What the British Did by Peter Mangold review

What the British Did: Two Centuries in the Middle East

By Peter Mangold, I.B. Tauris, 320 pages, $45

Anyone wanting a definitive judgment on the British record over two centuries of involvement in the Middle East will be frustrated by Peter Mangold’s fascinating book “What the British Did”. But they will certainly get one of the better overviews of Britain’s fraught relationship with the Arab world, told with a useful emphasis on fact and in a style that is refreshingly free of rancour.

Part of the pleasure in this book is its historical sweep from the very early days of British interest after the end of the Napoleonic wars starting with British engagement in Egypt in the early 1800s, through the classic period of colonial expansion when Britain acquired “an informal empire [ie: through indirect rule] through piecemeal, sometime accidental, sometime opportunistic thinking”. The book makes clear how this chaotic acquisition of power meant that British imperial logic in one place might differ radically from imperial logic in another, as in the bitter disputes between Bombay (now Mumbai) and London over who was in charge of British interests in the Gulf and what would become Saudi Arabia.

A large part of the book covers what the author calls the “High Noon of British authority from the latter part of World War One to the end of World War Two, which was astonishingly brief, and the subsequent unravelling proved difficult and was partly mismanaged”. The different chapters in the different areas allow Mangold to tell the very different stories required: for example, there is a good summary of the Suez crisis and Britain’s part in the great power rivalries of 1956, which is followed by a very different story of what was happening in Aden, the Hadhramout and the emerging Gulf states, where Britain was working at a very local level to promote peace and encourage development.

The later chapters look at the lengthy post-imperial coda which Mangold sums up as “residual British links in the region especially the Gulf, an activist British foreign policy throughout the Arab world, and the instability that gripped the Middle East once empire had ended”.

A good part of the interest in the book for today’s reader is the analysis of modern British policy in Iraq after the invasion of 2003 or in Egypt after the revolutions of the Arab Spring, written with full knowledge that Britain was involved in the same territories more than 100 years before, and yet also aware that the modern policy makers had little or no knowledge of any experience gained at that time.

In fact, it is clear that Arab memories were much more intact than the British, and an unsuspecting British general was surprised to be warned in 2003 that he should “remember what happened the last time you were here” as Iraqis suspected that the invading American and British were only in their country to “steal the oil, crush a rival, or stamp on Islam and Arabia”. This was very far from the general’s own interpretation of his mission at the time, but only a few years later it is hard to argue that the Arab was wrong.

There are plenty of other interesting and pointed anecdotes, such as the story of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, when the Ruler of Bahrain buttonholed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to lobby for support in a dispute with neighbouring Qatar. “Tell him,” said a very tired Prime Minister, “that we never desert our friends.” He paused, and then added “unless we have to”, which the translator diplomatically omitted. Mangold’s point in retelling this story was to make clear that the list of those in the Middle East who feel let down by the British is very long. Established British commitments were questioned when circumstances changed, promises were given to rulers who had little control over their territory or lost influence, and promises sometimes turned out to be in conflict.

Mangold’s key observation is that despite its imperial certainty, Britain never had an overarching strategy in the Middle East, and it lurched from crisis to crisis, gathering an informal empire of states managed through indirect rule rather than being made a formal part of the British Empire and coming under direct British rule. It left some goodwill where it was able to help development and leave in good order, but in the more central Arab states that Britain controlled, the legacy is less happy.

The book summarises four main complaints arising from the informal structure of the British empire in the Middle East. The first is the well-trod territory of the arrogance of imperialism, and how if the British could not get their way by acquiescence they were ready to use their strength to prioritise their interests and intervene in domestic affairs.

The second is the damage done by the creation of artificial divisions in the Arab world, about which the book is less accepting while agreeing that the dream of a unified Arab world is still potent. The facts of the imperial frontiers are undeniable, but the damage caused by these divisions much less certain, as the book finds that the nations that were created have proved durable and developed their own interests.

The third complaint is how much responsibility should Britain bear for all the post-imperial violence in the region, noting that the Ottoman and British periods managed the sectarian and ethnic divisions relatively calmly. Mangold sees the major exception to this record in Palestine where Britain bears a direct responsibility for the mandate, and then abandoning it, leaving the protagonists to fight it out, which Mangold describes as a stain on Britain’s record.

The other significant case of direct British responsibility is Iraq, where Britain turned a heterogeneous society into a unified state that grew out of British “mission creep” in the First World War, that its citizens neither desired nor designed. The mandate was brief, but the imperial failure to build durable institutions led directly to the revolution of 1958. Mangold goes on to point that a similar shot-gun marriage of states created the South Yemen Federation, but also points out that the UAE by contrast has survived and prospered.

The fourth issue is whether the British should have done more to establish democratic government beyond the introduction of the liberal constitutions in Egypt and Iraq in the 1920s. Here the book’s verdict is more definite and Mangold is clear that if the Arab region had been a part of the formal empire, then more effort would have been made, at least as part of the run-up to independence. As it was the protection of British strategic and economic interests did not obviously require the political capital to be expended on what seemed a thankless task, according to Mangold’s interpretation of British thinking at the time.

Mangold’s comprehensive survey of 200 years of history in “What the British Did” gives the book an essential place on the shelves of anyone interested in the region. The fact that it does not come to a single facile conclusion reflects the reality of Britain’s complex relationships at various times with various parts of the Arab world, and is the more valuable for it.