Sir mark sykes biography of albert

Secret 1916 agreement between the United Kingdom and France

The Sykes–Picot Agreement () was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from Russia and Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.

The agreement was based on the premise that the Triple Entente would achieve success in defeating the Ottoman Empire during World War I and formed part of a series of secret agreements contemplating its partition. The primary negotiations leading to the agreement took place between 23 November 1915 and 3 January 1916, on which date the British and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, initialled an agreed memorandum. The agreement was ratified by their respective governments on 9 and 16 May 1916.

The agreement effectively divided the Ottoman provinces outside the Arabian Peninsula into areas of British and French control and influence. The British- and French-controlled countries were divided by the Sykes–Picot line. The agreement allocated to the UK control of what is today southern Israel and Palestine, Jordan and southern Iraq, and an additional small area that included the ports of Haifa and Acre to allow access to the Mediterranean. France was to control southeastern Turkey, the Kurdistan Region, Syria and Lebanon.

As a result of the included Sazonov–Paléologue Agreement, Russia was to get Western Armenia in addition to Constantinople and the Turkish Straits already promised under the 1915 Constantinople Agreement. Italy assented to the agreement in 1917 via the Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and received southern Anatolia. The Palestine region, with a smaller area than the later Mandatory Palestine, was to fall under an "international administration".

The agreemen

Author(s): Christopher Simon Sykes

Biography & Memoir

At the age of only 36, Sir Mark Sykes was signatory to the Sykes-Picot agreement, one of the most reviled treaties of modern times. A century later, Christopher Sykes' lively biography of his grandfather reassesses his life and work, and the political instability and violence in the Middle East attributed to it. The Sykes-Picot agreement was a secret pact drawn up in May 1916 between the French and the British, to divide the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the event of an allied victory in the First World War. Agreed without any Arab involvement, it negated an earlier guarantee of independence to the Arabs made by the British. Controversy has raged around it ever since. Sir Mark Sykes was not, however, a blimpish, ignorant Englishman. A passionate traveller, explorer and writer, his life was filled with adventure. From a difficult, lonely childhood in Yorkshire and an early life spent in Egypt, India, Mexico, the Arabian desert, all the while reading deeply and learning languages, Sykes published his first book about his travels through Turkey aged only twenty. After the Boer War, he returned to map areas of the Ottoman Empire no cartographer had yet visited. He was a talented cartoonist, excellent mimic and amateur actor, gifts that ensured that when elected to parliament a full House of Commons would assemble to listen to his speeches. During the First World War, Sykes was appointed to Kitchener's staff, became Political Secretary to the War Cabinet and a member of the Committee set up to consider the future of Asiatic Turkey, where he was thirty years younger than any of the other members. This search would dominate the rest of his life. He was unrelenting in his pursuit of peace and worked himself to death to find it, a victim of both exhaustion and the Spanish Flu. Written largely based on the previously undisclosed family letters and illustrated with Sykes' cartoons, this sad story of an experienced,

by WILLIAM M. MATHEW

Lecture given to the History Group of The Norfolk Club, 14 April 2016 to mark the centenary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement 1916

Abstract

These three war-time initiatives are presented as part of a compressed, uncoordinated, two-year sequence set against the changing circumstances of international rivalries, imperial anxieties, and domestic politics.  Contradictions  were especially pronounced over Palestine – first designated, 1915, as part of an independent Arab polity;  then, 1916, as under international jurisdiction; and finally, 1917, as territory for a Jewish national home.  Such stark inconsistencies, in the compelling context of war, forced a high degree of official secrecy over the content of the policies.  This combination of contradiction and concealment, corroding trust in British good faith, did serious long-term damage to relations between the imperial power and the Arab and Jewish communities under its authority, the consequences enduring to the present day.

I   INTRODUCTORY

Three bits of policy, all belonging to the short period October 1915 to November 1917 – the first two, the McMahon-Hussein correspondence  and the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the work of the Asquith Liberal government; and the third, the Balfour Declaration, coming from the succeeding Lloyd George coalition.

None of them, it`s important to emphasise, arose from parliamentary debate, and none constituted any formal public pronouncement,

The critical, determining context for all three was the Great War and the closely related issue of imperial security – or, rather, imperial insecurity.

The War meant that the perspectives were, inevitably, short-term and opportunistic;  that the policies were, to varying degrees, secret;  and that there was, in consequence, much mutual contradiction and inconsistency – most notably in relation to Palestine.

As for imperial ins

Commander (retired) Henry Albert Le Fowne Hurt, C.M.G., R.N. (5 September, 1881 – ) was an officer in the Royal Navy.

Life & Career

Born in Alderwashy.

Hurt was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 31 December, 1900.

Hurt was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander on 31 December, 1910.

On 29 July 1914, Hurt was appointed to Columbine for minesweeping in the Firth of Forth. On 25 February 1916, he was appointed to Halcyon for M/S duties in the acting rank of Commander.

On 10 March 1916, he was placed in command of the trawler Sir Mark Sykes. In August 1916, Hurt cleared a minefield in the White Sea. He left Sir Mark Sykes when he was appointed in command of the icebreaker Alexander, the former Russian Alexander Nevsky, on 14 December 1917.

Post-War

Hurt was appointed to the monitor M.25, additional, on 25 November, 1918 for command of the White Sea Icebreakers and of the Archangel River Expeditionary Force in the acting rank of Captain.

Reverted to the Retired List on 15 February, 1919. On 29 October 1919, Hurt was promoted to the rank of Commander in recognition of wartime service, dated 11 November, 1918.

World War II

See Also