Gertrude Bell's moment in the Middle East: a reappraisal

Called by T.E. Lawrence, ‘the most brilliant Englishman in the Middle East’, Ronald Storrs was a prominent British diplomat and governor who played a leading role in the Anglo-Egyptian government and the Arab Bureau in the years immediately before and during the First World War. In 1917, Storrs became Military Governor of Jerusalem under the British Mandate, in his words, the first such governor ‘since Pontius Pilate’. This book tells the story of Storrs’s life in the Middle East by weaving together international affairs, regional geopolitics, statecraft and biography to reassess his influence on British policy during the early years of the twentieth century. During this period, he witnessed the rise of Arab nationalism, the end of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of Zionism in Palestine. Storrs’s governorship of Jerusalem came at a critical juncture in the city’s post-war history, and C. Brad Faught analyses his attempts to forge a working peace between Arabs and Jews while seeking also to preserve and protect the Holy City’s many sacred spaces. Storrs’s record as a colonial governor is examined, and the sharp divisions within Jerusalem’s body politic – some of which were created or exacerbated by Britain’s own policies – are explored. Included in the book are many of the leading figures in British and Middle East politics of the time, such as Edmund Allenby, Gertrude Bell, Winston Churchill, King Faisal, Sharif Hussein, David Lloyd George, Chaim Weizmann and Lawrence, By probing the life of an important but understudied British diplomat, the book makes an important contribution to deepening our understanding of the complicated history of the modern Middle East.

It has been asserted that women's travel narratives are fundamentally different from those of men. The differential access of women to the dominant imperial position produced a gaze on the Orient that registered differences in less pejorative ways. However, the analysis of the intersection of gender, class, nation, and race discourses problematizes this view, and gives evidence that in women's narratives and life experiences one can find sites of resistance to colonialism as well as sites of complicity, depending on the individual women's positioning in this intersection. But even if women's narratives and life experiences do not necessarily deviate from the predominant Orientalist discourse, their texts are nevertheless specifically gendered. In this paper I study two women travelers, Isabelle Eberhardt (1877 – 1904) and Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926). Eberhardt, born in Geneva (although with a Russian background), traveled to Tunisia and Algeria, wrote in French, and became a legendary figure in France. Gertrude Bell, born in County Durham (United Kingdom), spent most of her adult life in the Middle East and, at the service of the British Government, played a major role in the creation of its modern political map (in particular in Iraq). The study and comparison of these two women shed light on the complexity of attitudes towards colonialism that can result from a combined analysis of gender, class, nation, and race. Eberhardt was frequently torn between identifying with her race and class or with her gender, and among French colonial officers held a reputation of being an enemy of France as well as profoundly Algerianized; but, in the end, she gradually reached a compromised position in relation to France's colonial policies in the Sahara. In contrast, Bell was a traveler and a scholar who used her knowledge and her travels to promote the cause of the British Empire. But although she was unambiguously imperial in her outlook, she also managed to achieve a personal closeness with many Arabs and was a champion of their history and culture.

This article advocates for the central importance of examining cartography for the understanding of literary travel narratives, focussing on accounts of travel in the deserts of the Middle East written by Gertrude Bell and TE Lawrence, both explorers, archaeologists and authors who were implicated in British activities in the Middle East before, during and after the Arab Revolt, and who travelled through the region during the early 20th century. This article seeks to explore the connections between the authors’ textual depictions and the maps that they authored, using close readings of their travel narratives and their maps to arrive at a more profound understanding of how these processes of authorship resulted in the production and mediation of ‘Arabia’ as an imaginative geography. Drawing on archival research and a range of textual sources, the development of this literary geography is traced through the early research of TE Lawrence on crusader castles in Syria and Lebanon, Gertrude Bell’s descriptions of using maps in The Desert and the Sown, Lawrence’s account of collating a map of Sinai for the War Office and the relationship between local navigational knowledges with their cartographic activities.

This article explores “Orientalist” accounts of hospitality to identify historical antecedents for contemporary Western demand for hospitality and tourism products in the Middle East. Scenes of hospitality in the diaries of Richard Burton and Gertrude Bell are analysed in the context of the authors' historically locatable, subject positions. The paper finds that Orientalist expectations of hospitality form an image that is both culturally self-serving and, to an extent, impenetrable by the actual experience of the traveller. The durability of this discourse may still inform Western impressions of the contemporary Middle East. The development of the Middle East as a centre for hospitality and tourism innovation is critical to the continued global success of this industry; thus, by understanding historical antecedents, contemporary operators can begin to conceive the rich complexity of consumer attitudes towards the region. This analysis offers both an exploration of the inscription of a longstanding discourse of “difference” on contemporary consumer culture and presents a context for future research into contemporary modes of hospitality and tourism demand and commercial response in the Middle East.

By the 1880s, Wilfrid Scawen 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.’ It is odd then to think that such an anti-imperialist would inadvertently provide a blueprint for British colonial administrators to restructure the Middle East after the First World War. Despite Blunt’s historical role as an intellectual bridge between liberal Arab thinkers and nationalists and the British imperial policy-making elite, studies of his influence have remained confined to the literary world. This is because Blunt is often cast as an anti-Kipling often representing a voice of dissent to British Imperial policies in his poems and travel literature. But, this overtly literary understanding of Blunt’s work alone has significantly overlooked his political commentary (often published in periodicals) and social influence with British policymakers and early Arab nationalists. This omission most likely owes to a legacy of historians dismissing Blunt as a ridiculous and eccentric political radical (especially after 1900), who exaggerated the sway of his ideas. However, given the current geopolitical environment of the collapse of the ‘Arab Spring,’ and the rise of ‘ISIS,’ a re-evaluation of Blunt’s influence and ideas on British imperial policy in the Middle East is required. Prophetically, Blunt wrote that the British government had undermined his work in The Future of Islam, by ‘adopting’ it and ‘using it for its own purposes.’ Thoroughly utilizing the Blunt papers, letters, essays and diaries, this paper will explore Blunt’s influence on the political class in Britain during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. By revealing Blunt’s social network with major figures in British Middle Eastern policy like Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell, T.E. Lawrence and H. St. John Philby, this paper will illustrate how Blunt’s anti-imperial ideas were co-opted and used for British imperial aims in the Middle East. It will also explore how Blunt’s anti-imperial message was adopted by early Arab nationalists such as Muhammad Abduh and Jamal al-Afghani.

Peopled with larger-than-life figures such as Winston Churchill (around whom the story is structured), General Kitchener and T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Attaturk, Emir Feisal and Lloyd George the book describes the showdown with the Ottoman Empire which erupted into the devastating Eastern campaign of World War I and led to the formation - by bureaucracy and subterfuge by Americans and Europeans - of the states known collectively as the Middle East. The years 1914-1922 were the creative, formative years when everything seemed possible, but the events of 1922, the pivotal year, set the course for a future of endless wars and acts of terrorism that became the legacy of this period. Issues such as The Allenby Declaration establishing nominal independence for Egypt, the Palestine Mandate and the Churchill White Paper (from which Israel and Jordan sprang), the installing of Hashemite leaders of predominantly Shi'ite teritories, new leaders for Egypt and Iraq, the Russian declaration of a Soviet Union intent on re-establishing her rule over Moslem Central Asia - David Fromkin shows how all these changed the Middle East (and Europe) forever.

An explorer, archaeologist, scholar, writer, and policymaker, Gertude Bell was a colourful figure who played an outsize role in the history of the Middle East in the early twentieth century. This book carefully examines Bell’s published and unpublished letters, diaries, notes, and publications to reconstruct and reevaluate Bell’s intentions and legacy in the Middle East in the aftermath of the First World War. It focuses on her correspondence with senior figures to examine the well-networked Bell as a policymaker in waiting. It also reappraises Bell’s role in the formation of the Kingdom of Iraq, assessing her public statements in support of Faisal, Iraq’s future king, against the doubts she expressed in private. Centering her own experience and reflections in the context of wider events, it adds nuance to perceptions of Bell as an agent of the British Empire and explores the legacy of her actions in Iraq today.

For those Catholics who have always been fascinated by the part played by the late Sir Mark Sykes, and other of his colleagues who were very definitely Catholic in their outlook upon foreign affairs, in connection with British policy in the Middle East during the war, the two volumes of Miss Gertrude Bell’s Letters will have aroused hopes of enlightenment upon several problems and paradoxes. It must be said at once that in this respect the two large volumes are a profound disappointment. But that does not imply any disparagement of the most remarkable qualities and the very varied interest of her correspondence. Her letters have already been one of the most successful publications of the year. And as a record of the adventures and the indefatigable energy and industry of a patriotic Englishwoman who devoted her boundless enthusiasm, her oriental scholarship, her wide experience of the Eastern peoples, and her brilliant and attractive personality to the service of the Government during and after the war, they deserve all the publicity that they have received.Nor do the letters themselves give any suggestion, such as is apparent in the writings of Colonel Lawrence, that their author has assisted in creating the legend that has grown round her name. Gertrude Bell is described on the wrapper of the book, and has been referred to in innumerable reviews of these two volumes as the ‘Uncrowned Queen of Arabia.’ But nothing could be more modest and frank than her own account of her work among the Arabs.

This book seeks to re-evaluate the life and legacy of Gertrude Lowthian Bell (1868–1926), the renowned scholar, explorer, writer, archaeologist and British civil servant. In 12 chapters, written by a number of international scholars, Iraqi and British, it examines her role in shaping British policy in the Middle East in the first part of the 20th century, her views of the cultures and peoples of the region and her unusual status as a woman occupying a senior position in the British imperial administration. It focuses particularly on her involvement in Iraq and the part she played in the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy and the Iraqi state. In addition, it examines her interests in Iraq’s ancient past (she was instrumental in drawing up Iraq’s first Antiquities Law in 1922 and in the foundation of the Iraq Museum in 1923), and reflects on the various aspects of her legacy for modern Iraq.

Reading Revolt in the Desert, the recently published abridged version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom—T. E. Lawrence’s rendition of the overt and covert journeys in the Middle East in support of the Arab rebellion against Turkish Ottoman rule—entails a journey in itself—in time, space and myth—in order to come to grips with recent history and its complex ramifications. Unlike Palgrave, Gertrude Bell and the Blunts, Lawrence knew the terrain well, had a clear agenda and was primarily interested in Realpolitik , political expediency and military pragmatism, and certainly not in the magnificence of the East or its cultural and mythical splendors.

navigated the flux of his inner life, which included everything—observations, emotions , places visited, conversations overheard , texts old and new, and experiences personal and shared—that came together to form the man who gave his name to an age. One hopes Young Tom is just the first installment of what promises to be the definitive life. Eliot may never have so understanding a biographer. Bernard F. Dick Fairleigh Dickinson University Christopher Hitchens. and yet . . . essays. New York. Simon & Schuster. 2015. 339 pages. Christopher Hitchens died in December 2011 from cancer, long before publication of four dozen of his previously uncollected essays, all commissioned by some blue-ribbon sources. The lowercase title with open punctuation of this posthumous collection signifies Hitchens’s ability to qualify his polemical arguments, virtually as if he were thinking a new idea on the instant, with utmost celerity and clarity. Devastatingly ironic, vitally analytical, the essays (many of which are book-review articles) create an anthology of pugnacious or mocking rhetorical punishment for assorted subjects: national and international politics, national security, the American Deep South (“where all politics is yokel”), NASCAR events (where God is popularly regarded as “a Republican, with a good chance of being white”), Thanksgiving (of which he approved), Christmas (which he detested), the Fox network, etc. His venom is always potent (especially against the Clintons, Saddam Hussein, and Hezbollah), but history has already come to mock several of his arguments—none so much, perhaps, as his virtually hysterical championing of the second Gulf War, a crime that is most responsible for the current chaos in the Middle East. To his credit, he did not refrain from self-criticism or self-satire—as his Vanity Fair essays on physical self-improvement show with deadly, hilarious efficacy. His piece on the agonies of Brazilian waxing should be compulsory entertainment for the most serious essayists, while his descriptions of his own ugly physical attributes show that his malice did not spare even himself. But politics were his bedrock, as displayed in splendid essays on Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Somalian survivor of genital mutilation and civil war), Gertrude Bell (who created the map of Iraq), Rosa Luxemburg (the “most brilliant of Marxist intellectuals ”), Oriana Fallaci’s incomparable art of the interview, Chesterton’s reactionary sensibility , Arthur Schlesinger’s role as courtier -apologist, Erdoğan’s “xenophobic demagoguery ” (alas, he makes no comparable comment on Netanyahu’s), and Obama’s cool-cat quality (until disenchantment sets in). Politics also supplied a crucial layer in his literary criticism of Forster, Rushdie , Naipaul, Paul Scott, and Ian Fleming, but Hitchens remained a superior stylist, demonstrating a rare literary sensitivity to Joan Didion’s “blues” and Charles Dickens’s “inner child.” An intellectual omnivore (like Clive James), Hitchens almost matched Orwell in intellectual integrity and independence, while also coming as close as anybody has (to quote his own words on Edmund Wilson) to making “the labour of criticism into an art.” Keith Garebian Mississauga, Ontario Krisztián Nyáry. Merész magyarok, 30 emberi történet. Budapest. Corvina. 2015. 278 pages. Merész magyarok (Bold Hungarians) is Krisztián Nyáry’s second collection of sketches and short essays within two years. It Eugene Vodolazkin Laurus Trans. Lisa Hayden Oneworld Fifteenth-century Europe serves as the vast stage for a roving Russian healer who leaves his village on a journey of repentance, turmoil, and growth toward Jerusalem. Vodolazkin’s expertise in the medieval world rounds out this tale that defies the restrictions of this longago time and place in its treatment of universal human pains and regrets. Ivan Vladislavić The Folly Archipelago Books A mysterious interloper with big plans disrupts the quiet, restrained domestic life of Mr. and Mrs. Malgas in the suburbs of South Africa. The unsettling yet compelling nature of their new neighbor draws the characters into his proposals. Mr. and Mrs. Malgas begin to abandon their unquestioning complacency, a process that could be dangerous or revitalizing. Vladislavić skillfully crafts characters and an intriguing plot in what seems like an ordinary, bland world. Nota Bene WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 109 ...

This study investigates Churchill’s attitude towards the Kurdish question and explains how and why the idea of a Kurdish buffer state initially formed as part of Churchill's Middle Eastern strategy before ultimately being abandoned. It primarily focuses on the role of behind-the-scene officials in influencing and directing the policy decisions towards the future of Kurdistan. It argues that the contention between the Colonial Office and Baghdad did not reflect as much disagreement between Churchill and the High Commissioner of Baghdad Percy Cox, as previous works have suggested, as between their advisers, particularly Hubert Young, Assistant Secretary in the Middle East Department, and Gertrude Bell, Oriental Secretary at Baghdad. This study argues that behind the scenes, Young and Bell exerted great influence over the views of Churchill and Cox, respectively. Young’s standpoint in favour of Kurdish independence influenced Churchill’s initial advocacy of a Kurdish buffer state to protect British colonial interests in the Middle East. However, Bell was ultimately fundamental in determining the future of Kurdistan, contributing significantly to the absence of Kurdistan from the political map. She was at the core of British imperial policymaking for the Iraqi state through her significant influence over Cox regarding the political situation in Iraq. Facilitated by Churchill’s indecision, Bell was successful in obstructing the implementation of the ethnographic approach advocated by the Cairo Conference, and finally, in preventing the establishment of an independent Kurdistan, instigating the perpetual complexity of the Kurdish question.

This paper aims to analyse the gender codes, discourses, rhetoric, stereotypes, and the misogynistic and discriminatory attitudes of three patriarchal and phallocentric communities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the biography of Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), a woman who defied the social norms and expectations of her time. The first one was the Victorian English society in which Bell grew up, a socio-cultural space marked by a whole network of norms, established codes of behaviour and specific labels assigned according to religion, race, gender and social status. The second group, with whom Bell interacted between 1888 and 1914, consisted of Bedouin tribes of the Arabian deserts, in which deeply rooted traditions clearly delineated gender roles. The third consisted of the military, scholars, linguists, archaeologists and politicians active within British power structures in the Middle East in the first decades of the 20th century, an Orientalist milieu marked by overt misogyny

Traveller, archaeologist, mountaineer and diplomat, Gertrude Bell (1868–1926) poured her extraordinary talents into a series of adventures through Europe and the Middle East. Addressing her experiences in Persia and Syria respectively, Safar Nameh (1894) and The Desert and the Sown (1907) are both reissued in this series. The present work, first published in 1911 and among Bell's most acclaimed, describes her recent expedition to Mesopotamia. She recounts her outward journey to the Abbasid palace of Ukhaidir and her return via Baghdad and Asia Minor. Notably discussing changes in the region after the rise of the Young Turks, including their easing of restrictions throughout the declining Ottoman Empire, Bell also saw this book as 'the attempt to record the daily life, the speech of those who had inherited the empty ground where empires had risen and expired'. Replete with photographs, it vividly opens up Middle Eastern history and archaeology.

Gertrude bell in the near and middle east