PREVIEW： Epochs #206 ｜ Lawrence of Arabia with Luca Johnson： Part V
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.6559
Summary
In this episode, we take a deep dive into one of the most important events in history, the peace conference at Versailles in 1919, and the Arab-American Liaison Officer, Faisal Al-Faisal.
Transcript
00:00:04.940
The Kaisershracht in the Western Front and it's failed.
00:00:08.940
Even two weeks before the end of World War I in the West,
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even two weeks before, no one knew it would be done in two weeks.
00:00:17.000
It sort of came out of the blue, the German request for a full armistice.
00:00:24.080
I mean, everyone knew it was on the cards, but the exact time of it.
00:00:27.100
So, yeah, even a month before the end of World War I,
00:00:30.720
you would be forgiven for thinking we're going to be fighting into 1919.
00:00:38.140
The Ottomans collapsed pretty quickly after Damascus
00:00:41.500
because we don't get armies all the way to Constantinople
00:00:48.080
When the Germans give in, the Ottomans give in.
00:00:50.440
Although, of course, you know, a few years later,
00:00:56.440
Am I right in thinking they do occupy Constantinople?
00:00:59.240
And that's when the Turkish, under Ataturk, takes place.
00:01:04.340
the young Turk government of the three passions flee.
00:01:12.140
And then we get the era of Mustafa Kemal, Ataturk,
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And the modern, more or less the modern state of Turkey.
00:01:31.900
So the next thing, the next main set of events is Versailles.
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at the Peace Conference where it's not entirely clear
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Like, whether, is he there as part of the British delegation?
00:01:57.300
He spends most of his time with Faisal, doesn't he?
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getting him private meetings with influential people,
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particularly, of course, the American delegation with Woodrow Wilson,
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because he thinks that his best chance in order to shore up any hopes
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of an independent Arab state is to appeal to the Americans.
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Yeah, Woodrow Wilson's 14 points about self-determination.
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And the Americans are already, in 1919, among the most powerful,
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if not the most powerful, single voice and faction.
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They've got all the fresh armies and all the money in the world.
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So Woodrow Wilson has got massive sway at Versailles,
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whereas the British and the French sort of want to keep the old world
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going as much as possible, want to keep their colonial projects
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I've heard it described as, and I think this is fair description,
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as the biggest, deepest attempt ever to sort of reshape the world.
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They're tiny, tiny, tiny, pale in comparison to what was done
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At Versailles, they tried to rework the map of the world.
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They were, I mean, there's sort of the conference of Vienna
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And there's been various things like it before,
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but this was the biggest ever, the biggest ever thing.
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Literally, there's delegations from sort of everyone in the world
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But the three big players by far are Britain, France, and America.
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If you can't get their ear, you probably won't get what you want.
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And so it's sort of quite important about if you've got credentials there
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So if you really need to be a formal part of someone's delegation.
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He was chosen as part of the British delegation.
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But in fact, when he turns up, he wears the Arab headdress, at least,
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He's there with one of his giant Sudanese slaves.
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So I think Saudi Arabia didn't abolish slavery to, like, the...
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They want to try and pour scorn on us for the slave trade.
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And so it's part of Lawrence's job is, at the moment when it comes up,
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when the big powers, there's the big three, but there's actually sort of eight,
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or is it eight or ten powers that really count?
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Anyway, when it's Lawrence's shot or the Arabs' moment to make a speech
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and make their argument, Lawrence is their front man.
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And is it actually talked about much in Seven Pillars?
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So all this you'd have to pick up from other biographies.
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But when it's Lawrence's time to speak, he does that,
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that he casts his spell where all the great men,
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including Wilson and Clemenceau and Lloyd George,
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They sort of, they're just sort of in his thrall listening to his story.
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He's the most impressive man at the entire conference.
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Because everyone's talking about him to begin with.
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And all the papers are filled with Lawrence of Arabia at Paris and at Versailles.
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And he tells this great story and makes the argument for why the Arabs
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should have their independent sovereignty and why you should set up Iraq
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And Israel, of course, to actually enforce the Balfour Declaration.
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And so Faisal has to juggle with all of those, you know,
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the Zionist question as well, which gives him a great deal of anxiety.
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But, of course, there was literally could do about it.
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A very quick word on Zionism then and the Jews is that, of course,
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There's a mandate and in the mandate there's special provisions for the Jews
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in Jerusalem or in and around what becomes Israel.
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And you mentioned the Balfour Declaration and all that sort of thing.
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But Lawrence mentions the Jews hardly at all in Seven Pillars.
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I think they're mentioned three or four times and only ever in passing.
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And it's like, oh, and the Zionists think this and want this.
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And it's almost like that, like three or four times.
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And he mentions every now and again, oh, this guy is sort of a Zionist,
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He talks about a guy called Minot Zagin, a British officer who was really,
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he was one of the very, very few sort of arch-Zionists,
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But anyway, anyway, at Versailles, he makes the Arab case.
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And apparently all the power, the top eight, ten power brokers are just sort of
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in his thrall for a while, are just sort of listening in sort of silenced awe.
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He's sort of more famous than they are, in a sense, in a way.
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And he's a real war hero, a genuine, genuine sort of war hero.
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And when he's not speaking in front of committees,
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he's, of course, back at his hotel beginning to write Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
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There's one point, just again, to illustrate his sort of, his genius.
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After he finishes his speech, one or two of them say,
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that was great, could you do it again in French?
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And he just says, yes, and just delivers the same amazing thing in French.
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Obviously, it's whilst Lawrence is at the peace conference
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Or Lawrence receives the word that his father is dying.
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And so Lawrence drops everything at the conference
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and goes back to Oxford to try and catch his father.
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He gets back, his father's died, and he misses him by about two hours.
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Something really, like a really small window like that.
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And so with his father dying, he just is like, well, he misses a funeral.
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He just goes straight back to the peace conference.
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And there's a part from Faisal's diary here where he says,
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The greatest thing I have seen in him, which is worthy of mention as one of his principal
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characteristics, is his patience, discretion, zeal, and his putting the common good before
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When he came to take a leave, I asked the reason for his departure.
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He said, I regret to say that my father has died and I want to go and see my mother.
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I inquired when his father had died and he said, a week ago.
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I received a telegram saying that he was ill and left straight away.
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But when I arrived, I found that he had died two hours previously.
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I did not stay in England until the funeral because I realised that you were here alone
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I didn't want to be far from you in case things happened in my absence.
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I didn't tell you at the time in case it upset you.
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Consider such honesty, faithfulness, such devotion to duty and such control of one's personal
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These are the highest qualities of man, which are found in but few individuals.
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So that's what Faisal said about him in reaction to what he'd heard.
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So there's that Spanish flu outbreak in 1919, which killed more people than the war.
00:11:04.180
So, I mean, his mother, who's apparently a bit of a dragon, a bit of a battle act, a bit
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She'd had two of her sons killed in it and her husband taken away in 1919.
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And, yeah, so Lawrence is sort of, once again, super stoic about it.
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But it must have been, you know, because they were a very tight family before the war.
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Apparently, they were an extremely close family.
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So, and I think it's in this period where Lawrence goes back to see his mother, that his mother finally speaks to him about the truth of his upbringing, his background, his father's, the mystery behind his father's circumstances.
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So, but then he, so he goes back, misses his father's death, immediately returns to France.
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But then about a week later, does take a few days, a good few days off to go back and visit his mother and console his mother as best as possible.
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But then, after a few days of that, goes back to Versailles again.
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It's the Versailles Treaty and it's signed in Versailles.
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But actually, a lot of the work over the years was done in Paris itself.
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But they were staying in hotels in the middle of Paris.
00:12:26.740
There's one, one, I think it's funny, to show Lawrence's sense of humour, his sort of schoolboy, undergrad sense of humour.
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At one point, there's some really, really important dignitaries in the lobby of a hotel.
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Like, I think it might be Lloyd George and, like, the Foreign Secretary and some super, super important people.
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Some of the most important people in the world.
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And him and Meinetzar can just throw toilet rolls.
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You know, when you unroll a toilet roll and throw it.
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So, they teepee some of the most powerful men in the world in a hotel lobby.
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Despite everything, he's still got, like, a boyish sense of humour about him.
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But, I suppose the end of the story, in terms of Versailles, is that Faisal doesn't get, and the Arabs don't get what they want.
00:13:15.140
The fact that they got to Damascus first and did a superb job during the war in the deserts, in the end, doesn't really count for a great deal because of Clemenceau.
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The English are inclined to give them what they want.
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So, we're inclined to do the best we can for them.
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Wilson's basically on board because he wants all peoples, all native indigenous peoples, to have their own bit of land and their own sort of...
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But Clemenceau and the French are like, no, we won it fair and square.
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You agreed to it in the Saint-Picot agreement and we won it fair and square and they're not giving it up.
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Because not just in the East, in all of the Versailles Treaty, the French are like, we've just been mauled by World War I.
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We are going to get everything we can out of the people we beat.
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We are going to wring them dry of every last...
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And Clemenceau holds that opinion in the East just as much as in the Ruhr or whatever.
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I suppose the next few things to say before we just move on to the rest of Lawrence's life, the remainder of his life.
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It's only this for, what, another, what, is it, 15 years?
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So, I just want to finish up with sort of what happens with the Arabs then.
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So, where we mentioned near the beginning, there's sort of these four great Arab leaders.
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And then two main ones in Arabia itself, in the Arabian Peninsula itself, is King Hussein in Mecca and Ibn Saud.
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And so, and so in like very soon after, I think like 1920 or 1921, they go to war with each other.
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And Hussein refuses British backing and support.
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And it's not Faisal in control of the army, it's, is it Abdullah or is it Zaid?
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One of the other brothers is in control of King Hussein's army.
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And politically speaking, we're backing both sides.
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So, like the British Raj in India is backing Ibn Saud and Cairo and I think the Foreign or the Colonial Office, something or the war office, someone is backing Hussein still.
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But they go to war in Arabia and Hussein loses.
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And British Empire just playing chess against itself.
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And thus, we've got the House of Al Saud and they rule to this day.
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So, so Faisal's father and his family are sort of dispossessed, essentially.
00:16:22.500
But just going forward, they still made, it's complicated and there's all sorts of reasons, but they go on to become the kings and rulers of Iraq, Transjordan, as it was then known, and Syria.
00:16:37.260
Churchill being in the Colonial Office, he gets told to basically figure out how to shore up the expenses in the Middle East, particularly in Mesopotamia.
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And actually, this is part of the reason why Lawrence is so complimentary towards Churchill, because he says that Churchill really listens to him.
00:17:01.540
And he actually really, you know, so when it's negotiated about could Abdullah potentially become king of Jordan and could Faisal, would the Mesopotamians accept Faisal as a king?
00:17:14.120
And of course, there's some fiddling to make sure the election goes the right way and everything.
00:17:22.020
And obviously, Abdullah's house is still the same house that rules Jordan to this day.
00:17:28.180
So Lawrence's first main job after Versailles is, well, one of the people that loves him, is just completely in awe of Lawrence, is Winston Churchill.
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And Winston Churchill, even in 1920, is a power broker, a power player.
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He'd obviously, he'd been in government already a bunch of times.
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After the Gallipoli affair, he went and commanded a battalion or something or other in the Western Front.
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Then after that, straight after that, soon after that, he's back in government.
00:18:04.020
So one of the most powerful people in government, again, Churchill, 1920 onwards.
00:18:11.460
Like he, Churchill, like gushes like a schoolgirl about Lawrence.
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He's like, he's one of the greatest men there's ever been.
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He later says, doesn't he, that Seven Pillars of Wisdom, it says it's up there with Robinson Crusoe and, you know, like the great classics.
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And Lawrence, as a man, as a political mind, as a strategist, he's one of the best there ever was.
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So after, when Churchill was in the colonial office, he's like, Lawrence, come and be my, my special advisor.
00:18:45.100
Tell me how to rework the Middle East, the Near East.
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And Lawrence says, okay, do this, this, this, and this.
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So although the house of Hussein, the Hashemites, lose Arabia, they still actually remain the most important family, one of the most important families, because they hadn't found much or any real crude oil in Arabia at that point.
00:19:08.760
One of the books I was reading, they were saying, Al Saud could have never known how big his victory was.
00:19:14.760
No one knew that there was sort of endless reserves of crude oil in Arabia at that point.
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It was still by like the 1940s, they already knew.
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So, but at this point, it was still sort of not clear that that was going to be the case.
00:19:35.420
So Saudi Arabia, even in the 20s, was like, it was still just a desert kingdom that no one really cares about or values.
00:19:40.900
Obviously, there's the religious cities of Mecca and Medina.
00:19:48.880
No one cares about Arabia if you're not a Muslim.
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And then suddenly by the 40s, or by the 30s anyway, certainly by the 40s, it's like, oh, no, this is a global.
00:20:03.000
And even presidents of the United States need to ingratiate themselves with the House of Al Saud.
00:20:08.880
So anyway, so the Near East is sort of reworked by the Colonial Office and Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia in like 1920, 1921, 1922.
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And so, and we're left today with still a lot of the, the fallout of all of that is still going on.
00:20:26.620
Of course, there's many more things have happened.
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But those countries, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, they're still there.
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Now, some people said, this is one criticism, some people said against Lawrence, which I think is completely unfair.
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It's like, Lawrence is to blame for the mess that the Middle East is today because he had such a key role in making it that way.
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All the, all the endless conflicts between Persians and Arabs and Syrians and Arabs and Jews and Arabs and Islam and Judaism and the Christians and the Armenians and the Kurds and the on and on.
00:21:17.860
They did, they did the best they could to try and rework the Ottoman Empire.
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Blame the thing that is inside the human heart, which causes conflict.
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But Lawrence tried his best to transition that part of the world away, out of the Ottoman rule, which had lasted for centuries.
00:21:46.300
Whenever an empire like that falls apart, it's going to be one big mess.
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So they did, they actually did the best they could in the very, very early 20s.
00:21:57.360
They could have made, they could have, like, the way, for example, in the 18th and 19th century, Africa was carved up.
00:22:05.140
Quite often just drawing straight lines in a map.
00:22:08.060
Like, that was a terrible, terrible thing to do because it just didn't take account of tribes and ethnicities and religions and things.
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We'll just draw a line on the map and this river is the border of this now.
00:22:21.720
They were like, well, these people exist here and these people exist there.
00:22:25.100
So the border, that would be problematic if we don't do this and that way.
00:22:30.880
The absolute best they could have done in 1920, 1921.
00:22:36.840
But to hold Lawrence responsible for how things turned out 100 years later is a standard that you shouldn't really apply to someone's life.
00:22:49.400
So when you look at the facts and you look at the chronology in detail of who said what when and whose armies went where.
00:22:56.920
Like, Lawrence wasn't responsible for Ibn Saud defeating Hussein in Arabia.
00:23:01.860
So like, Lawrence wasn't the, if Lawrence had been the final person of any importance to play a part in the Middle East, then maybe.
00:23:13.360
He washed his hands of the entire thing shortly after his work with Churchill in 1921.
00:23:18.480
And then it became the responsibility of numerous other men of power.
00:23:24.120
And of the people on the ground that were living there, the rulers that were living there.
00:23:33.400
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