Essay about British Middle East Policy in the Late 1930's

The role of the Middle East has been very crucial to the United States, especially after WWII. The U.S. had three strategic goals in the Middle East and consistently followed them throughout various events that unfolded in the region. First, with the emergence of the cold war between the Soviet Union and the U.S., policymakers began to recognize the importance of the Middle East as a strategic area in containing Soviet influence. This also coincides with the U.S. becoming increasingly wary of Arab nationalism and the threat it posed to U.S. influence. Secondly, the emergence of the new Israeli state in 1948 further deepened U.S. policy and involvement in the region while also creating friction between the U.S. and Arab states which were

After World War 2, the United States took over Britain’s job of overseeing the Middle East. The United States tried to avoid conflict while preventing the spread of communism. They successfully stopped the spread of communism, but couldn’t have done much worse trying to prevent conflict and stabilize the Middle East. The United States policy destabilized the Middle East, Iraq in particular, by overthrowing the Hussein regime at a poor time and deepening the anti-Western attitude in the Middle East.

Over the years 1930 through 1941 the goals of American foreign policy generally changed. In the earlier years America dealt with war and fought with other countries. America was not very smart in learning to stay out of war. Over the years, America became more neutral and attempted to stay out of war as much as possible. Throughout the years, important figures wrote documents to support America’s journey and decisions.

Large busy markets, snake charmers, carpet vendors, and veiled women all invoke ideas of West Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia, but all these ideas come from Oriental fantasies from the nineteenth century. Edward Said the author of Orientalism said that “Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, "us") and the strange (the Orient, the East, "them").” The nineteenth century was a period of imperialism and tourism that led many western artists to visit West Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Orientalist paintings depicted two major effects, many artists often portrayed something “exotic,” which was racialized, feminized, and from a sexualized culture from a faraway land. Another effect that artists mainly like Jean-Léon Gérôme often showed was an authentic glimpse of a location and its inhabitants. Nochlin mentioned that many of Gérôme’s paintings worked to persuade their audiences by carefully representing a "preexisting Oriental reality.”

Oil was very important during this war because technology was evolving a lot and it was needed for guns, weapons, transportation. There was a “severe shortage developed in 1917-18”(doc 7). This was because it was all being used a lot so this caused France and Britain to want to take control of the Middle East a lot. Oil was in very high demand and they both needed a lot of it for the war and even technology out of the war too. In document 8, it is made clear that as the Ottoman Empire collapsed Brittan already was moving into taking control because of this same reason for the oil and resources. The reason this happened was because Britain had already realized before they would be needing more oil and wanted to take control right away. The chart in document 9 showed that as the timeline got to the 1900’s the consumption of oil shot up a crazy amount. This is as result of the war and all the new technology because of it. So a huge reason the Middle East got affected so much was because of their oil they

During the mid 1900’s Britain and France had to give up mandates which allowed Middle Eastern countries to gain their independance.

With the end of the War came the end of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Middle East nation states. These new states consequently ended the possibility for a single Arab Nation. Each state came under the influence of Britan or France. Although these new states were not technically colonized, each country was significantly swayed by the European powers. For example those states under British influence were lead by monarchs while French states often gravitated towards republics. These spheres of influence greatly impacted a

The Balfour declaration was intended to bring together Arabs and Jewish by making a home for the Jewish population in Palestine. However, after the Balfour declaration was implemented Britain was being pressured to allow more Jews into Palestine during WWII. Britain realized that this might cause tension if they increased the influx of Jews into the state. This was the spark of the conflict between Palestinians and the Jewish communities. The conflict increased between Palestine and the Jewish populations, especially the Zionist, after Britain tried once again to settle peace for the situation with the Morrison-Grady Plan.

Britain was largely responsible for the conflict between the Arabs and Jews/Zionists in the period of the end of the nineteenth century up until May 1948. The League of Nations only ratified the British mandate of Palestine in 1922. The decisions made by Britain, both earlier and subsequent to the ratification, resulted in Britain being largely responsible for the conflict between the Arabs and Jewish/Zionists. Those pivotal decisions include issuing the McMahon Hussein letters, The Balfour Declaration, controlling Jewish immigration and the British White Papers.

Imperialism began in the 1870s, European states established vast empires mainly in Africa, but also in Asia and the Middle East. Imperialism can be used as an act of expanding used as an act of developing a country’s empire through the use of force, colonization, or coercion. This method can be used to benefit one or both sides of the process. By means of benefiting one side would be considered as being a world bully because the nation is trying to expand or develop with the help of others without doing the other nation any good. As a result of advancing both nations can give a nation the name of a world leader with it helping both sides, everyone is developing in a way to help not just themselves, but others as well. America used imperialism for the good or bad as long as they got something out of it in some way. Many in the U.S. thought that country must be able to compete and saw the opportunity to take its own colonies before European countries got them all. Colonial powers often struggled with each other over the best potential features. These motives tend to believe its purpose is gaining additional wealth, power, and control. America used this approach as an intimidator to get economic growth, expand their political power, spread of the culture’s religion, and build military and naval bases.

The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence (October 1915) was a “series of letters between Hussein ibn Ali emir of Mecca, and Sir Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner in Egypt.”(Encyclopaedia Britannica, N.D.) The correspondence effectively traded British support of an independent Arab state for Arab assistance in the Ottoman Empire. It was an effort to create a 3rd front against the central powers (Germany, Austria and Turkey), by encouraging the Arab people in the Ottoman Empire to rise up against their Turkish overlords. It has been a cause of problems between the Arabs and the Jews and a direct clash with the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot agreement. It was interpreted by Hussein that Palestine would be given back to the Arabs after the war had ended, later claimed by Britain was that any land to be given back to the Arabs was only approximate and Palestine was excluded from the land to be given back. The confusion arose from one small phrase in the series of letters between

Much of the Middle East experienced centuries of Ottoman rule, generally from the mid-sixteenth century up until the declining years of the nineteenth century. The Ottomans' hold on the Middle East was often tenuous and frequently interrupted. Perhaps the biggest relic of British rule was the institution of monarchy, which they secured in almost all the lands they ruled. Nevertheless, the powerful forces uniting the Middle East have at times also been sources of division and conflict. In many historical episodes subtle differences in dialect or ethnic identity have served as powerful catalysts for the communication of national or sub national loyalties.

Many of the problems in the Middle East today are a direct result of actions undertaken in the region 's colonial past. I will argue that both imperialist ineptitude, deliberate meddling and outright deceit by colonial powers have sown seeds of distrust that linger in the Middle East today towards the West. I will claim that artificial boundaries, government structures and societal schisms created in colonial times have entrenched animosities and created internal structural instabilities in the area that are still being resolved. The imposition of Israel into Palestine, I will argue, remains an unresolved product of colonial rule. I will discuss how the discovery of oil and the regions importance as a trade route caused the World Powers to remain engaged in the area and oppressive in their demeanour. Finally I will argue that perhaps the greatest ongoing legacy of colonialism in the Middle east is an imperialist attitude by the west which continues to this day.

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were chosen by God to set up a state of Israel where they could not be