French War In Syria - British War Against The Iraqi Revolution I THE GREAT WAR 1920

this episode of the great war is sponsored by curiosity stream go to curiositystream.com the great war and sign up to curiositystream for just 14.79 a year and get access to nebula 2 where you can watch current great war episodes ad free you can find out more in the video description or at the end of this video it's july 1920 and in the middle east trouble is brewing france and britain have received league of nations mandates for the arab provinces of the ottoman empire but implementing them is not going well and that means war and revolution in syria and iraq [Applause] [Music] hi i'm jesse alexander and welcome to the great war by the summer of 1920 both france and britain were attempting to establish themselves as the new league of nations mandatory powers responsible for the oversight of syria and mesopotamia modern-day iraq in theory the british and french were to oversee the gradual transition to independence for the two arab regions but in practice they were also guided by traditional imperial interests the region was wracked by instability following the deprivations and destruction of the great war and now the violence would flare into open conflict against british and french rule in this episode we will cover the franco-syrian war and the iraqi revolt also known as the iraqi revolution 100 years ago in 1920. so let's start in syria where france had been promised the league of nations mandate since the british also had interests in syria and had occupied it first during the war there was some revival of imperial tensions between the two sides this increased once faisal became king of syria in march faisal was the son of hussein who was the head of the powerful hashemite family the sharif of mecca and the king of hijaz hussein was also an important british ally since he had led the arab rebellion against the ottomans during the war the situation came to a head when the more nationalist-leaning syrian national congress forced the more moderate faisal to go back on an agreement that he'd made with france and declare full syrian independence the syrian congress laid claim to greater syria which included lebanon and british-occupied palestine as well as early as january a nationalist society had informed faisal of their position in no uncertain terms we are ready to declare war on both england and france this threat to british interests along with the trouble in neighboring mesopotamia eased franco-british difficulties since both were now suspicious of faisal faisal was ready to work with the french but at the same time was no friend of the league of nations mandate i have no right to discuss it the people being aware of the danger which it may entail upon their future safety and independence have bitterly protested against it and refuse to accept it now it's worth noting that not all the people in the region opposed french rule especially the christian minority in lebanon now faisal's position between the french and the nationalists and his own family's ambitions have caused lots of historical debate about his true intentions as well as among some of his contemporaries though the french were suspicious of faisal given his connections to both the nationalists and the british some saw him as a moderate with whom they could work parliamentarian eduard daladier remarked of faisal he is a moderate man who is using all his means to convince the arab radicals to compromise with france but stability was in short supply in the early summer of 1920. there were numerous local revolts and clashes between different groups the alawite muslims rose up in latakia maronite christians and shia muslims fought around tyre and there was trouble around idlib in the north before long relations between faisal and the french commander in the region general ariguro deteriorated faisal felt guru was encouraging separatism amongst the christians and druze in lebanon which faisal and the nationalists viewed as part of syria the french army demanded use of the strategically important railway between aleppo and ryak to supply its garrison in turkey which caused an uproar in the syrian congress faisal tried a compromise which satisfied no one and finally decided to deny french troops the use of the railway the french began to prepare for potential war and safeguarded their flanks by an agreement with mustafa kemal's turkey fearing a conflict with france which he could not win faisal sent an emissary to go in july to determine french intentions and ask for full recognition of syrian independence the answer was clear as france took a firm position with the aggressive backing of their political representative in the region robert de que gero took control of the railway and sent faisal an ultimatum faisal was to reduce his army punish anyone who had committed a hostile act against france end conscription allow french use of the railway and recognize the french mandate this ultimatum interpreted the league of nations mandate as a form of indirect imperial rule to the surprise of the french faisal eventually agreed to the terms even though nationalist arabs rioted in the streets of damascus in any case faisal's answer reached guru after the deadline had run out this fit french intentions to resolve the situation by force and french troops began to advance into syria on july 21st and what is sometimes called the sharifian war began faisal again tried to offer a conciliatory peace to the french but his offer was rejected the french army of the levant that entered syria numbered about ten thousand men most of whom were north african and senegalese colonial troops and even included tanks faisal scrambled to assemble enough men to meet the invasion and called for volunteers in a speech at the ancient umayyad mosque in damascus i had sought to stop the advance of the enemy army by agreeing to their demands but they betrayed us if you want your country then go out and defend it the arab force that left damascus was a mix of green volunteers and former ottoman soldiers numbering somewhere between 1500 and 4 000 men and was poorly equipped with leftover and mismatched ottoman equipment king faisal's force was led by chief of staff and minister for war yusuf al-asma and it gathered near my saloon northwest of damascus where at 6 30 am on july 24th the french attack began for the first two hours of the battle fighting was fierce and syrian troops managed to pin down and surround some senegalese units but the overwhelming french superiority and the arrival of a french air squadron soon turned the tide faisal's army broke and al-asma was killed on the battlefield despite the crushing defeat of faisal's army the battle of my saloon has gained symbolic significance as ali alawi has written it was a military disaster but its name has gone down in arab history as a synonym for heroism and hopeless courage against huge odds as well as for treachery and betrayal it also created a heroine for many arabs in the person of naziq al-abid who led the nursing services during the battle and was an outspoken advocate of arab independence and women's rights for guru the way to damascus was now clear faisal who had watched the battle withdrew south of damascus and the city was captured without a fight on july 26th allegedly either guro or his local commander general cuabe is said to have visited the tomb of the medieval sultan saladin in the umayyad mosque saladin is known for having defeated the mostly french crusaders the french general supposedly remarked we have returned to the orient mr sultan after their victory the french soon divided syria and lebanon into five separate states which they would rule for years to come so by september 1920 faisal had been defeated and the kingdom of syria crushed but the deposed king now turned his eyes to another region where he might yet find a kingdom the british mandate of mesopotamia the league of nations mandate assigned to britain in spring 1920 included three former ottoman provinces around basra baghdad and mosul the last of which had originally been assigned to the french but had been given to the british during the peace conference these three regions were quite diverse with arabs and kurds sunni and shia muslims and significant christian and jewish minorities there were also different attitudes towards central power and foreign government there were tribal loyalties and a budding nationalist movement as well which was of course split between sunni and shia organizations the british also faced their own divisions as they tried to establish control british forces and defense budgets were stretched very thin and they were hard-pressed to manage their commitments in constantinople mesopotamia persia palestine trans-jordan and egypt in addition to their other imperial possessions they also faced an administrative tangle trying to sort out which government department would actually run the mandate since the foreign office the india office and the arab bureau all fought each other for influence opinions were split on what degree of independence mesopotamia would actually end up with and what kind of government it would have and even whether it should be one two or three states the people of mesopotamia were not particularly enthused with their new british mandatories some were opposed in principle to non-muslim rule some of the urban elite were not against british control while the ex-ottoman officers association and much of the tribal countryside was in the north the kurds demanded their independence and had launched a revolt back in 1919. now in general for those who oppose the british there was a fear that they would not grant enough independence and would govern too harshly to make matters worse the british had imposed new and very unpopular taxes in june a local arab politician warned gertrude bell who worked for the british civil administration and was close to t.e lawrence you said in your declaration that you would set up a native government drawing its authority from the initiative and free choice of the people concerned yet you proceed to draw up a scheme without consulting anyone despite this warning bell reckoned that an uprising was unlikely perhaps because the british mostly remained in the cities which were much less opposed to them than the countryside this fragile state of affairs made some other british administrators on the ground quite uneasy including bell superior the head of the civil administration colonel arnold wilson in spring 1920 he issued a dire warning to the government of british india the source of british troops in the region we cannot give effect to our mandate without risk of disaster unless we are prepared to maintain for the next two years at least as many troops in the country as we may have and in a state considerably more efficient than they are now wilson insisted that if the government didn't send more troops they should simply leave before things got any worse but his reports were considered alarmist and there was little appetite for more spending or further reinforcing the 30 000 indian and 4 300 british combat troops in mesopotamia the spark that set off the revolt in iraq occurred on june 26 1920. a local tribal leader was arrested near the village of rumaitha but soon other members of his tribe arrived and broke him out of the prison the british decided to try to retaliate by carrying out an attack on another nearby village and burning it down but local tribesmen drove them off the unrest began to spread across the middle euphrates region with several tribes joining forces and besieging abu shayr and rumaitha and cutting the railway lines that were vital for british troop movements two british forces sent to relieve the garrison were defeated by a force of some five thousand tribesmen before long the british were losing control of the middle euphrates region and sent reinforcements from basra in the south they also decided to withdraw to the city of hillah to prevent smaller garrisons from being overwhelmed and to protect the last approaches to baghdad the tribesmen who were led in the field by saeed alwan al-yasiri and saeed mussin abu tabich now took the offensive and besieged kufa and hillah and they virtually controlled the countryside as well the key cities of najaf and karbala were abandoned by british troops without a fight and the tribal and religious leaders set up a local government although it is still debated whether this was intended to eventually extend across the country kufa quickly became the center of action as the royal air force flew missions attacking the besieging arab forces and dropped supplies for the garrison there have been claims that british planes dropped poison gas on the iraqis but more recent research makes this seem unlikely even though winston churchill himself declared that he was fine with the idea the gunboat hms firefly gave the kufa garrison supporting fire from the river and at first the tribesmen had no answer to the firefly's heavier guns the british sent out yet another relief forced to rescue their troops at kufa but as they struggled along in the intense heat they were attacked and defeated by local forces at raranjia some 180 british and indian troops were killed and the arab forces captured valuable ammunition and an 18-pounder artillery piece the gun was quickly repaired brought up to kufa and put into action by veterans of the ottoman army and the firefly was sunk the situation was now from a british point of view extremely dangerous the defeats had a dampening effect on morale and increased tensions as gertrude bell confessed it's a bad business the military authorities seem to me all through to have been more inept than it's possible to conceive the british commander in the region general elmer haldane later wrote that he had never been so worried as after the defeat at ravangia not even during the great war from 1914 to the armistice except for an occasional brief spell of leave i was never absent from the western front and my troops often held ground which in the parlance of the time was called unhealthy but these 12 days at baghdad in 1920 days that seemed like years surpassed all earlier ones in the mental strain which they imposed in a bad sign for the british both shia and sunni muslims were in revolt alongside each other a rare occurrence between the rival groups the revolt now began to spread to the south north and around baghdad as news of the arab victory at raranjia spread but in these regions the uprising did not last as long and was not as intense one of the reasons is because the british had much better relations with prominent shakes in both north and south in fact one of the factors that pushed one of the upper euphrates tribes into rebellion was quite unrelated to the broader conflict british officer lieutenant colonel jarrod leachman who had once declared that the answer to the revolt was quote wholesale slaughter was murdered after a dispute with the son of the sheikh of the zoba tribe who felt that he had been mistreated this incident caused the zoba and several other groups to revolt but things soon settled down in october the british also broke the back of the revolt in the middle euphrates tuareg was captured and karbala given up to spare the holy city from damage the siege of kuffar was finally relieved after three months causing najaf to surrender as well british prisoners were returned and the rebels were forced to give up their weapons and pay a bounty despite the fall of the cities fighting in the countryside against the tribes continued until the end of november the eventual settlement with the tribes included a vague promise of an independent arab kingdom that had yet to be defined now once the revolt had been mostly brought under control the british tried to understand what had caused it but there was no easy answer arnold wilson prepared a report that listed 13 contributing factors including a conspiracy between turkey and faisal a conspiracy between the germans and turks and the machinations of the american standard oil company another intelligence report charted a conspiracy between the germans the turks and the bolsheviks and some in british circles found other possible culprits as well like pan-islam or the jews one of the revolt's leaders sayid musin abu tabich was more pragmatic as he later reflected on the immediate causes of the revolt the british hastened the revolt's timing by their ignorance about the proud personality of the iraqi and the numerous political mistakes that they committed across the country one factor colonel wilson didn't put that much stock in was iraqi nationalism as he stated quite plainly what we are up against is anarchy plus fanaticism there is little or no nationalism and this question of nationalism is at the heart of a historical debate about the revolt in mesopotamia some historians emphasize that the different groups in the region had all sorts of different and sometimes unrelated reasons for rebelling against the british others give faisal's network of officers in mesopotamia a prominent role but question his commitment to the arab cause and instead put more weight on the imperial ambitions of the hashemite family who were prepared to work with the british or french if it meant that they could acquire power the nationalist argument which proved influential in iraq and the arab world is that the uprising can actually be considered an iraqi revolution in this interpretation the uprising represented the will of the majority of the people shia and sunni for re-establishing historic iraq which had been under foreign rule from the time of the mongols in the 13th century according to this argument the iraqi revolution laid the foundation for the eventual independence of iraq in 1931 which was foreshadowed by the revolutionary self-government of areas that they had liberated from the british regardless of the cause of the revolt once it had been put down the british had some tough decisions to make defeating the tribes had cost 450 british and indian dead about 1 500 wounded and 40 million pounds and mesopotamia had shown that it could not be governed without changes already back in august british newspapers were questioning the government's policy in iraq how much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavor to impose upon the arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they neither asked for and do not want the british would take a step back but the question now was who would be the leader of iraq the british were still split on the question as was the population faisal and his father now began to lobby and pressure the british to put faisal on the throne of mesopotamia and cited wartime promises to the hashemite family i believe the present evils are not incurable resulting as they do from misunderstandings between the two peoples if the pledges given to the arabs through king hussein are fulfilled i am confident things will settle down among the brits who wanted a hashemite king there was some discussion as to whether it would be faisal or his brother abdullah wilson had opposed faisal but even while the revolt was still going on he began to favor him as a candidate that might accept british influence faisal alone of all arabian potentates has any idea of the practical difficulties of running a civilized government on arab lines he can scarcely fail to realize that foreign assistance is vital to the continued existence of an arab state he realizes the danger of relying on the arab army winston churchill who became minister of the colonies in early 1921 eventually supported faisal as well and after months of discussions and further lobbying by the hashemites the so-called sharifian solution was adopted at the cairo conference in march 1921. it was agreed that faisal would become king of iraq and his brother abdullah became king of trans-jordan though britain would still have significant influence the new kingdoms enjoyed more autonomy than some brits had hoped for gertrude bell had seen the writing on the wall in september 1920. the agitation has succeeded no one would have thought of giving the arabs such a free hand as we shall now give them as a result of the rebellions so as 1920 came to a close syria and iraq were now on a clear path to indirect rule by britain and france via the league of nations mandates there would soon be an iraqi kingdom but for some revolutionaries it was bittersweet the tribes had done the fighting but faisal was now king poet ahmad al-safi al-najafi expressed his disappointment what a botched revolution we did the farming and others harvested abu tabi himself later wrote that the british were far preferable to the ottomans and that the revolution had brought to power the very same people who had had influence in ottoman times for now the dreams of arab nationalists had been crushed but a powerful legacy remained for many my saloon still stands as a symbol of resistance against european imperialism and the iraqi revolution forced the british to back down and paved the way for full independence in the 1930s and now it's time for our roundup segment where we take a look at what else is going on in july 1920. let's start in europe where the spa conference took place from july 5th to july 16th in belgium the allies and germans discussed the implementation of the treaty of versailles and agreed to a disarmament schedule coal shipments and the distribution of financial war reparations but not the total sum on the 11th a plebiscite was held in two regions of east prussia which voted to remain part of germany rather than join poland on the 16th the treaty of saint germain went into effect the treaty had been signed in september 1919 and made peace between the allies except the united states and austria and divided the austrian half of the habsburg lands between the successor states on the 21st the inter-allied mission to poland began which aimed to help bring about an end to the polish-soviet war in north america on july 5th at the democratic party convention laura clay became the first american woman to receive a vote for a presidential nomination for a major u.s political party and finally on july 27th mexican rebel pancho villa surrendered to government forces but was permitted to settle down and was given an annual allowance [Music] so thanks again to curiositystream for sponsoring this episode curiositystream is a streaming service offering you thousands of high quality documentaries and right now you can sign up and get 26 off that's just 14.79 for an entire year when you sign up at curiositystream.com the great war you also get nebula bundled in with your account on nebula you can watch a whole variety of creators like us ad free and support them at the same time there's original content on nebula as well which you won't see on youtube for example we've released our documentary series 16 days in berlin on nebula the most detailed documentary about the battle of berlin one of the last big battles of world war ii and for several reasons we wouldn't be able to upload it here due to youtube's content restrictions so go to curiositystream.com the great war and sign up for just 14.79 for one year now we'd like to thank rabbi rashed for his help with this episode and as usual you can find all our sources for this episode in the video description below and there you'll also find a link to the great war audio podcast where we recently interviewed historian jonathan boff about his new book on the german perspective on world war one i'm jesse alexander and this is the great war 1920 a production of real-time history and the only youtube history channel that is a synonym for heroism and hopeless courage against huge odds as well as for treachery and betrayal

Channel: The Great War

Views: 205,916

Keywords: History, World War 1, WW1, First World War, Documentary, Documentary Series, The Great War, Indy Neidell, 1919, Interwar Period, 1920s, Educational, Russian Civil War, Revolution, Interbelum, Battle of Maysalun, Feisal, Hashemite Family, Arab, Middle East, Syria, Damascus, Baghdad, Mesopotamia

Id: TOZDF8-m_gw

Length: 29min 52sec (1792 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2020