Anoop Verma's Diary: Itihasa & Darshana: George and Clemenceau: Dividing the Middle East

Monday 14 June 2021

George and Clemenceau: Dividing the Middle East

After the First World War, the British and French governments started the process of identifying the territories in the Middle East that they wanted to control. In December 1918, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his French counterpart Georges Clemenceau had a blunt conversation in London, on the subject of how the Middle East was to be divided among the allies. Here’s how their conversation went:

Clemenceau: “What do you want?”

George: “I want Mosul.”

Clemenceau: “You shall have it. Anything else?”

George: “I want Jerusalem too.”

Clemenceau: “You shall have it.”

Clemenceau wanted to establish a protectorate over Syria, to which George agreed. George identified Palestine as the territory which he must control if he was to protect the Suez Canal. Clemenceau agreed to let George have Palestine. (Source: The Papers of Lord Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the Imperial War Cabinet and top aide to David Lloyd George)

In light of the knowledge of the disastrous fate of the interventions in the Middle East from 1918 to this day, this exchange between Clemenceau and George seems naive, arrogant, and quixotic.

If Clemenceau and George had a sense of history, they would have realized that the West had been failing in the Middle East for more than two thousand years. The Western Roman Empire failed to control the Middle East. The Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantines) failed. The three centuries of crusaders could not make any headway in the Middle East.

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Nirad C. Chaudhuri

“In the south the temples have survived, and in the north they have not. Over seven centuries from the eleventh to the end of the seventeenth all the great cities of northern India dating from Hindu times were sacked by the Muslim invaders and conquerors of India. All the temples there and in all other centres of Hinduism were systematically destroyed. None were left standing at Ujjain, Ajmere, Delhi, Mathura, Brindaban, Kanauj, Prayag, or Benares—which were the centres of the political, cultural, and religious life of the Hindus. In most of these places mosques were built on the sites of the temples, and in some with pillars taken from them. This religious vandalism also worked its fury on the Buddhist centres. Moreover, it was not simply that the great temples in the cities were destroyed; so were the village temples. For most of the period of Muslim rule, there was a ban on building new temples and rebuilding the old in the regions the Muslims controlled.” ~ Nirad C. Chaudhuri

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"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." ~ George Santayana

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“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” ~ James Joyce