The Man Who Created the Middle East: A Story of Empire, Conflict and the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Christopher Sykes Simon

      

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016

      Copyright © Christopher Simon Sykes 2016

      Christopher Simon Sykes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Cover image © Look and Learn/Peter Jackson Collection/Bridgeman Images (shows Lieut Colonel Mark Sykes by Hester, Robert Wallace 1866-1923)

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008121938

      Ebook Edition © November 2016 ISBN: 9780008121921

      Version: 2017-09-06

       Dedication

      I dedicate this book to the memory of my grandfather, Mark Sykes, whom I would so love to have known.

      ‘… of this I am sure, we shall never in our lives meet anyone like him.’

      (F. E. Smith. 1st Earl Birkenhead)

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

      

      

       Introduction

       Prologue: An Exhumation

      

      

       1. The Parents

       2. Trials and Tribulations

3. Through Five Turkish Provinces

4. South Africa

       5. Coming of Age

       6. Return to the East

       7. Family Life

       8. A Seat in the House

       9. War

       10. Kitchener and the Middle East

       11. The Sykes–Picot Agreement

       12. Zionism

       13. The Balfour Declaration

       14. Worked to Death

      

      

       Epilogue: The Legacy

      

      

       Acknowledgements

       Bibliography

       References and Notes on Sources

       Index

      

      

       Also by Christopher Simon Sykes

       About the Publisher

       Introduction

      It is extraordinary to think that my grandfather, Sir Mark Sykes, was only thirty-six years old when he found himself signatory to one of the most controversial treaties of the twentieth century, the Sykes–Picot Agreement. This was the secret pact arranged between the Allies in the First World War, in 1916, to divide up the Ottoman Empire in the event of their victory. It was a piece of typical diplomacy in which each side tried its best not to tell the other exactly what it was that it wanted, while making the vaguest promises to various Arab tribes that they would have their own kingdom in return for fighting on the Allied side. None of these promises materialised in the aftermath of the War, Arab aspirations being dashed during the subsequent Peace Conference in which the rivalries and clashes of the great powers, all eager to make the best deals for themselves in the aftermath of victory, dominated the proceedings, and pushed the issue of the rights of small nations into the background. This was the cause of bad blood, which has survived to the present day.

      Perhaps it is because my grandfather’s name is placed before that of his fellow signatory that history has tended to make him the villain of the piece rather than Monsieur Georges-Picot. ‘You’re writing about that arsehole?’ commented an