Anglo-French Relations in Syria: From Entente Cordiale to Sykes-Picot A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts James L. Bowman May 2020 © 2020 James L. Bowman. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled Anglo-French Relations in Syria: From Entente Cordiale to Sykes-Picot by JAMES L. BOWMAN has been approved for the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences by Peter John Brobst Associate Professor of History Florenz Plassmann Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 Abstract BOWMAN, JAMES L., M.A., May 2020, History Anglo-French Relations in Syria: From Entente Cordiale to Sykes-Picot Director of Thesis: Peter John Brobst Though the Entente Cordiale of 8 April, 1904 addressed several outstanding imperial tensions between the British Empire and the French Third Republic, other imperial disputes remained unresolved in the lead-up to World War I. This thesis explores Anglo-French tensions in Ottoman Syria, from the signing of the Entente to the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916. Syria proved to be a cause of frictions that brought many buried Anglo-French resentments back to the surface and created new ones. Cultural, strategic, and economic interests were at stake, interests which weighed heavily upon the Entente powers and which could not easily be forgone for the sake of ‘cordiality’. This thesis presents evidence that unresolved Anglo-French tensions in Syria raised serious concerns among officials of both empires as to the larger future of their Entente, and that even after the Entente joined in war against their common enemies, such doubts persisted. This thesis argues that the strategies developed by Britain and France in Syria were developed to check each others’ ambitions, and that these strategies proved highly consequential to their respective post-war positions in Syria. It is concluded that tensions in Syria constrained broader Entente trust and cooperation both before and during World War I. 4 Dedication To my wife, Krispin 5 Acknowledgments Several professors in the Ohio University History Department deserve my thanks. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. John Brobst, who provided his support from the formulation to the completion of this thesis. I thank Dr. Patrick Barr-Melej and Dr. Steven Miner for their encouragement during the courses I was fortunate enough to take with them. I would like to thank Dr. Ingo Trauschweizer and the Contemporary History Institute, and Dr. Michelle Clouse for her guidance in my role as a teaching assistant. I would like to give a special thank you to my friend Dr. Robert Ingram for his time and counsel on many things. I also thank my fellow graduate students, my friends, and especially my family for the encouragement and love they have gifted me over the past two years. 6 Table of Contents Page Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 3 Dedication ....................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Entente Cordiale ........................................................................................... 19 Chapter 2: Eve of War ................................................................................................... 46 Chapter 3: Reaching Sykes-Picot ................................................................................... 94 Epilogue ...................................................................................................................... 121 References ................................................................................................................... 130 7 Introduction John Marlowe contends that Anglo-French rivalry and suspicion “had its origins in, and was mainly concentrated upon, the Levant.”1 By WWI Ottoman Syria came to symbolize the tensions that complicated the spirit of Entente Cordiale, but those tensions had deep historic roots. It was from those roots that grew a network of interconnected interests and priorities that complicated British and French national and international relations. Before we focus on the early 20th Century, let us survey those roots. The interests of the British and the French in Ottoman Syria represented the values and visions of their respective Empires, and often the pursuit of these interests resulted in either cooperation or competition. France and Britain’s position in Syria relied heavily on their standing with the Ottoman Empire. Syria was conquered by the Ottoman Sultan Selim I in the early-sixteenth century, and it was Selim’s successor Sulieman I who began the tradition which continued until WWI of granting France capitulations in the interest of trade and diplomatic relations. These capitulations and the Ottoman tradition of the millet system allowed French missionaries to establish Catholic missions in Syria to practice and preach their faith without undue interference from Ottoman authorities, and to enjoy exemption from local courts. French kings from the start of the capitulations claimed the traditional duty, conferred by the Vatican, to serve as protector of the rights of Catholics in non-Christian Near-East regions. This protection was not only for religious but also cultural reasons. Through French schools and churches, the French language became the tongue of the educated classes in Turkey and traders in Syria, “so that it could be said that a traveler in Syria 1 John Marlowe, Perfidious Albion, The Origins of Anglo-French Rivalry in the Levant, (London: Elek Books, 1971), 7. 8 might almost consider himself in a French dependency.”2 This role as Protectorate of Catholics in the East explains why, despite the damage done to the Franco-Ottoman relationship by the French revolutionary invasion of Ottoman Syria, Napoleon’s armies were welcomed and even aided by Syrian Christians. Napoleon saw Ottoman Syria to exert influence in Egypt. We will discuss later French and English diplomats who saw Syria to solidify control of Egypt, India, the Persian Gulf, the wider Eastern Mediterranean, and as part of the route to the Indian Ocean. It was these interests which drew Britain into Egypt to head off Napoleon’s invasion, but this was far from the start of her involvement in Syria. Whereas the paramount mission of the French in Syria was religious and cultural, the British were more oriented towards economic and strategic considerations. England under Queen Elizabeth I obtained in 1580 permission to trade with the Ottoman Empire, a privilege previously enjoyed exclusively by France. The English monopolized their trade to the Ottoman Empire under the chartered Levant Company, which operated until 1825. The Levant Company dealt in luxuries including Lebanese silk and Palestinian wool and oil, and English traders like the French were protected by millets and enjoyed the privileges of capitulations negotiated between the English kings and Ottoman sultans. English monarchs did not claim a role as protectors of Christians in the East and did not share the French and wider European view of the Levant “as a Europa Irredenta, as the cradle of Graeco-Roman civilization temporarily alienated to Islam”.3 However, they nevertheless used the presence of their traders and missionaries in Ottoman Syria as justification for 2 Edward Meade Earle, Turkey, The Great Powers, and the Baghdad Railway, (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1923), 153-154. 3 Marlowe, Perfidious Albion, 7-8. 9 the extension and protection of the legal rights enjoyed by their own subjects to Christian subjects in Syria. Though the dueling Anglo-Turk and Franco-Turk relationships brought significant advantages for both European powers, from the start of the Levant Company to the turn of the nineteenth century England played second fiddle in Syria and the wider Ottoman Empire. It was with Napoleon’s invasions that Britain seized her opportunity to gain the upper hand with an alliance to frustrate the French advance, an alliance so welcome by the Ottoman sultan that he described George III as “his respected brother the exalted sultan of the English.”4 British military support, coupled with the destruction inflicted by Napoleon, ended French economic predominance in Syria as well as in Egypt, where the new Khedive Muhammad Ali granted the British monopoly rights over the Egyptian trade of grain. Still, French economic interests in Egypt, which in the decades after Napoleon had begun to outpace their trade with the Ottoman Empire, as well as the support of Ali, ensured that France did not lose a foothold in Egypt.5 Though the end of the Napoleonic period with the Treaty of Westphalia marked the start of a period of relative peace between France and Britain which culminated in the Entente Cordiale, interests in Ottoman Syria prior to the Entente continued to drive Anglo-French competition during the nineteenth century. Anglo-French interests in Ottoman Syria were complicated in the nineteenth century by a third great power, Russia, and by the signs of decline in the Ottoman Empire which by the 1840s and 1850s led many to describe the once-great power as the ‘sick 4 A. L. Tibawi,