The Culbertson Economic Mission and Anglo-American Tensions in the Middle East, 1944-1945

Abstract

THE United States government sent a special economic mission, headed by an attorney-economist, William S. Culbertson, to North Africa and the Middle East in the fall of 1944 to survey postwar prospects for American business.1 Although historians of World War II have generally overlooked the Culbertson Mission,2 it merits scrutiny for several reasons. First, the field investigation conducted by the mission together with its major report on the Middle East illustrate some fundamental economic notions that conditioned American postwar planning. The faith of Culbertson and his colleagues in the efficacy of 'free enterprise as a regulator of the international economy and their rejection of state trading were in harmony with the views of Secretary of State Cordell Hull and reminiscent of ideas about the benevolence of commerce, dating from the American Enlightenment of the late-eighteenth century. Second, the mission's report analyzed obstacles that would have to be surmounted before American business could fully utilize opportunities in the postwar Middle East. Third, unlike so many study reports, the Culbertson findings were not relegated to forgotten bureaucratic pigeonholes; instead, they were taken seriously by those charting postwar American economic policies. Fourth, the report documented Anglo-American differences arising during World War II in the Middle East. And, finally, Culbertson and his colleagues revealed a vision of expanded official American participation in the affairs of the Middle East. Integrated into their vision of the United