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girlactionfigure · 7 months

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Pre-World War I, neither #Arabs nor #Jews had their own states; and the #MiddleEast was controlled by the Ottoman Turkish Empire. During the 30 years between the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in 1918 & Israel declaring independence in 1948, there were many opportunities for peace.

1918 - First Meeting Between #Zionist & Arab Leaders

At Aqaba, Zionist leader Dr. Chaim Weizmann first met Emir Feisal (photo below) - son of the Grand Sharif of #Mecca, ruler of the Hejaz, direct descendant of #Mohammed, leader of the #Arab revolt against the Ottomans & by far the most well-known & respected Arab leader of the early 20th century.

Feisal knew that what he called “Southern #Syria” (referred to by the British as “Palestine” & by the Jews as “Eretz Israel”) had become a neglected, largely barren, arid, malarial-swamp-infested wasteland under the Ottomans & felt the #Jewish zeal to revitalize the Land would benefit both Jews & Arabs.

1919 - #Paris Peace Conference

The Paris Peace Conference convened to discuss post-war peace terms & how land of the former Ottoman Empire & Imperial #Germany would be divided.

Emir Feisal represented Arab interests at the Conference

Jan 1919: Weizmann-Feisal Agreement Signed

Dr. Weizmann and Emir Feisal, in Jan 1919, signed an Agreement acknowledging:

“the racial kinship & ancient bonds existing between the Arabs & the Jewish people” and mutually recognizing the Balfour Declaration by declaring “Palestine” the Jewish National Home on which “[a]ll necessary measures will be taken to encourage and stimulate #immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.”

March 1919: Feisal & Frankfurter Exchange Letters

After a meeting between Emir Feisal & Zionist leader Felix Frankfurter in March 1919, Feisal drafted & signed a letter to Frankfurter with the Arab position:

“We feel that the Arabs & Jews are cousins by race, suffering similar oppression at the hands of powers stronger than themselves, & by happy coincidence have been able to take the first step towards the attainment of their national ideals together. We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement … we regard [the Zionist proposals] … as moderate and proper … [and] wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home … The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist … there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed I think that neither can be a real success without the other.”

Frankfurter replied to Feisal in a letter acknowledging the Arab position “with deep appreciation” & stating:

“[W]e knew that the aspirations of the Arab and the Jewish peoples were parallel, that each aspired to re-establish its nationality in its own homeland … The Arabs and Jews are neighbors in territory; we cannot but live side by side as friends.”

Apr 4-7 1920 - Violent Nebi Musa Riots & Their Rejection By Several Arab Leaders

While the policy of the #British government was pro-Zionist & pro-Arab, certain British officers on the ground were deeply #antisemitic & worked to foment Arab violence against Jews.

Specifically, British Colonel Waters Taylor (financial advisor to Military Administration in Palestine), met with Arab extremist Amin al-Husseini & encouraged him to incite a riot during Easter to show the Arabs did not support #Zionism.

For four straight days, al-Husseini’s incited mob of ~65,000 Arabs engaged in a riotous #pogrom against the Jewish community in #Jerusalem.

The mob chanted things like, “slaughter the Jews,” “the Jews are our dogs,” and “we will drink Jewish blood,” as they destroyed & looted Jewish shops, homes, & synagogues and then raped and murdered their way through the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

As horrifying as the riots were, not all hope was lost as Arab sheikhs from 82 villages around Jaffa & Jerusalem (who claimed to represent 70% of the population) published a document fully condemning the Arab riots & violence against Jews & expressly proclaiming Zionism was “not a danger” to Arabs.

April 20, 1920 - San Remo Conference

At the San Remo Conference, Ottoman & German colonies were split into 15 legal mandates awarded to the Allied powers.

One of those mandates was the British Mandate for Palestine (containing all of modern day Israel, #Gaza, the #WestBank, & the country of #Jordan), which expressly required the British to hold the land in trust while encouraging Jewish immigration to the Land on which there would be a reconstituted Jewish National Home.

Feb 1921 - Churchill meets Jewish & Arab leaders in Palestine

Winston Churchill was put in charge of Britain’s Palestine policy by Prime Minister David Lloyd George & he visited the Land to meet with Jewish & Arab leaders in Feb 1921.

Churchill was stunned by the degree to which the Jews had already developed the land & built large, fully-functioning communities over the prior decades; he also marked the groundbreaking ceremony for #Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Days later, Churchill met with Arab leaders - only those with whom he met were led by another member of the al-Husseini clan, Musa Kazem al-Husseini.

Churchill was stunned as he listed to the Arabs read aloud a 39-page memorandum filled almost exclusively with hatred, demonization, & absurd conspiracy theories about Jews and world domination.

Churchill expressed his disapproval & told the Arab leaders in attendance it was “manifestly right that the Jews should have a National Home … [a]nd where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately & profoundly associated? … [W]e also think it will be good for the Arabs who dwell in Palestine.”

March 1921 - British Commission Empowers al-Husseini & Terror Ensues

The British Commission in Palestine appointed Amin al-Husseini “Grand Mufti” - a position that did not previously exist (“mufti” existed, but not “grand mufti”), and that gave him lifelong tenure as the most prominent Arab leader in Palestine.

Al-Husseini almost immediately instigated organized “fedayeen” terror attacks against the Jewish community culminating with riots in Jaffa and Petah Tikvah that left 43 Jews dead only three weeks later.

Following the riots, al-Husseini consolidated his power & took control of all #Muslim religious funds, the mosques, the schools, & the courts. He then wrote to Churchill & demanded an end to Jewish immigration & for Palestine to be “reunited with Syria.”

1922 - Mandate made Official & the First Partition of Palestine

By international treaty, in 1922, the League of Nations officially formalized the British Mandate for Palestine, which adopted the Balfour Declaration, acknowledging the Jewish people’s "historical connections” to the Land, & declaring the British requirement to “facilitat[e] Jewish immigration [and] encourage settlement on the land” while acknowledging the “moral validity of reconstituting” the Jewish nation.

Meanwhile, Churchill acknowledged a segment of the Palestinian Arab community violently rejected the Jews, but he also received express declarations from hundreds of Palestinian Arab sheikhs & mukhtars supporting Jewish immigration to improve the industrial development of the land, which they said would improve the lives of Arabs as well.

In an attempt to quell any further violence & Arab anxieties, with the stroke of a pen, Churchill partitioned the British Mandate for Palestine by slicing off 3/4 of the Land (everything east of the Jordan River) to create a new Arab Muslim country called “Trans-Jordan,” to which Emir Feisal’s brother, Abdullah (also widely recognized as an Arab Muslim leader from #Saudi Arabia), was named king.

Jews were irate at the loss of 75% of the territory promised to them, but ultimately decided to accept Churchill’s White Paper in the spirit of good will toward their Arab neighbors.

Al-Husseini (who now had his thumb on the majority of Palestine’s Arabs, especially since most would not dare challenge him lest they be summarily executed) flatly rejected the extremely Arab-friendly partition & said the whole of the land was Arab.

Just one year later, the British were forced to suspend the Palestine Constitution after Al-Husseini refused to participate in the Mandatory government.

And al-Husseini continued to organize ongoing violence against Jews culminating in the particularly barbaric 1929 Hebron massacre, which began as a result of the now oft-repeated & nearly 100-year-old lie that the Jews were attempting to “destroy al-Aqsa mosque.”

1936 - Start of the Arab Revolt

In April 1936 (3+ years after Hitler first came to power & while the situation of Jews in #Europe was rapidly deteriorating), al-Husseini organized a terror attack on a Jewish bus, which was then followed by three years of organized terror between Palestinian Arab clans & by Arabs against both Jews and the British.

Al-Husseini formed the Arab Higher Committee, declared a national strike & made three demands: (1) cessation of Jewish immigration; (2) end of land sales to Jews; & (3) the establishment of an Arab national government in the whole of Palestine.

1937 - Peel Commission & Recommended Second Partition of Palestine

Britain set up the Peel Commission to investigate the cause of the Arab riots & to make recommendations.

One of the Jewish Zionist leaders, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, was interviewed by the Commission, & his words were hauntingly prophetic.

Jabotinsky told the British the Jews of Europe faced “a disaster of historic magnitude … We have got to save millions, many millions … who are virtually knocking at the door [of Palestine] asking for admission.”

As to the Arab population, Jabotinsky was clear there was no Jewish desire to “oust” any Arabs and he further said “Palestine on both sides of the Jordan should hold the Arabs, their progeny, and many millions of Jews.”

Jabotinsky then acknowledged a movement of Palestine’s Arabs to create yet another Arab state in the land, but he said, “when the Arab claim is confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved, it is like the claims of appetite versus the claims of starvation.”

The Peel Commission ultimately recommended a second partition of Palestine - this time leaving the Jews with only an extraordinarily tiny portion of what is today a sliver of the northwest coast of Israel, and giving the remaining 80% of the land for an Arab state.

The Jews felt betrayed. But they understood, at least on some level, the disaster awaiting their brethren in Europe & the immediate need to provide safe haven.

So, the Jews accepted the Peel Commission’s partition, assuming the Arabs would accept it & agree to live side-by-side in peace.

This time, not only did al-Husseini reject the planned partition, but neighboring Arab leaders & states did as well.

A Syrian pan-Arab Congress rejected the Peel Commission’s recommendations & declared its goal to “liberat[e] the country and establish[] an Arab government.”

1938 - Woodhead Commission & the Evian Conference

The following year, Britain established the Woodhead Commission to study Palestine & try to find borders that both the Jews & Arabs could accept.

The Woodhead Commission made three proposals, all of which saw the once large Jewish nation continue to shrink exponentially.

In its report, the Woodhead Commission noted, “Arabs of all parties & shades of political opinion were unanimous in condemning the plan as inequitable & wholly unacceptable.”

The report further noted that the thought that “peace to Palestine” would be brought by any partition that included a Jewish state of any size was something “we cannot venture to hope.”

One Arab witness interviewed by the Woodhead Commission said if partition is set in motion that creates any Jewish state, “you will have to have a barbed wire right right it … with pill boxes every half kilometer … Hostility in our lifetime there will be.”

Another Arab witness said, “There would be a violent reaction to anything which gives any part of Palestine to the Jews.”

One other Arab witness said that even if a tiny Jewish State was proclaimed, the Arabs might stay quiet at first, but they would merely be “bid[ing] their time, that is all” until the Jewish State would be destroyed.

The Woodhead Commission declared the Arab position as making the conflict in Palestine “irreconcilable.”

Meanwhile, also in 1938, the Evian Conference was called by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt in #France to allegedly attempt to deal with the Jewish #refugee problem caused by rise of #Nazi Germany.

All 32 nations in attendance at the Evian Conference refused to permit any significant immigration of Jews to their country.

The #Nazis even mocked the world and their “fake” sympathy for the Jews by declaring in Nazi newspaper headlines, “JEWS FOR SALE AT A BARGAIN PRICE—WHO WANTS THEM? NO ONE.”

1939 - St. James Palace Conference & the White Paper

In February 1939, the British held the St. James Palace Conference in #London to try to find a peaceful solution to the problems in Palestine.

However, the Conference was dead on arrival as the Arab delegates refused to meet with their Jewish counterparts.

Meanwhile, just two months later, Britain (then led by anti-Zionist Neville Chamberlain) was preparing for potential war with Germany, acknowledged its dependence on Middle Eastern oil to win that war (thus requiring Arab goodwill), & decided to appease the Arabs.

The 1939 White Paper was issued, abandoning Britain’s legal obligations to establish a Jewish State in Palestine & shutting the doors to further Jewish immigration almost entirely.

When the British submitted the White Paper to the League of Nations for approval, it was rejected as “not in accordance with … the Mandate.”

But the world was on the brink of war, and the League of Nations had no enforcement power. So Britain ignored the League of Nations’ decision.

The Jewish Agency for Palestine called the White Paper a betrayal in the midst of the “darkest hour of Jewish history.”

Zionist leader (and later first Prime Minister of Israel) David Ben-Gurion called the White Paper “the greatest betrayal perpetrated by the government of a civilized people in our generation.”

Dr. Weitzmann called it, “a death sentence for the Jewish people.”

When war broke out later that year & the Holocaust ensued, Europe’s Jews did not have any place on Earth in which they could seek refuge.

Millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but it could be argued they were condemned to their fate by the failure of the Evian Conference and the issuance of the British White Paper.

1945 - End of WWII & the Holocaust

In 1945, the full extent of Nazi atrocities & their systematic slaughter of 6 million of Europe’s Jews (2/3 of the population) was revealed to the world.

Those Jews who survived had no homes to which they could return; & there were multiple violent pogroms against the few Jews who tried to go “home.”

Hundreds of thousands of Jews were homeless #refugees & survivors of #Hitler’s madness; but they could only be put into Displaced Persons camps, which were often in the same location as the Nazi concentration camps in which they had been tortured & where their families had been murdered.

U.S. President Harry Truman was appalled that even in light of the Holocaust & the condition of the surviving displaced refugee Jews, the British refused to end its illegal White Paper policy; and he demanded Britain immediately permit the entry of 100,000 Jewish survivors to Palestine.

Britain, then under the leadership of anti-Zionist Prime Minister Clement Attlee, refused.

1946 - Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry

The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was set up in 1946 to study the Jewish refugee problem & the status of the situation in Palestine and make any recommendations.

The Committee found the Arab intransigence to any Jewish immigration & to any Jewish state remained; but given Britain’s legal obligations under the Mandate & the condition of the Jewish refugees in Europe, the Committee recommended the immediate immigration of 100,000 Jews to Palestine to be followed by further steps to arrange a compromise between the Jews & Arabs.

1947 - Britain Abandons the Mandate & Seeks Resolution by the UN

Foreign Minister of Britain (and well-known #antisemite) Ernest Bevin declared in Feb 1947 his recommendation that the Mandate be abandoned since “there is no prospect of reaching … any settlement which would be even broadly acceptable to the two communities in Palestine.”

Bevin described the “irreconcilable” nature of the conflict to the British House of Commons thusly, “For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of a Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.”

In May 1947, the UN created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (“UNSCOP”), & four months later, UNSCOP made its recommendations that included a partition of Palestine into one Jewish state & one Arab state - each on approximately 50% of the Land (which, for the Jews, represented a mere 1/8 of the territory originally set aside for Jewish immigration and a Jewish State).

The Jews accepted the UN’s proposal, but the Arabs rejected it.

Sept 1947 - Attempts to Avoid War

On Sept 16, 1947, Zionist leaders met with the leader & secretary-general of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha.

The Zionist leaders pointed out the #UN had spoken, but also said they were “genuinely desirous of an agreement with the Arabs & [were] prepared to make sacrifices for one.” Generous compromises were offered.

Pasha, however, responded thusly:

“It’s likely … that your plan is rational & logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won’t get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of arms. We shall try to defeat you. I’m not sure we’ll succeed, but we’ll try.”

Abba Eban (later Israel’s first Ambassador to the UN) tried to reason with Pasha, saying he would “welcome any counterproposal from your side.”

But Pasha responded:

“An agreement will only be acceptable at our terms … We have only one test, the test of strength. If I were a Zionist leader, I might have behaved the way you’re doing. You have no alternative. In all events, the problem now is only soluble by the force of arms.”

Oct 2, 1947 - Zionist Leaders Urge Reconciliation with Local Arabs

The Assembly of Palestine Jewry issued an appeal on Oct 2, 1947 that read:

“We will do everything in our power to maintain peace, & establish a cooperation gainful to both [Jews & Arabs]. It is now, here & now, from Jerusalem itself, that a call must go out to the Arab nations to join forces with Jewry & the destined Jewish State and work shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals.”

There was no similar call from the Arab world in response.

Nov 1947 - UN Partition Vote & Outbreak of Civil War

On Nov 29, 1947, the UN voted to approve General Assembly Resolution 181 adopting partition as recommended by UNSCOP.

The Jews celebrated international legitimacy for their State; but, like all UNGA Resolutions, 181 was a mere “recommendation.”

Since the Arabs flatly rejected Resolution 181, there was no means by which the UN could enforce it.

The next day, Arabs attacked a Jewish bus on the Petah Tikva-Lod road, killing five passengers, & Jewish neighborhoods in and surrounding Jerusalem were attacked.

A Civil War had begun.

May 1948 - Israeli Independence

At 8 a.m. on May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared independence for the State of Israel.

Ben-Gurion began by stating:

“Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural values of national & universal significance & gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.”

But Ben-Gurion also ended by stating:

“In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace & play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions … We extend our hand in peace & neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.

Only hours later, the neighboring Arab countries (#Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, #Iraq, and #Egypt) launched a full scale invasion of the nascent State of Israel.

Sec-Gen Azzam Pasha proclaimed, “This will be a war of extermination & momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres & the Crusades.”

Pundits filled the airwaves with talk of a second Holocaust considering the Arab states had a population of 200 million with well-equipped armies, & Israel’s entire population was ~600,000 men, women, & children with no formal military training.

Plus, both the United States & Britain maintained an arms embargo on Israel.

However, in what was a true modern-day miracle, the Jews of the reconstituted Jewish State of Israel, a mere three years after the Holocaust & once again facing extermination, fought back the Arab armies to armistices signed in April 1949.

@CptAllenHistory

#Education #Israel #Palestine

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scotianostra · 8 days

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On June 21st 1919, 74 warships of the German fleet were scuttled in Scapa Flow, Orkney.

Learning that the German High Seas Fleet was to be turned over to the Allies, the Germans scuttled their own fleet at Scapa Flow, Scotland, on June 21, 1919. Before the British became aware of what had transpired, the fleet was almost beyond salvage and the German Navy, for all indent, had ceased to exist. As punishment, the Germans had to deliver almost everything left afloat in Germany, including cranes, tugs, and service craft.

The sinking of Germany's captive Imperial Navy off Orkney in 1919 signalled the death of the Kaiser's Reich.

Following the end of World War I in November 1918, 74 German ships were interned in Scapa Flow, a shallow, sheltered bay in the Orkney Islands north of Scotland that had served as one of the Royal Navy's key bases during the war.

The story of their scuttling, which inspired plays and films in the 1920s, was dramatic enough: Skeleton crews, disaffected and sick after months on board, had surreptitiously loosened portholes, drilled holes in bulkheads and left watertight doors open, waiting on the order from their commander, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, aboard the fleet's flagship, the Emden.

Von Reuter, in turn, was waiting for the outcome of the peace talks in Paris, where the fate of Germany's ships was to be decided. Historians believe that von Reuter had been ordered to sink the ships at all costs (a violation of the Armistice agreement), but only if, as was expected, the Allies decided that they were to be seized. France, in particular, was said to be keen to acquire extra ships.

The British Navy suspected that the Germans were planning to sink the ships and prepared plans to stop them, but von Reuter found an opportunity in an alignment of circumstances: a delay to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which the German admiral was not kept informed of, and a bright day on June 21 that allowed the Royal Navy to leave the bay to go out on exercises.

After von Reuter sent out a signal by semaphore and searchlights at around 11:20 a.m., sea cocks, flood valves and internal pipes were opened. It took an hour for the news to reach Admiral Sydney Fremantle of the Royal Navy, leading the exercises, and another two for his fleet to return to Scapa Flow, by which time crews were only able to save 22 of the ships.

During the scuttling, some of the Germans were shot for refusing to go back to their ships to stop them from sinking, And 21 were wounded, mostly from bayonet wounds and being hit with rifle butts.

Thirteen World War I German sailors are now buried in a cemetery on the Orkney Islands: Nine were shot, and the others died during their internment — most probably victims of the flu.

The conditions during the internment were poor. Twenty-thousand Germans were initially brought to Scapa with the ships, though that was gradually reduced to about 1,800 by the time of the scuttling. The British were very strict, and tried everything to avoid allowing the sailors to get into contact with the local population here Life was pretty harsh, especially in autumn and winter. The weather here is pretty rough.

They weren't allowed off the ships. Their supplies had to come from Germany. We wouldn't give them anything. So it would have been pretty grim for them.

That segregation was partly motivated by fears of a spreading flu epidemic on board — but the British may also have had another "contamination" in mind: the spread of communism across Europe. The previous year's revolution in Germany had been started by mutinous sailors, and the vestiges of the class resentment were still on board.

There was still a lot of tensions between the officers and the rank and file, Many of the red sailors made clear that they were revolutionaries, and they to some extent even showed they despised their officers — by stamping on the decks to make it impossible for von Reuter to sleep. He eventually had to change his flagship because he got no sleep.

Nowadays, the last remains of all this drama (many of the ships were later raised) lie 30 meters below the surface. Scapa Flow has become a popular diving spot, where amateur regularly come to take a closer at the Kaiser's old ships.

#scotland #scottish #history #world war one #germany #naval history #nORTHERN ISLES

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fumblingmusings · 4 months

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A 100% accurate portrayal of the Paris Peace Process in 1919.

Includes Italy about to gobble up a lot of the Central Powers lands, Germany going through the five stages of grief in an endless loop, America already booking the next ship home so he never has to speak to anyone from Europe ever again, the UK being weirdly apologetic and yet not actually doing anything to soften the terms, France enjoying the schadenfreude, and Canada realising they didn't actually ask for anything despite pushing for a seat at the table.

#hetalia #op #historical hetalia #this is not even remotely accurate when you look at their positions for more than two seconds but...indulge me #a joke...

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blackswaneuroparedux · 11 months

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A wonderful person - not very like a woman, you know?

T.E. Lawrence on his friend Gertrude Bell

In many ways the life of T.E.arc Lawrence and Gertrude Bell was similar and overlapped in many ways. Two remarkable persons who represented the height of the British Empire heroism.

Lawrence is undoubtedly the more famous of the pair, branded in Orientalist film history by Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, headdress and all. But historians and contemporaries would arguably say, rightly in my opinion, that Bell’s influence on the Middle east region may have outweighed that of her overly confident friend and colleague, T.E. Lawrence. The First World War made Gertrude Bell into the icon she was to become after her death.

At the same time the First World War and its aftermath are a story of disappointment and depression for Gertrude Bell. Early on, she sees the war as the “end of the order we’re accustomed to” - a Whiggish order in which she had believed that British power could be exercised for good; she witnesses and fears the general abandonment of the belief that “there’s room enough in the sun” for everyone. Scales fell from her eyes earlier for her than for others of her class charged with redrawing the map of the Middle East and especially the fate of the Arabs.

Just before the installation of Prince Feisal, the not-yet-Iraqi tribes rebel. The colonial administration wants to adopt the position vacated by the Ottomans and demands of each tribe a poll tax. These are the the tribes that had been promised sovereignty. That is why they’d fought the Ottomans and sided with the allies: to be rid of their masters, not to swap them for some new ones. When the tax goes unpaid, the aerial bombardment of villages starts.

Gertrude Bell writes home, distraught, already blaming the curse it is that oil has been discovered in this land. Churchill had seen from the start of the war that oil independence for the empire would be the great strategic prize of the war as well as a tactical military requirement. There was never anything innocent in the War Office’s late recruitment of Bell to the Cairo office to work alongside T.E. Lawrence (who, in what is presumably for him the highest of compliments, writes of her that she is “not very like a woman”).

As the war and the aftermath of the Paris Peace 1919 gives way to the realpolitik of the grab for oil-rich Ottoman lands in the 1920s, she tries to warn that “no people likes permanently to be governed by another”.

Dutifully, she draws the boundaries of the new Kingdom of Iraq to balance Sunni and Shia numbers – “to avoid a theocratic state”. The Cairo Conference in 1921 set out to achieve this end and resulted in Feisal being given a Kingdom in Iraq and his brother the throne of neighboring Transjordan.

However in the end, she concludes that “making kings is too great a strain” because, we feel, she knows that Britain’s promises of sovereignty will be empty.

The talent and sympathy of the likes of Gertrude Bell don’t count for much against the onward march of power and the interests of those who wield it.

#bell #gertrude bell #TE lawrence #lawrence of arabia #quote #first world war #the middle east #versailles #history #british history #politics #war #prince feisal #archaeologist #spy #diplomacy #british empire

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mapsontheweb · 4 months

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The Assyrian Delegation's map of an independent Assyria, presented at the Paris Peace Conference 1919

#maps #assyria #1919

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todaysdocument · 11 days

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Letter from Nguyen ai Quac [Ho Chi Minh] to Secretary of State Robert Lansing (with enclosure)

Record Group 256: Records of the American Commission to Negotiate PeaceSeries: General RecordsFile Unit: 851G.00

PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE

[much clearer (typewritten or stamped) text (within stamped frame): in black:]

851G.00/1

[/stamp]

A Son Excellence le Secrétaire d'Etat de la

République des Etats-Unis, Délégué à la Conférence de la Paix.

Excellence,

Nous prenons la liberté de vous remettre ci-jointe

la note des Revendications du peuple Annamite à l'occasion

de la victoire des Alliés.

Nous comptons sur votre haute bienveillance pour l'honorer de votre appui auprès de qui de droit.

Nous prions Votre Excellence de vouloir bien agréer l'hommage de notre profound respect.

Pour le Groupe des

Patriotes Annamites.

[stamp (faintly) seen below "Patriotes Annamites." and the signature, with a date within an inner rectangle within a larger rectangular "box";

text within it reads as follows:][outer:] FILE

[inner:] 20 AOUT 1919

[/stamp]

[signature [(above a typewritten blank line):] ] Nguyên Aí Quâc

56, Rue Monsieur le Prince, 56

- Paris -

[complete document, transcription and translation at link]

#archivesgov #june 18 #1919 #paris peace conference #vietnam

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racefortheironthrone · 1 year

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What are your thoughts on Woodrow Wilson? It seems like depending on who you ask, he’s either the intellectual father of the current international system, or the man who brought American race relations to their post Civil War nadir by segregating the federal government.

As someone who primarily studies U.S domestic policy, I don't hugely care about Wilsonian foreign policy.

Yes, yes, international law and the roots of the U.N, but at the end of the day the League of Nations wouldn't have been fit for purpose even if Wilson had managed to get the U.S to participate, he got massively steamrolled at the Paris Peace Conference by Clemenceau and Lloyd George on everything from imperialism to anti-German revanchism, and you can't get away from the fact that his liberal pronouncements on national self-determination were sharply limited by his racism when it came to the self-determination of insufficiently white people.

When it comes to domestic policy, it gets harder for me because a lot of important and good stuff happened in his Administration - the income tax, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act ("labor's Magna Carta" according to Samuel Gompers), the Commission on Industrial Relations, the passage of the Suffrage Amendment for women, etc. - but most of that happened thanks to other people. Wilson was more of a cheerleader and promoter than a policy wonk, so I think any Progressive would have done as good a job.

On the issue of "American race relations," I think Wilson's impact was largely symbolic, but his impact was absolutely on behalf of segregation. The Jim Crow agenda of black disenfranchisement and discrimination had mostly been completed between 1890 and 1910 - by the southern wing of the Democratic Party that he came out of, I should add - and Wilson's personal contribution was to extend the latter principle into the Federal government as a final thumb in the eye to lingering Republican sentiment on civil rights. At the same time, between McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, the leadership of the Republican Party had basically already surrendered on black representation in Federal employment (just as at least the Executive had on anti-lynching laws, civil rights, and voting rights), so the damage had mostly been done.

His public support for Birth of a Nation - whether or not he actually said it, the tagline "like history writ with lighning" was a useful boost to the film's marketing - was probably more impactful in the long run. His Administration's inaction during the Red Summer of 1919 was most impacful of all, and even if you buy the bullshit argument that the Federal government didn't have the power to do anything in most cases, Wilson absolutely had the power when it came to Washington D.C and it somehow took him four days to send in the Army to stop white mobs from making war on the black community.

#history #u.s history #woodrow wilson #william mckinley #theodore roosevelt

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jadeseadragon · 1 year

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Evelyn De Morgan (British, 1855 - 1919), Helen of Troy, 1898, oil on canvas. [top digitally enhanced]

"In Greek mythology, Helen was the daughter of Zeus (King of the Gods) and Leda (a human). Legend has it that Helen (the wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta) was carried away by Paris (the son of the King of Troy), an act which precipitated the siege and destruction of Troy. Some writers have suggested that Helen eloped with Paris and was a willing participant in the tragedy. But this painting show Helen as innocent of any wrongdoing, surrounded by doves of peace and the white roses of Aphrodite (the goddess of love), whilst gazing into a mirror bearing the image of Aphrodite."

#evelyn de morgan #women artists #helen of troy #greek mythology

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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Designed by architect Albert Laprade, the Palais de la Porte Dorée, whose construction began in 1928, stands at the entrance to the vast space designed to house the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris. [...] [Its] style was a perfect example of a colonial modernity [...].

The display of riches extracted from the colonies, and the depiction of people bent over working, busy doing a thousand actions destined to enrich France, make up the Palais de la Porte Dorée’s 1,200-square-meter façade. It was realized at a time when many cracks were showing in the colonial empire, and when anticolonial groups in France and Europe were honing their arguments. Far from the peaceful image of worlds laboring to enrich France portrayed on this façade, [...] [t]he 1931 International Colonial Exhibition fabricated an illusion: that of a successful pacification and a working empire. [...] The government wanted to impress and dazzle the public [...].

A veritable tour de force, in a day, the public could visit Angkor Vat, Timbuktu, the palaces of Niger, or of the Queen of Madagascar. These monuments of vanquished civilizations -- now “French possessions” -- proved that access to fabulous riches had been secured. The 1931 Exhibition glorified the French colonial “civilizing mission,” but behind this euphemism were assimilation policies based on dispossession, the Code de l’indigénat (Indigenous Code), which legalized various forms of discrimination in the colonies, forced labor, and exploitation. [...] The colossal aspect of the Exhibition only fleetingly masked these fissures. [...] By its very inordinateness, the Colonial Exhibition [...] inadvertently revealed the illusion that underlay the colonial project. [...]

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In Europe and France in the 1910s to 1920s, Black, Asian, and Arab people organized, wrote, and mobilized. Examples include the Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1919 [...]. The constituent congress of the League against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression was held in Brussels in 1927. [...] [I]t was attended by representatives of the African National Congress, [...] Albert Einstein, Henri Barbusse [...]. Let us not forget either [...] the uprisings in Vietnam in 1908; [...] the 1925 revolt in Syria; or again in Vietnam in 1930. [...] Revolts and demonstrations demanding rights broke out throughout the entire French colonial empire, including [...] the demonstrations in Abéché (Chad) in 1917; the demonstrations of the people of Gabon and the Middle Congo from 1917 to 1918 [...].

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As an institution, the museum partook in the invention of homogeneous, racialized categories (“Africans,” “Asians,” “Arabs,” “Europeans”) [...]. The Palais de la Porte Dorée’s multiple bas-reliefs [...] form a veritable “stone tapestry” and an imposing fresco of imperialist power. The work of sculptor Alfred Auguste Janniot (1889–1969), it constitutes a colonial encyclopedia. Entitled: “L'Apport des territoires d'outre-mer à la mère patrie et à la civilization” (“The Overseas Territories’ Contribution to the Motherland and to Civilization”), it is the only of its kind in France in terms of size.

In this bas-relief, a vast, diverse, and complex world is reduced to a flat surface on which these figures’ labor contributes to the greatness of France. [...] The colony as disciplinable “Nature” [...]. Humans and animals, plants and pirogues intermix and intertwine. Here, half a body emerges from the foliage; there a child perched on a woman’s hip hovers over a cactus. Further on, the name “Sudan” spills from a lion’s mouth. There is no social life, [...] the colony is “Nature.”

This disorder contrasts with its orderly finality: the anticipated export of products to France. But it is also a disorder that evokes the ordering of the world through colonization. [...]

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The colony was a huge enterprise in taming fauna, flora, humans, rivers, forests, and mountains. Nothing was to escape the colonizers’ eye, or control. Everything had to be renamed, ordained, arranged, distinguished according to norms that reinforced an epistemology and imposed rigid binarities on worlds that had complex understandings of the living. Colonization was a project of control, possession, and transparency.

Thanks to this bas-relief, the French were given the impression of knowing everything about a world laying at its fingertips, that colonization offered them the entire diversity of the world, pacified, disciplined, subjected. [...] The Exhibition’s Jardin d’Acclimatation was an instrument of this organization; the public could imagine it was visiting the jungle, the savannah, tropical forests, and seas comfortably and safely. [...]

We also see the extent to which structures of racism destroy the possibility of living differently, [...] the imagination, that they stifle us, that they sever ties [...]. We want to retrace the cartographies of transnational and transcontinental resistance, to give voice [...]. We no longer want to be put under house arrest, confined.

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All text above by: Françoise Vergès. “Decolonize the City.” e-flux Architecture (Appropriations series). May 2023. [All bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. At e-flux, Vergès explains, in an introduction, that this text “is a compilation of several extracts of the book De la violence coloniale dans l’espace public: Visite du triangle de la Porte Dorée (Of Colonial Violence in the Public Space: A visit to the Porte Dorée Triangle)“.]

#ecology #imperial #colonial #abolition #temporal #haunted #indigenous #french algeria #carceral #multispecies #carceral geography #tidalectics #caribbean #archipelagic thinking #intimacies of four continents #victorian and edwardian popular culture

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