Foundations of British Policy in the Arab World; The Cairo Conference of 1921

Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. xiv, 322 pages. DJ has wear and soiling. Endpaper map. Maps. Footnotes. Includes Preface, and Notes on Arabic Transliteration and Usage, as well as Appendices, Selected Bibliography, Biographical Sketches, and Index. Chapters include Wartime Commitments,1914-18; The Difficulties of Peace, 1919; Failure of the Paris Peace Conference; The Year of Violence, 1920; London: Prelude to Cairo; The Cairo Conference, March, 1921; Iraq; Palestine; Transjordan; and Perspective and Conclusions. The author received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and was the editor of the Journal of International Affairs. Drawing extensively on previously unavailable documents of the British government as well as private papers and memoirs, the author uses the Cairo Conference as the focal point for a detailed study of Britain's involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. After tracing the background that led to the conference, Aaron Klieman describes and analyzes the deliberations themselves, and assesses the effect of the decisions taken on Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, and Arabia. He demonstrates that many of the contemporary problems of the Middle East--political instability, disillusion with democratic institutions, inter-Arab rivalry, the Arab-Israeli conflict--originated in this earlier, decisive period. The 1921 Cairo Conference, described in the official minutes as Middle East Conference held in Cairo and Jerusalem, March 12 to 30, 1921, was a series of meetings by British officials for examining and discussing Middle Eastern problems, and to frame a common policy. The secret conference of British experts created the blueprint for British control in both Iraq and Transjordan. By offering nominal leadership of those two regions to the sons of the Sharif of the Mecca, Churchill felt that the spirit if not the actual letter of Britain's wartime promises to the Arabs were fulfilled. Particular concerns of the conference were to resolve the conflicting policies defined in the McMahon letters (1915), the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917). Winston Churchill, the newly appointed Colonial Secretary, called all the British Military Leaders and civil administrators in the Middle East to a conference at the Semiramis hotel in Cairo to discuss these issues. It was an experimental conference organized by the Colonial Office, with the purpose to solve problems more efficiently, with improved communications, without protracted correspondence. The conference's most significant outcome was the decision to implement the Sharifian Solution: Abdullah bin Hussein was to administer the territory east of the Jordan River, Transjordan, and his brother Faisal was to become king of a newly created Kingdom of Iraq; both were to continue to receive direction and financial support from Great Britain. It was also agreed that Lebanon and Syria should remain under French control, Britain should maintain the mandate over Palestine and continue to support the establishment of a Jewish Homeland there, Husain, the Sharif of Mecca, was to be recognized as King of the Hejaz and Abdul Aziz ibn Saud left in control of the Nejd in the heart of the Arabian Desert.