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Book ID Asin: 038553292X
Book Title: Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East (ALA Notable Books for Adults)
Book Author: Scott Anderson
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Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East (ALA Notable Books for Adults) by Scott Anderson Book Review

Name: Bobby D.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Tremendously good read with a few flaws
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 29, 2013
Review: I have been stung by T. E. Lawrence's legend, myth and enigma ever since my Father bundled myself, Brother and Mother together explaining that he had just seen the newly opened film Lawrence of Arabia while on a business trip. That very next weekend we went down to Hollywood to see the three plus hour movie (I was bored to tears). Being surprised and seeing my Father's enthusiasm I began to read more about Lawrence and World War One and the Arab Revolt. I saw the film several more times over that year and began what has been a lifelong hobby as I have collected books, articles and research on LAWRENCE. So anytime there is a new Lawrence biography I am pleased in the expectation that others too will discover this unique, flawed and mysterious man.
This month we have the release of Scott Anderson's new book LAWRENCE IN ARABIA which for some reason felt it important to replace the word OF with the word IN. And although I have some concerns with some of Anderson's characterizations and his depiction of Lawrence especially in his post war life I think the book is a tremendously good read that takes on a much broader scope than just being a Lawrence biography.
Anderson gives us a broader picture of how the Arab Revolt and Lawrence's roll tied into other World War I campaigns. There is a good section on how Lawrence and others proposed early in the war that the British attack the Ottoman Empire (who controlled the Middle East) at Alexandretta (near Aleppo which is much in the news today). But instead Winston Chruchill and the British war planners attacked Gallipoli resulting and a lost opportunity and a crushing defeat. If Alexandretta had been captured and the Ottoman Empire split in two there may have been no need for an Arab revolt.
The book tries to be a biography of Lawrence asking how did Lawrence do it (answer no one was looking) and three others: Curt Prufer a German spy who tries to get Arabs to attack the Suez Canal, Aaron Aaronsohn the Jewish Zionist who along with his sister set up pro-British spy ring in Palestine, and William Yale who working for Standard Oil traveled the Middle East. The problem with these three other individuals with the possible exception of Aaronsohn is that they are at best interesting footnotes except that they do help expand the readers understanding of people and events beyond the scope of the Lawrence story. And although I liked Anderson's structure I thought the Aaronsohn story was better told in Ronald Florence's 2007 book LAWRENCE AND AARONSOHN, T.E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronshon, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Anderson quotes Florence in several of the Aaronshon sections). As to Prufer and Yale I don't recall ever hearing about them before this book.
Anderson's book justifiably spends a lot of time discussing the Sykes/Picot treaty between Britain and France and the person of Mark Sykes who was a major political player and is a major character in the book. Much more so than even Aaronshon. His personal and political story really is what the book's subtitle is about.... Deceit... Imperial Folly... and the making of the modern Middle East. Add Sykes/Picot with the Balfour Declaration and you have the unbelievable colonialism arrogance that Lawrence opposed in his support of an independent Arab nation. What the Arab's hoped to gain by their revolt.
This brings me to a point in Anderson's book that really disturbed me when I read it. The fact that Anderson calls Lawrence out as a TRAITOR. This on pages 270-271, "....in any wartime army at any point in history - The divulging of a secret treaty to a third party was considered a consummate act of treason, one sure to win the offender a long prison sentence if not an appointment with a firing squad. Yet a some point during those early days of February in Wejh, Lawrence took Faisal aside and did precisely that, revealing to him both the existence and salient details of Sykes-Picot." No one doubts that Lawrence at this time knew of the treaty but I am hard pressed to see any evidence that Lawrence was a traitor. There are many other numerous explanations about how and when Faisal first found out about the treaty. If Lawrence was in fact a traitor I would have thought the French at the very least would have pressed the point with their British allies. I don't believe any other biographer has made a point of this issue. Anderson then even ends his book in the Epilogue by saying, "Everything T.E. Lawrence had fought for, schemed for, arguably betrayed his country for, turned to ashes....." This is a heavy handed indictment. The interesting thing about Lawrence is that many things about him are elusive and will always remain a matter of conjecture. But I for one feel Anderson has gone over the top on this claim. (Much the way prior biographers have made the point that Lawrence was a homosexual. No one will really know for sure but then does it matter.)
Lastly, I take exception to Anderson's brief depiction of Lawrence in the Epilogue diagnosing Lawrence as having had Post-traumatic stress disorder. Anderson further says, " ...it is hard to escape the image of a sad and reclusive man, his circle of friends and acquaintances steadily dwindling to a mere handful...".
No doubt Lawrence had a unique and difficult personality to understand. How many Britain's would turn away from being knighted by their King during the actual ceremony? None before Lawrence. John Mack in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, THE PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (1976) devoted a whole book to doing a psychological study of Lawrence (One of the best books on Lawrence). In Michael Korda's recent book, HERO: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (2010) Korda paints a more convincing picture than PTSD where Lawrence having sought fame, having become a celebrity as big as say Diana today, found he did not like living with fame. Rather than leverage his fame like most people would be expected to do Lawrence hid from it. I always thought the fact that he grew up keeping the secret that he was illegitimate in class contentious Britain that he was a pretender. The work Lawrence did after the war was never going to be heroic...the stuff of headlines.... But he was an intellectual who wrote two books and translated others. The letters he wrote were long and interesting and send to a wide circle of acquaintances yielding who collections of text. Yes, Lawrence was not like the rest of us... and that is why his legend, myth and enigma endure.
In Anderson's Acknowledgments at the end of his book Anderson gives high recognition to Jeremy Wilson whose authorized biography, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1990) and says, "While I respectfully disagree with Mr. Wilson on several aspects of Lawrence's actions in Arabia. I am deeply indebted to the astounding amount of scholarly research he has done on Lawrence......" If you're a fan of all things Lawrence you no doubt know that Jeremy Wilson and his wife Nichole own Castle Hill Press. They have been publishing fine collector quality books by Lawrence for some twenty years. I own several of these the two most recent being THE MINT and BOATS FOR THE RAF 1929 - 1935. I recommend the Wilson's work to you as well as Wilson's T.E. Lawrence Studies page on internet. (Here he also does a good power point presentation covering the historical accuracy of the movie.)
For those who like and collect things Lawrence I want to also mention a book I found very well published and presented. It is in part what one might term a small coffee table book. It is Joseph Berton's T.E. LAWRENCE AND THE ARAB REVOLT (2011.
Lawrence is now but a drifting bit of sand blowing across the landscape of a land and people he loved that today is fractured by human intolerance. He became the medieval knight he dreamed of becoming. And I think that is what drew my Father to Lawrence.

Name: MSNYC
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Apologies not needed
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 8, 2013
Review: I might amend this later, however 1 page into the Author's Notes I can tell I most likely will not like this book. Though he alludes to the 'Eurocentric' version of history, I have yet to come across a book that discusses the Middle East or Islam in anything but Islamo/ArabCentric slants. Endless apologies for Islamo/Arabic conquests/imperialism/violence and endless portrayals of the West/Euro history as being brutish, violent, imperialist always against a peaceful (!) and advanced (!) Islamo/Arabic foe.

The sentence that caught my eye was when he objected to the use of 'Constantinople' vs 'Istanbul' as being 'Eurocentric (read Imperialist) version of history'. How can that be an imperialist view? The Ottoman Empire was possibly the single most successful Empire in history. Constantinople was not disputed land, was not a city conquered by the 'Imperialist' West or Europe. It predated both Europe, Islam and the Ottoman Empire by centuries if not millenia. The 'Turk's did not return to ancient lands they had been ousted from, not did they battle over undeveloped land for centuries and then build a thriving metropolis. The 'Turks' never even had a foot in history in Anatolia (ya know, Troy?) they lived 100s of miles to the North and East in the Russian steppes and swept into Anatolia on the heels of the Muslim conquest westward (and southward/northward/eastward). Constantinople was one of the greatest cities in Western civilization and it's cathedral Saint Sophia the center of Christian civilization 1000 years before it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks who had not an iota of history in that region or that city prior. They spend literally 1/2 a millenia laying siege to the population who had never done them the slightest harm, finally slaughtering a good part of the population, enslaving the rest, and taking the city they had nothing to do with over for the center of their Empire, and converted the holiest church Christianity into a mosque. Imagine for a moment if Rome had done the same to Mecca 500 years ago, the world would be burning.

Suffice it to say that calling Istanbul Constantinople is not 'imperialist' it is anti-imperialist if anything. Only misplaced Euro/Western guilt can criticize the West for that terminology, or apologize for the crusades, or pretend that Islam brought science and light to the 'backwards' West. It's bad enough hearing it from un/mis-educated middle easteners but why western historians bend over backwards propagating that same tired mythology is beyond me.

I'll reserve judgment for now, yet I am pretty sure that this author, like so many before, will pretend the West was somehow singularly oppressive, aggressive or acquisitive in it's conquest of 'Palestine' as compared to say the Ottomans, Seljuk Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Romans, Babylonians, Mongols, or Persians before them, and will pretend that in the 2000 years of conquest of that area that the only slice of time that is 'valid' is the Arabic conquest prior to several conquerors subsequent to that (including the Mongolian Empire) led to 500+ year Ottoman conquest prior to the West/British conquest (who were then supposed to, unlike every conqueror before, return it to the last guys to conquer it). None of those conquerors required a 'Sykes Picot Treat' nor would they have been embarrassed were one to be discovered; they conquered the land, took the resources and loot they required, and administered and taxed (and slaughtered) the local populations as they saw fit. And nary one of them was pressured by the conqueror two back to return it to them. It is why people now speak with disdain for the 'Balfour Declaration', implying or outright declaring the British agreed to give Arabic land to the Jews. The precise interpretation is that the British, who conquered the land from the Ottomans, had agreed to give it to the Arabs, who had conquered it themselves several steps back, and then agreed to give some land to the Jews, who had also conquered it several steps back (and built their holy city of Jerusalem). The land didn't 'belong' the Arabs, Jews, Turks, Ottomans, Mongolia or anyone else; it belonged to Britain.

Update: Nothing has changed my mind about the author's slant yet, only reinforced it: he refers to the crusades as an example of the West's inclination to conquer, explore or exploit the east; clearly he knows that despite any other individual or collective motivations by the crusaders, they were primarily a response AGAINST centuries of largely unimpeded eastern/islamic/arabic conquest of and exploitation of the west, from Anatolia to, at that time as yet unsuccessful attempts at Constantinople, through North Africa, the Balkans, Iberia/Spain and endless forays into France and attempts at Rome and, most importantly, the conquest of Christianity's holy city of Jerusalem and it's holy relics. Needless to say Christianity/The West has conquered that from the Jews 1,000 years before, however whom they did not conquer it from was 'The East' or 'Islam', the latter having taking that city, which was Holy to both Christianity for 600 years and Judaism for 2,000 years and had zero holy or historical significance to 'The East'/Islam, by force in the late seventh century. Yet the author is going to clearly ride the peace-loving-east-plundered-by-the-greedy-voracious-and-brutish-western-imperialists card like other Western historians.

Update 2: And it continues; whilst discussing the history of Turkey/The Ottoman Empire he refers to it's birthplace in the "mountainous regions of Anatolia"; this glosses over the fact that the Turkish people were not natives of Anatolia, they were natives of Central Asia, who swept into Anatolia on the wave of Arabic/Islamic conquering of Anatolia by sword, subjugating the Greeks and Jews, who had lived their for 1000s of years already. under 'Turkish' rule in those very same mountainous regions, looting their lands and keeping them as second class citizens for 1000 years until they revolted and were summarily slaughtered, i.e. the Armenian Genocide, the ARMENIANS being the one's whose birthplace was the 'mountainous regions of Anatolia' or at very least for 2,000+ years before any 'Turk' laid eyes on it.

And again: "had the Christian Crusaders learned from their Muslim enemies while invading the Holy Land". "Invading?" "THE Holy Land"? "The" Holy Land WAS Christian Holy Land which had been invaded by and conquered and occupied by the Muslims which in turn was why they were the West's enemies in the first place. It is hard to imagine if Rome had conquered Mecca and turned the Mosque into a Church and evicted the Muslims, if they were to return in 500 years anyone would refer to their reconquest of Mecca as an 'invasion of the Holy Land'

And again with the 'let's pretend the Middle East is a victim not a participant': while beginning the chapter on the outset of WW I and how the weapons changed the nature of war/death/carnage and caused almost 20 million deaths, he says 'one would have to return to the Dark Ages or the depredations of Genghis Khan to find a war as devastating'. In other words, he needed to reach into the 'brutal backwards west' or the Far East to the (presumably) most fearsome conqueror in history. Yet surely he could have found a far better example right in his own middle east backyard; the 'depredations' of Arabic Islam that swept out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and invaded, slaughtered, looted and conquered most of the known world. Eighty MILLION Indians alone were slaughtered by Islam, that number not taking into account Romans, Babylonians, Persians, Anatolians, Jews, Greeks, Constantinoplinians, Carthaginians, Egyptians, Berbers, Iberians, French and Romans like wise slaughtered (looted, enslaved, taxed, deprived of self-determination, ya know, Empire Building). Yet with a chance to actually make that connection, i.e. WW II resurrected carnage on a scope seen since the one precipitated BY the Middle East it 1400 years ago he turns a (intentional) blind eye to the opportunity.

Now it gets perverse; the author while discussing and deriding the great powers machinations to divvy up the land (that they were about to conquer, like every conqueror of the region before them) nearly drips with contempt for the subterfuge of the British Empire in sacrificing their promises to the Arabs (Emir Hussein) to placate the French, while paying 'homage' to British Egypt commmitment to 'honoring one's word' as they were also unaware of the upper echelon British double-talk. He doesn't have a problem with Britain or the Great Powers taking the land from the Ottomans; he has a problem with them doing so and not giving Arabia, Palestine, Anatolia and Egypt to the Arabs and 'breaking their promises' If anyone's real point is that by the 20th century the world's morality had moved past such land grabbing and land conquest (a convenient position if you are the Ottoman Empire) then one should be offended that that land was grabbed NOT that is was grabbed and not summarily returned to the prior conquerors of the land. Arabs had no claim to Egypt, Anatolia, Jerusalem, much of Palestine EXCEPT by their own conquest. So how were they 'shafted' because empire(s) that conquered the peoples that conquered them didn't give it to them or 'keep their word'? Any one who is truly offended by 'the Great Loot' (which is only really applicable to the 2,000+ year history of 'Palestine' not simply the British/French conquest in 1915) should demand that the UN renounces recognition of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran AND Egypt and return that land to it's 'rightful' owners, Turkey.

Name: DL
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The book
Date: Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 17, 2023
Review: The book arrived ahead of schedule and met my expectations.