prompted the

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Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, to exclaim he ‘wished it had never been shown’.21 A Realpolitik recognition of the growing power and wealth of Saudi Arabia was the dubious justification. This process was substantially advanced by the events of 1973. Marked by another Arab-Israeli conflict, the relatively inconclusive Yom Kippur War, the outcome of which nonetheless moved Sadat towards the peace he concluded with Israel three years later, 1973 prompted the first of the two oil price hikes of the decade. The low cost of extraction for the Saudis has meant that they have often subsequently used oil diplomacy to reduce oil prices in order to weaken competitors. In the 1970s, however, these price hikes were to further enhance Saudi wealth and influence. Some of this oil wealth from Saudi and other Arab states was to be invested back in London, not least in media, finance and health tourism. Most notable were the donations from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi towards the building at last of the Central London Mosque. First promoted by Headley, for whom recognition of the importance of Islam in the empire was part of his patriotic imperialism, this idea had been taken forward for similar reasons during the Second World War. The Colonial Secretary, Lord Lloyd, argued in the dark days of 1940 that establishing this mosque ‘would serve as a tribute to the loyalty of the Moslems of the Empire and would have a good effect on Arab countries of the Middle East’.22 The resulting Islamic Cultural Centre opened by George V in 1944 in Regent’s Park was subsequently augmented by the grand adjacent mosque opened in 1977. Saudi soft power and financial and cultural penetration of Britain thus was apparent by the end of the 1970s. The Iranian Revolution at the end of that decade then began to change the Saudis’ geopolitical position in the Middle East, leading to a growing proxy confrontation with their Shia neighbour. Meanwhile, the perceived challenge the new Islamic Republic of Iran posed to the West right from its advent in 1979 prompted a limited British return to the projection of power East of Suez. Initially this was through armilla patrols with the Americans, ostensibly to protect shipping in the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War launched by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in September 1980. This war marked the culmination of a long period of tension between the two countries, exacerbated by the Iranian Revolution and Khomeini’s appeals to the Shia majority in Iraq to stage a similar revolt there. Although ostensibly maintaining an evenhandedness between the two belligerents, Britain in practice favoured Iraq in the conflict. Formally the

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export of material with ‘lethal uses’ was interdicted, yet these rules were not effectively enforced and by 1985 secretly relaxed. The motive was partly the venal one of arms sales opportunities, but also reflected British geopolitical calculations. The war may have been launched by Saddam Hussein with the expansionist aim of annexing Khuzistan, an Arab-inhabited part of Iran. Arab nationalism, however, was no longer regarded by the British as a threat to their interests in the Middle East. Instead, it was now the willingness of Iran to export its Islamic Revolution, not least through support for the usually repressed Shia populations elsewhere, that seemed most likely to destabilise the region in ways inimical to the West. An example was the Iranian engagement in southern Lebanon following the 1982 Israeli invasion which led to the founding of Hezbollah three years later. Accordingly, if 1967 prompted the decline of Arab nationalism as a sociopolitical factor in the Middle East, then the 1979 Iranian Revolution marked the revival of religion instead. There were, however, important differences from the pan-Islamism of the late nineteenth century. This was partly because of the Shia complexion of Iran and its tendency therefore to use Shia populations elsewhere to spread its influence. It was also partly because this revolution placed Islam at the centre of the overthrow of a failing and corrupt regime. Islam thus supplanted nationalism as a means for social and political renewal within a country. Meanwhile the centrality placed on Islam in the new state and the efforts to export that revolution invoked the idealised cosmopolitan world of which Qutb wrote in ways that could appeal to Sunni populations as well. To some extent such developments were already in train before 1979. It was a civilian politician, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who presided over a dramatic Islamisation of politics and institutions in Pakistan after his 1971 election victory. Not that this saved him from execution in 1979 following the military coup that brought Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq to power. Bhutto’s attempt to use religion to consolidate identity politics and his own position was now to be taken much further. This military dictator’s rule incubated a radical Islamism, not least in Pakistan’s security services, that was already taking root as a result of the religious flavour of the insurgent confrontation with India in Kashmir. Through this Pakistan and irregular Pakistani fighters were already involved in the type of guerrilla warfare that would become far more intense to the North after 1979. Zia, however, was regarded with far more favour by the British than the Iranians. The key distinction was that Zia was seen through the prism not of the Middle East, in which the British—unlike the Americans—had

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never included Pakistan, but of the Cold War. This conflict deepened dramatically because of another key event of 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Zia was both on the right side then as far as his Western allies were concerned, and also a key facilitator of the covert aid channelled into Afghanistan to counter the Soviets. Earlier in the Cold War Islam had been regarded by Britain primarily as a means to bolster existing rulers and weaken nationalists. To these functions was now added Islam as the rallying point for resistance to the Soviets in the relative absence of other mobilising factors, as invoked by the speech of the new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to the American Foreign Policy Association in December 1979. Religion became the key recruitment tool to the mujahideen conducting guerrilla operations in Afghanistan, the key component in the ideology that fuelled their resistance and the signifier that secured the Western-supplied weapons enabling them to wage war. Contrasts with the earlier insurgent conflict in Aden should be picked out. That also had a Cold War backdrop. However, then there was a threeway conflict between Marxists, Nasserites and traditional British-backed rulers, with religion not a notable factor. In Afghanistan, in contrast, although ethnicity was significant in some resistance to the Soviets, the West’s decision to focus resistance around religion turned that into a major factor and internationalised its appeal, drawing towards the conflict those who sought to wage militant Jihad from elsewhere, including Saudis like Osama bin Laden. It also encouraged an Islamicisation of society along the Pakistani supply lines, not least in the training camps for the fighters who headed north. Changes in mass communication, disillusionment with nationalist elites and wider geopolitical developments created opportunities for these ideas to have much greater purchase by the 1980s. They did not, however, become dominant expressions of Muslim identity or everywhere mobilising factors in the politics of Muslim societies. Because of their perceived centrality in the struggle in Afghanistan and the emergence of bodies like Hezbollah and Hamas, the notion of militant Islam nevertheless became increasingly central to the Western imaginary. The trope of fanaticism as a label which simplistically obviated the need to understand tensions in Muslim societies had never really gone away. This was despite the efforts of figures such as the Syro-Egyptian reformer Muhammad Rashid Rida earlier in the century to subvert such rhetoric by reporting examples of fanaticism among the Christians of Britain.23 It was now to revive strongly. These apparently militant developments were to result in the consolida-

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tion of a reductionist view of an alien ‘Islamic World’ for a fearful Western gaze, unaware of the complexities of Islam, refracted through crude tabloid representations of incendiary preachers. They also provided a spurious justification for racist hostility to post-war immigration.24 An exasperated Edward Said was already pointing out how these distorted stereotypes othered Muslims in 1980.25 This othering was exacerbated by the geographical separation effected in British cities by segregationist housing policies. Awareness of these developments, and that international currents among Muslim societies could now impact politics on British streets, was then catalysed by the Salman Rushdie affair. Two figures linked that affair to Britain’s past imperial encounters with Islam. One was Rushdie himself. He was a child of empire, having been born to a well-to-do Muslim family in Bombay two months before Indian independence. He came to fame through his Booker Prize winning novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), a dizzying magical realist exploration of empire and its legacy in post-independence India. Like his protagonists in the subsequent novel which proved so controversial, The Satanic Verses, Rushdie had also journeyed as an immigrant from the periphery to the heartland of the former empire, with this disorientating cultural experience constituting the backdrop to his novelisation. The other represented even more directly the domestication of Britain’s encounters with Islam. Siddiqui also originated from India, but there similarities with Rushdie ended. Far from the latter’s left-liberal intellectual detachment from religion either as a belief system or as a form of belonging, Siddiqui was a devout Sunni Muslim. In 1972 with Saudi finance he co-founded the Muslim Institute to map out Qutb’s future Islamic civilisation and turn back the assault of secularism. He also deeply admired Khomeini, his revolution and its demonstration that Islamicist ideas could animate the Muslim masses. These connections helped turn the 1988 publication of Rushdie’s fourth novel into an international as well as domestic confrontation with a seemingly militant Islam.26 This was not the only connection between Qutb, Siddiqui and Rushdie. Qutb, drawing on Maududi’s influence, in his Islam: The Religion of the Future identified what he called the ‘Hideous Schizophrenia’ produced by error since the dawn of Christianity and the resulting dissonance in religion’s relations with science.27 These dissonances were becoming apparent through the disruption to systems of knowledge in the Middle East resulting from the advent of mass communications by the time Qutb was drafting this sometime in the 1950s. For Qutb the way to cure this schizophrenia

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was by replacing both the corrupt Christianity allegedly causing it in the first place, and the corrupt Islam of his own era which had been infected by it. Instead of this Jahiliyyah, his Islam of the future would see a Salafist restoration of the Islamic order at the time of the Prophet, with the schizophrenia cured by an overarching structure of belief and obedience that would expunge all those painful dissonances he himself had experienced on a trip to the USA. Although not his most influential work, this book neatly summarises the key outlines of Qutb’s thinking. Furthermore Rushdie, through the sufferings of his characters in The Satanic Verses, conjures up very much the schizophrenia of which Qutb complained. Rushdie’s familiarity with such thinking was already apparent in his third novel, Shame, which thinly disguises the contest between Bhutto and Zia and picks out Jamaat-e-Islami’s doctrines as a particular target. The Satanic Verses satirised the alluringly simple dogmatism of such ideas and their tendency to arrogate to themselves God’s role as judge, in the process turning religion into ‘the servant of the lowest instincts’ and God into ‘the creature of evil’. This magical realist embedded such observations in a dystopian rendition of encounters between a distorted and dream-like setting in which this debased Islam is encoded, and the vivid London of the novel. With a right-wing government still focused on the Cold War and the Left focused on confronting Thatcher, rising Islamism in Britain nonetheless went largely under the radar. The CEO of Rushdie’s publisher, Penguin, commented: ‘One relied on the sanity of secular democracy…. It never occurred to us that this time it might be different or that it would become such as huge worldwide event’. After all, the Muslim riots in London and Africa in 1938 over H. G. Wells’ denigration of the Prophet in his A Short History of the World did not snowball in this way. Even journalists who were of Indian Muslim background like Kenan Malik found that it was only as the Rushdie affair broke in 1989 that they realised its significance. Malik recounts meeting an old friend from confrontations with white racism in the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party in the 1970s, to find that he had rejected the ‘white left’ and rediscovered his Muslim roots in a new Salafist form. This reflected a shift from one type of identity politics to another. For Malik, the turning-point was the reaction to the widespread riots of 1980–1981. These broad-based ethnic minority responses to aggressive policing prompted a new and well-funded focus on community relations which, through the device of multiculturalism, divided the broad left that had existed hitherto into various client groups. Accordingly, ‘Racism now meant not the denial of equal rights, but the

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denial of the right to be different’. The need to defend against perceived oppression was transferred to identity politics as community politics was balkanised. Community leaders who could contain tensions among their ethnic or religious groups were incentivised to self-identify in return for cash. One consequence was the expansion of mosques during the 1980s with local government and Saudi or Iranian money, helping thereby to turn multiple ethnic identities into religious ones. In the process British Muslims, most of whom originated from the Sufi-influenced Barelvi tradition, also became influenced by Wahhabi ideas, or by the strict teachings of the Deobandi preachers Zia sent to Pakistani communities in Britain. For Siddiqui, it was also a perfect opportunity to use the rhetoric of religious and political oppression to contain feared secularisation among the second generation of Muslim immigrants then reaching maturity.28 Rushdie observed in 1982 that a Britain no longer capable of exporting power had instead imported empire. Certainly, the management techniques developed in the 1980s resembled the old imperial tactics. Multiculturalism tended to divide and rule discontented ethnic minority groups, the Councils of Mosques which appeared at local level starting in Birmingham from 1981 onwards provided collaborators supposed to contain these discontents and the Islam they purveyed was still understood, as in the heyday of empire, as a socially conservative force. This view was to be radically altered by the crisis that The Satanic Verses provoked. The first protests in Britain began with the Saudi-funded and Jamaat-eIslami founded Islamic Foundation in Leicester in late 1988. It was not, however, until the book-burning in Bradford on 14 January 1989 that these protests were widely reported. Bradford had particular resonances because its association with the controversy over multicultural education in the city sparked by head teacher Ray Honeyford in 1984 had already brought public attention to the large Muslim presence there, and Honeyford’s ousting had been the first victory in Britain for Muslim political campaigning.29 A month later Khomeini issued his fatw¯ a informing ‘the proud Moslem people of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death’.30 The following day an Iranian organisation put a price on Rushdie’s head as the novelist went into hiding, and a week later Britain withdrew its diplomats from Tehran. Siddiqui’s role in this process is obscure. He was definitely in Tehran at the time. Although he had initially opposed actively campaigning against

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the book it is alleged that he encouraged the Iranians to take action. Certainly, Khomeini’s declaration enabled Siddiqui to propel the hitherto littleknown Muslim Institute into a leading role in the burgeoning protests in Britain. His background as a journalist and ability to coin a sound bite for the BBC also turned him into a ‘media-friendly militant’ who shamelessly sought to exaggerate the radicalism of his co-religionists.31 The outcome of this process was a growing sense of an existential crisis. This is not least because it led to a growing assertiveness on the part of British Muslims around issues such as the extension of the moribund blasphemy laws to religions other than Christianity. It also started a reconfiguring of ideas about Islam in British official and media minds away from an assumption of social and political conservatism back towards the images of fanaticism marked on the imperial frontier in the 1890s. This formulation had never entirely gone away in the mindset of British officials like Sir John Troutbeck during a long and distinguished career in the Middle East in the mid-twentieth century. Both of these views were, of course, orientalist constructs. Both also served largely to obscure rather than enlighten the British about how to relate to the Muslims now within their midst.

Notes 1. Brian R. Farmer, Understanding Radical Islam: Mediaeval Ideology in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), p. 83. 2. Sean Oliver-Dee, The Caliphate Question: The British Government and Islamic Governance (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009) and Umar Ryad, ‘Anti-imperialism and the Pan-Islamic Movement,’ in Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motabel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 131–49. 3. John Slight, ‘British Imperial Rule and the Hajj,’ in David Motabel, pp. 53–72. 4. Gail Minault, The Khilifat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 5. Geoffrey P. Nash, ed., Marmaduke Pickthall: Islam and the Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Ron Geaves, Islam and Britain: Muslim Mission in an Age of Empire (London: Bloomsbury, 2018); and James Gilham, Loyal Enemies: British Converts to Islam 1850–1950 (London: Hurst, 2004). 6. Kathryn Tidrick, Heart-Beguiling Araby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 7. Benjamin D. Hopkins, ‘Islam and Resistance in the British Empire,’ in Motabel, pp. 150–69; John Fisher, Gentlemen Spies: Intelligence Agents in the British Empire and Beyond (Stroud: Sutton, 2002), pp. 78–107; and

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8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

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Jonathan Reynolds, ‘Good and Bad Muslims: Islam and Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria,’ International Journal of African Historical Studies 34, no. 3 (2001): 601–18. James Whadden, Monarchy and Modernity in Egypt: Politics, Islam and Neocolonialism Between the Wars (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013). D.N. Panigrahi, India’s Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat (London: Routledge, 2004); Robin J. Moore, ‘India in the 1940s,’ in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 5: Historiography, eds. Robin Winks and Alaine Low (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 231–42. William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the US and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), p. 744. William R. Roff, The Origins of Malay Nationalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967). Heather J. Sharkey, ‘Jihads and Crusades in Sudan from 1881 to the Present,’ in Just Wars, Holy Wars and Jihads: Christian, Jewish and Muslim encounters and exchanges, ed. S.H. Hashmi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 263–82. André Gerolymatos, Castles Made of Sand: A Century of Anglo-American Espionage Intervention in the Middle East (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), pp. 66–69, 195. Stephen Dorril, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), pp. 558–98. Spencer Mawby, British Policy in Aden and the Protectorates 1955–67: Last Outpost of a Middle East Empire (London: Routledge, 2006). The National Archives, London [henceforward TNA]: FO1110/941, tel.352 to Amman, 2 March 1956. Said K. Aburish, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (London: Gollancz, 1997), pp. 48, 353–70. Mahmoud Hassan Tarabay, ‘The Social Context of News Production: Internal and External Influences on the Arab Press in London and Beirut,’ Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 1994, Chap. 2. Ghassam Salamé, ed., Democracy Without Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), p. 19. Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2012), pp. 86–87. David Brockman, ‘Behind the Screens: Death of a Princess,’ Transdiffusion, 7 February 2005 (https://www.transdiffusion.org/2005/07/02/ princess, accessed 25 September 2018). TNA: CAB 67/8/68 Lord Lloyd, ‘Proposal that His Majesty’s Government should provide a site for a mosque in London’, WP(G)(40)268, 18 October 1940.

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23. Umar Ryad, ‘Islamic Reformism and Great Britain: Rashid Rida’s Image as Reflected in the Journal Al-Man¯ ar in Cairo,’ Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 21, no. 3 (2010): 263–85. 24. W. Shahid and P.S. van Koningsveld, ‘The Negative Image of Islam and Muslims in the West: Causes and Solutions,’ in Religious Freedom and the Neutrality of the State: The Position of Islam in the European Union, eds. W. Shahid and P.S. van Koningsveld (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), pp. 174–96. 25. Edward Said, ‘Islam Through Western Eyes,’ The Nation, 26 April 1980. 26. Paul Berman, ‘The Rushdie Affair and the Struggle Against Islamism,’ The New Republic, 7 December 2012 (https://newrepublic.com/article/ 110804/who-are-the-real-blasphemers, accessed 14 September 2018). 27. Sayyid Qutb, Islam: The Religion of the Future (Delhi: Mazaki Maktaba Islami, 1974). 28. Kenan Malik, From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy (London: Atlantic Books, 2009); John Piscatori, ‘The Rushdie Affair and the Politics of Ambiguity,’ International Affairs 66, no. 4 (1990): 767–800; and Kalim Siddiqui, Generating ‘Power’ Without Politics (London: Muslim Institute, 1990), p. 18. 29. Mark Halstead, Education, Justice and Cultural Diversity: An Examination of the Honeyford Affair 1984–85 (Brighton: Falmer, 1988). 30. Cited in Zig Layton-Henry, ‘Race Relations and Immigration,’ in Contemporary Britain: An Annual Review 1990, ed. Peter Catterall (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 376–80. 31. Malise Ruthven cited in Seyfeddin Kara, ‘Between Salman Rushdie and Ayatollah Khomeini: Kalim Siddiqui and Political Islam in Britain in the Last Quarter of the 20th Century,’ The Muslim World 107, no. 3 (2017): 375–400.

Bibliography Aburish, Said K. A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite. London: Gollancz, 1997. Berman, Paul. ‘The Rushdie Affair and the Struggle Against Islamism.’ The New Republic, 7 December 2012 (https://newrepublic.com/article/110804/whoare-the-real-blasphemers, accessed 14 September 2018). Brockman, David. ‘Behind the Screens: Death of a Princess.’ Transdiffusion, 7 February 2005 (https://www.transdiffusion.org/2005/07/02/princess, accessed 25 September 2018). Curtis, Mark. Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2012. Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations. London: Fourth Estate, 2000.

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Farmer, Brian R. Understanding Radical Islam: Mediaeval Ideology in the TwentyFirst Century. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Fisher, John. Gentlemen Spies: Intelligence Agents in the British Empire and Beyond. Stroud: Sutton, 2002. Geaves, Ron. Islam and Britain: Muslim Mission in an Age of Empire. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. Gerolymatos, André. Castles Made of Sand: A Century of Anglo-American Espionage Intervention in the Middle East. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2010. Gilham, James. Loyal Enemies: British Converts to Islam 1850–1950. London: Hurst, 2004. Halstead, Mark. Education, Justice and Cultural Diversity: An Examination of the Honeyford Affair 1984–85. Brighton: Falmer, 1988. Hopkins, Benjamin D. ‘Islam and Resistance in the British Empire.’ In Islam and the European Empires, edited by David Motabel, pp. 150–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Kara, Seyfeddin ‘Between Salman Rushdie and Ayatollah Khomeini: Kalim Siddiqui and Political Islam in Britain in the Last Quarter of the 20th Century.’ The Muslim World 107, no. 3 (2017): 375–400. Layton-Henry, Zig. ‘Race Relations and Immigration.’ In Contemporary Britain: An Annual Review 1990, edited by Peter Catterall, pp. 376–80. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Louis, William Roger. The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the US and Postwar Imperialism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. Malik, Kenan. From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy. London: Atlantic Books, 2009. Mawby, Spencer. British Policy in Aden and the Protectorates 1955–67: Last Outpost of a Middle East Empire. London: Routledge, 2006. Minault, Gail. The Khilifat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Moore, Robin J. ‘India in the 1940s.’ In The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 5: Historiography, edited by Robin Winks and Alaine Low, pp. 231–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Nash, Geoffrey P., ed. Marmaduke Pickthall: Islam and the Modern World. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Oliver-Dee, Sean. The Caliphate Question: The British Government and Islamic Governance. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009. Panigrahi, D.N. India’s Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat. London: Routledge, 2004. Piscatori John. ‘The Rushdie Affair and the Politics of Ambiguity.’ International Affairs 66, no. 4 (1990): 767–800. Qutb, Sayyid. Islam: The Religion of the Future. Delhi: Mazaki Maktaba Islami, 1974.

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Reynolds, Jonathan. ‘Good and Bad Muslims: Islam and Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria.’ International Journal of African Historical Studies 34, no. 3 (2001): 601–18. Roff, William R. The Origins of Malay Nationalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967. Ryad, Umar. ‘Islamic Reformism and Great Britain: Rashid Rida’s Image as Reflected in the Journal Al-Man¯ ar in Cairo.’ Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 21, no. 3 (2010): 263–85. ———. ‘Anti-imperialism and the Pan-Islamic Movement.’ In Islam and the European Empires, edited by David Motabel, pp. 131–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Said, Edward. ‘Islam Through Western Eyes.’ The Nation, 26 April 1980 (https:// www.thenation.com/article/islam-through-western-eyes/, accessed 20 February 2019). Salamé, Ghassam, ed. Democracy Without Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World. London: I.B. Tauris, 1994. Shahid, W. and van Koningsveld, P.S. ‘The Negative Image of Islam and Muslims in the West: Causes and Solutions.’ In Religious Freedom and the Neutrality of the State: The Position of Islam in the European Union, edited by W. Shahid and P.S. van Koningsveld, pp. 174–96. Leuven: Peeters, 2002. Sharkey, Heather J. ‘Jihads and Crusades in Sudan from 1881 to the Present.’ In Just Wars, Holy Wars and Jihads: Christian, Jewish and Muslim Encounters and Exchanges, edited by S.H. Hashmi, pp. 263–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Siddiqui, Kalim. Generating ‘Power’ Without Politics. London: Muslim Institute, 1990. Slight, John. ‘British Imperial Rule and the Hajj.’ In Islam and the European Empires, edited by David Motabel, pp. 53–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Tarabay, Mahmoud Hassan. ‘The Social Context of News Production: Internal and External Influences on the Arab Press in London and Beirut.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 1994. Tidrick, Kathryn. Heart-Beguiling Araby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Whadden, James. Monarchy and Modernity in Egypt: Politics, Islam and Neocolonialism Between the Wars (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013).

Index

A Aden, 96, 97, 99, 102, 149, 151–156, 161, 165, 203, 219, 220, 236, 242, 247 Administrative difficulties of campaign (division between FO/WO/IO/Govt of India), 153, 160 Anjengo, 46

B Bandar Abbas (Gambaroon), 30, 31, 36, 37, 39, 45, 50 Berbera, Somaliland, 133, 152–154, 161, 163–165 Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, 57, 75, 125–127, 143 Boer Mounted Infantry, 158 British Empire, 52, 76, 89, 90, 98, 100, 125, 126, 129, 133, 135, 138, 139, 141, 149, 162, 197, 199, 206, 217, 219, 222, 226, 236, 237, 246, 247

British Somaliland/Somali Coast Protectorate, 149, 152, 162

C Caliphate Question, 139, 246 Cartography, 27, 28, 31, 46, 49, 50, 52 Charts, 28–33, 35, 36, 38–44, 46, 48–52 Childs, Sir Josiah, 43 Churchill, Winston, 107, 109, 114, 125–127, 129–131, 141–145, 167, 226 Commerce, 30, 33, 38–42, 46, 48–50, 52, 65, 68 Cost of the campaigns, and who was to pay, 133, 150

D Drapers Company, 28

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Q. Olmstead (ed.), Britain in the Islamic World, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24509-2

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INDEX

E East India Company, 27, 30, 38–40, 43 Edward Barlow, Basra, 28–31, 33, 40, 44 Emperor Menelik II of Abyssinia, 150, 159 Empire, 5, 9, 11, 13, 27, 29, 30, 38, 39, 43, 46, 49, 58, 59, 70, 75, 90–92, 100, 101, 109, 110, 112, 125, 128, 129, 135, 137–139, 144, 145, 150, 151, 155–158, 162, 164, 176, 183, 187, 197, 198, 218, 225–229, 236, 240, 243, 245, 246 F Fitzhugh, Augustine, 32, 50 French Somaliland, 152, 161 G Gen. Charles Egerton, 160, 161, 167 Gen. O’Moore Creagh, 155 Gen. William Manning, 162 Government of India, 72, 80, 102, 151, 153, 154, 165, 202, 203, 210, 212, 214–216, 219, 220, 222, 223 Bombay presidency, 152 H The Hajj, 34, 78, 202–205, 215–217, 219, 220, 223, 227, 229, 246 Hormuz, 36–39 I Imperial critics, 131, 154 Imperialism, 28, 29, 31, 36, 40, 44, 49, 129, 141, 150, 179, 213, 240, 246, 247

Imperial Service Troops, 157, 158 Bikaner Camel Corps, 158 Indian Army, 153–159 Italian Somaliland, 152, 156, 158–160, 162 J Jamaat-i-Islami, 232 K King’s African Rifles, 156, 158 L Lord Cranborne, Undersecretary at the Foreign Office (1900–03), 151 Lord Curzon, viceroy of India (1899–1905), 154, 155, 165 Lord Elgin, viceroy of India (1894–99), 131, 132, 153, 165 Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India (1895–1903), 152, 154, 156, 159 Lord Hardwicke, Undersecretary at the War Office (1902–3), 154 Lord Lansdowne, Foreign Secretary (1900–05), viceroy of India (1888–94), 151 Lord Northbrook, viceroy of India (1872–76), 152 Lord Percy, Undersecretary at the India Office (1902–03), 154, 156 Lt. Col. H.C.G. Swayne, 156, 158, 159, 163, 164 Lt. Col. J. Hayes Sadler, 149, 159, 164, 166 Lt. H.E.S. Cordeaux, 159, 163 M Malabar, 30, 31, 36, 40–43, 45, 46, 48, 50–52, 60

INDEX

Maps, 42, 57, 64, 93, 101, 103, 243 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Prime Minister (1895–1902), 153 Middle East, 3, 5, 91, 127, 129, 138–142, 146, 173, 182, 197, 199–201, 203, 205–208, 214, 216, 217, 225, 226, 230, 233–241, 243, 246, 247 Mocha (Moha), 30–36, 40, 48, 50, 51 Muhammad Abdullah Hassan (a.k.a., “the Mad Mullah”), 149, 163 Muslim Brotherhood, 207, 226, 231, 232, 234, 239 N Nasserism, 233 O Obbia, Italian Somaliland (site of British landing), 156, 158, 159 Orientalism, 3, 5, 134 Ottoman Empire, 5, 9, 20, 89–96, 98–100, 107–110, 112, 116, 118, 128, 129, 138, 139, 144, 159, 197, 225, 228 P Palestine Mandate, 170, 200, 232 Pan-Islamism, 226, 227, 229, 232, 241 Persian Gulf, 30, 31, 36, 38, 39, 43, 44, 48, 50, 58, 62, 76, 98, 212, 221 Pilotage, 29, 31, 32, 36, 40, 41, 44, 46, 48, 50 Port-views, 31, 40, 46

253

R Radicals, 11, 12, 93, 126, 142, 231, 232, 236, 239, 241, 246, 247 Red Sea, 27, 30–32, 34, 35, 40, 43, 44, 48, 66, 149, 151–153, 164, 203 Rennell Rodd, Ambassador to Rome, 159 Rushdie Affair, 226, 243, 244, 248

S Scepter , 33, 35, 51 Somali levies, 154, 156

T Technology aircraft, 162 dum-dum bullets, 162 Gatling guns, 161 Heliograph, 161 telegraph, 161 The Thames School, 28, 29, 41, 49, 50, 52 Thornton, John, 30, 32, 36, 38, 46, 50, 52 Trade, 27, 30, 31, 33–35, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 96, 152, 157, 179 Transport camels, 158, 161, 167 motor lorries, 161 railways, 93, 98, 99, 109, 161

W Welch, Andrew, 41, 51