Abstract
Edith Violet Sykes (1872-1930) is an undiscovered character in the historiography of travel literature. She is the wife of a British agent and diplomat Sir Mark Sykes, who was renowned for his deeds in the Middle East and the Sykes-Picot Agreement. She is actively engaged in politics, establishing Chaldean Relief Committee for Armenian and Assyrian populations, and criticizing the violence in Ireland. Her travel notes in 1906 in the Ottoman Middle East shed light on her Orientalist mindset, the construction of East vis-à-vis the West, and how Victorian-born woman approaches this land and its people. In that sense, the purpose of this article is multifarious: First of all, this study will be the initial presentation of the unpublished travel notes of Edith Sykes. Secondly, the different assets of the Ottoman Middle East such as rivalry among the tribes, people’s living, and political disturbances will be discerned through the British woman whose narration provides assistance for the transition of events into political discourse.
Highlights
Not enough is known today about the life of Edith Sykes who was the wife of famous British agent-diplomat Mark Sykes, despite her humanitarian activities in World War I by running a hospital1 and her being the co-founder of the Chaldean Relief Committee
Sir Eldon Gorst, was the consul-general in Egypt between 1907-1911. She was married to Sir Mark Sykes who, as one of the signatories of the Sykes-Picot Treaty concluded in 1916 to design partition of the Ottoman Empire, gained a reputation as the man who contributed to the drawing of the Middle East
Alison Blunt, in her work examining the relation of gender and imperialism over Mary Kingsley and her travel in West Africa, indicates that “Kingsley publicly supported imperialism but privately empathized with Africans at least partly because of her split position as both superior and inferior, inside and outside Western discourses of power and authority.”15 In the case of Edith Sykes, she functioned as the imperial apparatus with her knowledge related to the Ottoman government, categorization of people, and her political articles based on her observation
Summary
Not enough is known today about the life of Edith Sykes who was the wife of famous British agent-diplomat Mark Sykes, despite her humanitarian activities in World War I by running a hospital and her being the co-founder of the Chaldean Relief Committee. Alison Blunt, in her work examining the relation of gender and imperialism over Mary Kingsley and her travel in West Africa, indicates that “Kingsley publicly supported imperialism but privately empathized with Africans at least partly because of her split position as both superior and inferior, inside and outside Western discourses of power and authority.” In the case of Edith Sykes, she functioned as the imperial apparatus with her knowledge related to the Ottoman government, categorization of people, and her political articles based on her observation She displayed the orientalist mind of a hegemonic imperial existence looking at the way she describes several people ugly and found the places dirty and smelly as travelled to the East. In the travel of Edith Sykes, her dominant context is the acquisition of knowledge for the imperial agenda as she gives many details of tribes, tribal conflicts, and the deeds of the government all of which she utilized for the political discourse; while her narration include femininity as she examines the gender relation, the appearance of people, and familial bonds
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