James Barr (3) (1976–)
Author of A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle That Shaped the Middle East
For other authors named James Barr, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
James Barr is the author of Setting the Desert on Fire: T. E. Lawrence and Britain's Secret War in Arabia, 1916-1918. He was awarded a visiting fellowship at St Antony's College, Oxford, to conduct research for A Line in the Sand. He lives in London.
Works by James Barr
A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle That Shaped the Middle East (2011) 639 copies, 10 reviews
Lords of the Desert: The Battle Between the United States and Great Britain for Supremacy in the Modern Middle East (2018) 211 copies, 2 reviews
Setting the Desert on Fire: T. E. Lawrence and Britain's Secret War in Arabia, 1916-1918 (2006) 201 copies, 2 reviews
Life in Gaza Today-Catalogue 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Barr, James
- Legal name
- Barr, Alexander James
- Birthdate
- 1976-02-19
- Gender
- male
- Short biography
- James Barr read Modern History at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he took a First. Since then he has worked in Westminster in politics, as a leader-writer for the Daily Telegraph, in the City and most recently in Paris. Today he lives in London.
His book on Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab Revolt, Setting the Desert on Fire, was first published in 2006.
In A Line In The Sand he picks out a key theme of that book – the rivalry between Britain and France for dominance in the Middle East – and describes how this little-known struggle transformed the Middle East, from the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War to the violent birth of the state of Israel in 1948.
During the research for this book he was a visiting fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. Currently he is a visiting fellow at King's College London.
http://www.jamesbarr.org.uk/Author.ht... - Nationality
- UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- UK
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Reviews
A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for the Mastery of the Middle East by James Barr
The origins of the crises that might yet turn us all into radioactive ash - Chinese aspirations to acquire Taiwan, Russian concerns about national security to its West- are no more intractable for contemporary understanding than the consequences of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Most people observing the vicious and unholy assault on Gaza by Israel, the collapse of Syria into quasi-Islamism, earlier collapses into anarchy in Iraq and Libya, the re-emergence of Persia as regional power show more and so many other phenomena tend to have a fairly primitive black and white view.
As always, things are generally more complicated. Each case has its history that can take us back as far as you like but the causes of the modern network of crises in the Middle East are best centred on the near-final clash of empires that took place in the First World War.
The full story is far too complex to re-tell in a mere book review but Barr's account of imperial struggle between Britain and France between 1915 and 1948 is almost essential reading for anyone who thinks they should have an opinion on the matter today.
The central problem was that two already overburdened and potentially vulnerable empires (rather like the US today) were around to fill a vacuum left by the collapse of an aged and less developed empire (the Ottoman), perhaps the last heir of Rome itself.
During the First World War, victory for Britain and France was far from assured (certainly in 1915-1917) when the dumbest and most cowardly document in twentieth century history (the Balfour Declaration) set in motion a horrendous process that is still with us today.
A weak Foreign Secretary created the conditions for the incursion of an unnecessary 'Crusader Street' just at the time when other forces in the British Empire (more obviously progressive if self interested) were working to encourage conservative Arab nationalism to win the war and secure India.
At the same time (the main subject of Barr's book) a mutually distrustful France and Britain, with totally different conceptions of empire, were almost absent-mindedly carving up the Ottoman Empire (the Sykes-Picot Agreement) well before it had actually fallen.
And there we have it - a Palestine gifted to well funded ethno-nationalists over the heads of the local population, the encouragement and creation of a new Arab ethno-nationalism masked as conservative dynasticism and the latter betrayed not just by the first but by imperial ambition.
From this point on, it is all down hill as the increasing numbers of Jews in Palestine demand security and protection, Arab greed and disorganisation is always one step behind and France encourages (eventually) Jewish terrorism just as the British encouraged Arab resistance to French imperialism.
Barr covers the story in a very readable narrative style with considerable attention to detail. Every move in the local version of the Great Game is presented and explained. Emotion is removed so we can see the players precisely for what they were.
The British are their usual self-interested, lazily rational selves spoiled by inept politicians ... so not much change there. Their involvement is fundamentally one of protecting the communications and eventually oil flow across the empire. Egypt and India are what matter.
For London, the Arabs are there to be much like any other subservient affiliate of empire protecting a flank and denying rivals (which includes the French) from getting too close to essential interests. This is what the dumb Balfour Declaration totally screwed up.
The last period of the British mandate in Palestine shows just how out of its depth Britain was as its empire began the process of complete degeneration. The road to India was, of course, going to be less important after 1947. The surge of British brutality was nasty, desperate and actually out of character.
The French are just vicious. Their approach to empire can only be described as thuggish and overtly exploitative, run by officials who gave empire its bad name and who were much more happy working as Vichy than as Free French (a subsidiary story covered well by Barr).
De Gaulle was an exasperating narcissistic handful for the British and about as trustworthy as a rattle snake, mostly from weakness. For the French, whatever international law might say, Syria and Lebanon were 'possessions' to be possessed regardless of the natives.
The British by the twentieth century actually tried to be pretty decent without questioning that the fundaments of their rule were indecent. The French did not even bother to try. The Americans have proven that hegemony can enforce tolerance of the criminal on supine 'allies'.
The Zionists come across as one step from fanatic. In fact, let us call this straight. They were manipulative terrorists who did a right old post war number on the American people with their extremely astute exploitation of 'spin' and celebrity. Actors look stupid then as now.
No better than Arafat in his heyday or Hamas, Irgun and the Stern Gang's terrorism, funded and assisted by the French and American Jews, murdered Arabs and British soldiers and administrators alike. This makes the power of the Israel lobby in the UK today all the more impressive.
This leaves the Arabs. It is a picture that is not flattering in terms of organisational ability or coherence. Arab intellectuals are great talkers and love grandstanding events but they seem to have a problem organising a clear shared ideology or avoiding flattery and corruption.
Constantly out-played by Zionists and what amount to French Fascists (to all intents and purposes), the path to brutal dictatorship or flaccid Western-backed dynasticism or futile terrorism in response to what were masters at the trade is marked out during these years.
Certainly the Arab propensity to conspiracy theory and narratives of betrayal is borne out by much of the evidence in the book although much of any British betrayal is as much down to incompetence as deliberation. The French never promised anything in the first place.
Meanwhile two stories are unfolding outside this book that will come into play later. The first is the emergence of Islamism as the primary form of Egyptian resistance to colonialism and the second is the exploitation of the resources of Iran which will lead eventually to Mossadeq's overthrow.
What a mess! But the book is not a mess. Barr has produced an important narrative account of how we got to where we are today. Nor does it make judgements. It simply lays out the facts. I have my interpretation and yours may be different (if you have the courage to escape your prejudices).
And a conclusion? Perhaps that, when desiring the collapse of ramshackle of empires, we should be careful of what we wish for if the successor operations are exploitative, cynical and less-than-competent vampires who hate each other.
As to the self-determination which Woodrow Wilson threw into the pot and which the British were pragmatically prepared to concede in order to protect the whole, again, be careful of what you wish for if the ethnic entities involved are ruthless and mad on the one side or ill-formed on the other.
There are no solutions in this book. The two main Western empires are now virtually defunct despite their posturings. The great successor empire in Washington is grappling with the chaos with precisely the same mix of incompetencies, barren ideology and self interest.
The heir of the Jewish ethno-nationalists is a monster that the West, playing Dr. Frankenstein, refuses to recognise as one. The Arabs in the region of Sykes-Picot are either battered basket cases (Syria, Lebanon) or constantly living on the edge of becoming one (Jordan, Iraq).
As to the Palestinians - the poorly led front line victims of all these imperial shenanigans - they are 'busted' with the best on offer being a confined puppet state on the West Bank, humanitarian 'ethnic cleansing' and what many now consider localised 'genocide'.
Over a century after Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration, perhaps the biggest loser is the self-image of the 'West' (whatever that is) as the good guy. As the histories are told (and there are many of them now), the old rhetoric looks like a coating of cream on a pile of poo.
Traditional narrative history has often got lost in the drive to bore us with critical theory and minor academics wallowing in 'discourses'. Nobody reads that rubbish and so nothing changes. If you bother to read the facts and think for yourself, maybe our elites can actually be brought to account. show less
Most people observing the vicious and unholy assault on Gaza by Israel, the collapse of Syria into quasi-Islamism, earlier collapses into anarchy in Iraq and Libya, the re-emergence of Persia as regional power show more and so many other phenomena tend to have a fairly primitive black and white view.
As always, things are generally more complicated. Each case has its history that can take us back as far as you like but the causes of the modern network of crises in the Middle East are best centred on the near-final clash of empires that took place in the First World War.
The full story is far too complex to re-tell in a mere book review but Barr's account of imperial struggle between Britain and France between 1915 and 1948 is almost essential reading for anyone who thinks they should have an opinion on the matter today.
The central problem was that two already overburdened and potentially vulnerable empires (rather like the US today) were around to fill a vacuum left by the collapse of an aged and less developed empire (the Ottoman), perhaps the last heir of Rome itself.
During the First World War, victory for Britain and France was far from assured (certainly in 1915-1917) when the dumbest and most cowardly document in twentieth century history (the Balfour Declaration) set in motion a horrendous process that is still with us today.
A weak Foreign Secretary created the conditions for the incursion of an unnecessary 'Crusader Street' just at the time when other forces in the British Empire (more obviously progressive if self interested) were working to encourage conservative Arab nationalism to win the war and secure India.
At the same time (the main subject of Barr's book) a mutually distrustful France and Britain, with totally different conceptions of empire, were almost absent-mindedly carving up the Ottoman Empire (the Sykes-Picot Agreement) well before it had actually fallen.
And there we have it - a Palestine gifted to well funded ethno-nationalists over the heads of the local population, the encouragement and creation of a new Arab ethno-nationalism masked as conservative dynasticism and the latter betrayed not just by the first but by imperial ambition.
From this point on, it is all down hill as the increasing numbers of Jews in Palestine demand security and protection, Arab greed and disorganisation is always one step behind and France encourages (eventually) Jewish terrorism just as the British encouraged Arab resistance to French imperialism.
Barr covers the story in a very readable narrative style with considerable attention to detail. Every move in the local version of the Great Game is presented and explained. Emotion is removed so we can see the players precisely for what they were.
The British are their usual self-interested, lazily rational selves spoiled by inept politicians ... so not much change there. Their involvement is fundamentally one of protecting the communications and eventually oil flow across the empire. Egypt and India are what matter.
For London, the Arabs are there to be much like any other subservient affiliate of empire protecting a flank and denying rivals (which includes the French) from getting too close to essential interests. This is what the dumb Balfour Declaration totally screwed up.
The last period of the British mandate in Palestine shows just how out of its depth Britain was as its empire began the process of complete degeneration. The road to India was, of course, going to be less important after 1947. The surge of British brutality was nasty, desperate and actually out of character.
The French are just vicious. Their approach to empire can only be described as thuggish and overtly exploitative, run by officials who gave empire its bad name and who were much more happy working as Vichy than as Free French (a subsidiary story covered well by Barr).
De Gaulle was an exasperating narcissistic handful for the British and about as trustworthy as a rattle snake, mostly from weakness. For the French, whatever international law might say, Syria and Lebanon were 'possessions' to be possessed regardless of the natives.
The British by the twentieth century actually tried to be pretty decent without questioning that the fundaments of their rule were indecent. The French did not even bother to try. The Americans have proven that hegemony can enforce tolerance of the criminal on supine 'allies'.
The Zionists come across as one step from fanatic. In fact, let us call this straight. They were manipulative terrorists who did a right old post war number on the American people with their extremely astute exploitation of 'spin' and celebrity. Actors look stupid then as now.
No better than Arafat in his heyday or Hamas, Irgun and the Stern Gang's terrorism, funded and assisted by the French and American Jews, murdered Arabs and British soldiers and administrators alike. This makes the power of the Israel lobby in the UK today all the more impressive.
This leaves the Arabs. It is a picture that is not flattering in terms of organisational ability or coherence. Arab intellectuals are great talkers and love grandstanding events but they seem to have a problem organising a clear shared ideology or avoiding flattery and corruption.
Constantly out-played by Zionists and what amount to French Fascists (to all intents and purposes), the path to brutal dictatorship or flaccid Western-backed dynasticism or futile terrorism in response to what were masters at the trade is marked out during these years.
Certainly the Arab propensity to conspiracy theory and narratives of betrayal is borne out by much of the evidence in the book although much of any British betrayal is as much down to incompetence as deliberation. The French never promised anything in the first place.
Meanwhile two stories are unfolding outside this book that will come into play later. The first is the emergence of Islamism as the primary form of Egyptian resistance to colonialism and the second is the exploitation of the resources of Iran which will lead eventually to Mossadeq's overthrow.
What a mess! But the book is not a mess. Barr has produced an important narrative account of how we got to where we are today. Nor does it make judgements. It simply lays out the facts. I have my interpretation and yours may be different (if you have the courage to escape your prejudices).
And a conclusion? Perhaps that, when desiring the collapse of ramshackle of empires, we should be careful of what we wish for if the successor operations are exploitative, cynical and less-than-competent vampires who hate each other.
As to the self-determination which Woodrow Wilson threw into the pot and which the British were pragmatically prepared to concede in order to protect the whole, again, be careful of what you wish for if the ethnic entities involved are ruthless and mad on the one side or ill-formed on the other.
There are no solutions in this book. The two main Western empires are now virtually defunct despite their posturings. The great successor empire in Washington is grappling with the chaos with precisely the same mix of incompetencies, barren ideology and self interest.
The heir of the Jewish ethno-nationalists is a monster that the West, playing Dr. Frankenstein, refuses to recognise as one. The Arabs in the region of Sykes-Picot are either battered basket cases (Syria, Lebanon) or constantly living on the edge of becoming one (Jordan, Iraq).
As to the Palestinians - the poorly led front line victims of all these imperial shenanigans - they are 'busted' with the best on offer being a confined puppet state on the West Bank, humanitarian 'ethnic cleansing' and what many now consider localised 'genocide'.
Over a century after Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration, perhaps the biggest loser is the self-image of the 'West' (whatever that is) as the good guy. As the histories are told (and there are many of them now), the old rhetoric looks like a coating of cream on a pile of poo.
Traditional narrative history has often got lost in the drive to bore us with critical theory and minor academics wallowing in 'discourses'. Nobody reads that rubbish and so nothing changes. If you bother to read the facts and think for yourself, maybe our elites can actually be brought to account. show less
A line in the sand : Britain, France and the struggle for the mastery of the Middle East by James Barr
This is one of those books that seem to have been written in reverse: Barr started out from what was apparently a chance discovery in "a newly-declassified document" he was looking at, that showed that France had been sponsoring Zionist terrorists operating in the British mandate of Palestine in the 1940s, and decided to go back over the history of Anglo-French relations in the Middle East to work out how things had got to that point.
He identifies as starting point the secret Sykes-Picot show more Agreement of January 1916, in which Britain and France, faced with the disintegration of Ottoman power in the Middle East, assigned themselves spheres of influence divided along an arbitrary line on the map "from the 'e' in Acre to the last 'k' in Kirkuk". Making, of course, no allowances for the way the world had moved on since the "race for Africa" of the 1870s, or for the complex religious and political history of the region, and laying the foundations for no end of trouble in the century to come.
Barr charts the continued distrust and jockeying for strategic advantage between the two countries, complicated no end by a succession of mavericks on both sides determined to pursue their private agendas in the Middle East by "unconventional methods" — T.E. Lawrence was only the most famous of many semi-official troublemakers. Not to mention an equally impressive succession of incompetent administrators and overconfident military commanders.
Barr is undoubtedly right that a lot of the past and present problems of the Middle East can be traced to the arrogance of both countries in the way they assumed they knew best for the area, and to Britain's selfish preoccupation with protecting the Suez Canal and the oil supplies for its Mediterranean fleet and France's concern to project its image as a successful colonial power despite the damage done by the two World Wars. And he tells a convincing and lively story, with a lot of detail I didn't know about in between the more familiar big events.
I did wonder a bit, however, if he is giving Britain and France too much credit. Even with the best of management, Suez and the oil resources were clearly strategic problems that would lead to conflict (and still do) whichever powers established themselves in the region. Arab nationalism wasn't invented by T.E. Lawrence, it was always going to play an important part as Ottoman influence faded and self-determination became a norm for people all over the world to aspire to. And Zionism had its roots in the situation of Jews in the Russian Empire and Germany: even if the British and French had kept their fingers out of the pie, it would have found sponsors somewhere, in the US if not in Europe, and as soon as it did, there would have been emigration to Palestine, making conflict with the Arabs almost certain. show less
He identifies as starting point the secret Sykes-Picot show more Agreement of January 1916, in which Britain and France, faced with the disintegration of Ottoman power in the Middle East, assigned themselves spheres of influence divided along an arbitrary line on the map "from the 'e' in Acre to the last 'k' in Kirkuk". Making, of course, no allowances for the way the world had moved on since the "race for Africa" of the 1870s, or for the complex religious and political history of the region, and laying the foundations for no end of trouble in the century to come.
Barr charts the continued distrust and jockeying for strategic advantage between the two countries, complicated no end by a succession of mavericks on both sides determined to pursue their private agendas in the Middle East by "unconventional methods" — T.E. Lawrence was only the most famous of many semi-official troublemakers. Not to mention an equally impressive succession of incompetent administrators and overconfident military commanders.
Barr is undoubtedly right that a lot of the past and present problems of the Middle East can be traced to the arrogance of both countries in the way they assumed they knew best for the area, and to Britain's selfish preoccupation with protecting the Suez Canal and the oil supplies for its Mediterranean fleet and France's concern to project its image as a successful colonial power despite the damage done by the two World Wars. And he tells a convincing and lively story, with a lot of detail I didn't know about in between the more familiar big events.
I did wonder a bit, however, if he is giving Britain and France too much credit. Even with the best of management, Suez and the oil resources were clearly strategic problems that would lead to conflict (and still do) whichever powers established themselves in the region. Arab nationalism wasn't invented by T.E. Lawrence, it was always going to play an important part as Ottoman influence faded and self-determination became a norm for people all over the world to aspire to. And Zionism had its roots in the situation of Jews in the Russian Empire and Germany: even if the British and French had kept their fingers out of the pie, it would have found sponsors somewhere, in the US if not in Europe, and as soon as it did, there would have been emigration to Palestine, making conflict with the Arabs almost certain. show less
Almost a sequel to 'A line in the sand' and the power struggles involving outside powers that have pervaded the Middle East. The protagonists have changed from France and Briton to Briton and the United States, but the stakes remain high and the stories fascinating, with many unintended consequences. Barr's research is impeccable and his prose engaging. Taken together these books provide the reader with broad insight into the dynamics of colonial politics in the region, and past actions that show more still affect the local inhabitants to this day. show less
This book charts the amazing story of Anglo-French rivalry in the Middle East, which was surprisingly virulent. Although both countries might have been officially allies, in the region there was no doubt who was the real enemy, and the age old colonial conflict between Britain and France was very much alive.
Two things stand out for me from reading this book: one was the surprising lengths the French would go to to thwart British ambitions in the area, including helping zionists assassinate show more British officials. The other is the stunning callousness with which the British would make promises to various parties when it was convenient, and then go back on them, when these commitments would prove inconvenient. Neither country comes out very well.
The story is told in a series of vignettes. This makes it more readable, but inevitably makes for gaps and shortcuts in the general narrative. If you want a full and systematic account, with detailed analysis, you'd have to do further reading. show less
Two things stand out for me from reading this book: one was the surprising lengths the French would go to to thwart British ambitions in the area, including helping zionists assassinate show more British officials. The other is the stunning callousness with which the British would make promises to various parties when it was convenient, and then go back on them, when these commitments would prove inconvenient. Neither country comes out very well.
The story is told in a series of vignettes. This makes it more readable, but inevitably makes for gaps and shortcuts in the general narrative. If you want a full and systematic account, with detailed analysis, you'd have to do further reading. show less
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