The flamboyant figure of the seemingly idealistic and indispensable T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia” has, until recently, dominated much of the historiography of British involvement in the Middle East during the Great War.  His purported accomplishments have also eclipsed the numerous and significant contributions of a multitude of other members of the Arab Bureau in advising and sustaining the Arab Revolt to eventual victory over the moribund Ottomans.

While the purpose of Dr. Bruce Westrate’s brilliant revisionist study is clearly not to “diminish the historical stature of T.E. Lawrence” (p. xiv), his intent, at which he succeeds admirably, is to “chart the [Arab] bureau’s growth and development and to liberate Lawrence’s comrades from the obscurity to which the strictures of legend have for so long consigned them” (p. xiv).  Indeed, the Arab Bureau was not a “coterie of romantics promoting the fortunes of Arab nationalism” (p.65), but ardent imperialists dedicated to protecting the routes to India and creating British-sponsored client states, the latter negating the potential requirement to occupy or annex the area after the war.

To accomplish these goals, the Arab Bureau was determined to maintain a balance of power in Arabia -- Hussein versus Ibn Saud -- in order to perpetuate informal British hegemony in Arabia.  For that reason, and because of British concern with the caliph in Constantinople’s proclamation of a holy war against the Allied infidels and its impact upon Muslims in India, the British supported the Sharif of Mecca after persuading him to raise the standard of revolt in June 1916.  The Arab Revolt thus became the means to accomplish the Arab Bureau’s goals -- and to undermine the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement.  But even then, as Westrate has shown compellingly, the Arab Bureau had a greater vision: “to exploit Arab dissatisfaction to Britain’s long-term advantage in order to both win the war and manage the peace” (p.7).

This superb book is based upon the author’s 1982 University of Michigan Ph.D. dissertation, although it has benefited by the inclusion of more recently-published secondary source material, including from Fromkin’s A Peace to End all Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922 (1989), Kent’s The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire (1984), and Wilson’s Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence (1990).  The author’s selection, use, assimilation, and analysis of primary source material are equally excellent.  He mined the troves of personal papers at St. Antony’s College, Oxford; the Sudan Archive at the University of Durham; the British Museum; Imperial War Museum; King’s College, London, and others.  The use of official documents, mainly from the Public Office Record Office (PRO) and India Office Library, is also superior.  The author, however, should have considered researching in PRO FO (Foreign Office) 861 (Aleppo Consular Files) and the numerous related War Office files (especially (WO 33, 95, 106, and 157).  Eight descriptive maps and contemporary sketches ably supplement the narrative.

Westrate has demonstrated convincingly that the members of the Arab Bureau were indeed “sober strategists marching to their own imperial tune” (p.1432), and that the Arab Bureau itself, while continually hamstrung by internecine squabbles among various elements of the British command and strategy hierarchies, was generally successful in a number of endeavors, notably the support of the Arab Revolt.  This superb study ably fills a void in the historiography of British military participation and imperial strategy in the Middle East during the Great War, and is recommended in the strongest terms.

Book Review, The Arab Bureau: British Policy in the Middle East, 1916-1920, by Bruce
Westrate, Journal of Military History 58 (April 1994): 338-339. Reprinted in T.E. Notes: A T.E. Lawrence Newsletter 6 (May 1995): 7-8.