Few people could have been found less well equipped to resist such arguments than Sir Mark Sykes, who had a genuine love for France, and whose strong point in any case was imagination and a concern for what we would now call the big picture. He did not, alas, have a head for details, or any willingness to argue about the meaning of every word in a text, let alone insignificant geographic features on a map. These, however, were Picot’s strengths. He was tireless and well-informed; his mind was made up; and he had been sent to the negotiating table with strict, precise instructions from his government with which he was in wholehearted agreement—unlike Sykes, whose mission was merely to smooth things over with the French, and, if possible, slow them down.

“The Sykes-Picot Agreement is a shocking document … the product of greed at its worst, that is to say, of greed allied to suspicion and so leading to stupidity: it also stands out as a startling piece of double-dealing … [a] breach of faith.” If even so moderate a pro-Arab historian as George Antonius, writing from New York, in 1938, only three years after Lawrence’s death, can so describe the Sykes-Picot agreement, it can scarcely be wondered that Arab historians of the period today regard it as a betrayal equaled only by the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel in 1947–1948. Few diplomatic documents in history have attracted such odium over so many decades. It now stands for most of the things Arabs resent about the Middle East as the region has evolved since 1918: the unnatural division of the Arabic-speaking area of the Ottoman Empire into relatively small states, with frontiers drawn carelessly (or sometimes cunningly) by western powers; the unequal distribution of natural wealth, including water and later oil; the opening up of Palestineto Jewish settlement (under the protection of the British flag); the imposition of royalty а l’anglaise on people who wanted democracy;* and much else besides.

It must be remembered, however, that when Sykes sat down with Picot the much-delayed revolt of the Arabs against the Turks had yet to begin, and there was still a good deal of doubt among the British that it ever would—or that it would amount to anything much if it did. A British army had been defeated by the Turks at Gallipoli; another British army was about to be surrounded by the Turks at Kut al-Amara; the French army was about to endure the martyrdom of Verdun, followed shortly afterward by the martyrdom of the British Expeditionary Force in the First Battle of the Somme. The possibility of persuading the sharif of Mecca to declare a revolt against the Turks and raise a few thousand ragged, if picturesque, Bedouin tribesmen to take Medina, if they could, was not foremost on the minds of those in power in London and Paris.

In A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin raises the possibility that Sykes and Clayton misunderstood each other, or that Clayton may even have attempted to deceive Sykes. This is not improbable. Clayton, after all, was a professional soldier and intelligence officer, as well as the homme de confiance of Sir Reginald Wingate in Cairo. He would certainly have been cautious in speaking to a wealthy and influential member of Parliament touring the Middle East on behalf of the government, even one who came dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant-colonel of the Green Howards. In fact, what really mattered was not the difference between Clayton’s view of a future Arab state (that is, the view from Cairo and Khartoum) and Sykes’s (that is, the view from London and Paris) but rather the assumptions they shared. For both of them, an Arab state, whatever its borders, would require an Arab king—a role for which they considered the sharif of Mecca admirably suited, since he was by any standards animposing figure and a gentleman. They saw the Arab state, in other words, as resembling one of the larger principalities in India, with a British adviser hovering in the background among the gorgeous figures of the court; or as a clone of Egypt, with a British high commissioner pulling the strings behind a facade of “native” government. One reason why Sykes managed to make such rapid progress with the normally difficult Georges-Picot was that Picot’s view of French Syria was very similar. He had in mind a native ruler very much like the one who was then sultan of Morocco, kept in power by a native army led by French officers, and kept in line by a French high commissioner who took his orders from Paris. That this was not the independent state the sharif, his sons, the Bedouin tribesmen, or the intellectuals and Arab nationalists in Damascus were expecting to get did not deter either of them.

Even Lawrence, who would do his best in 1918 “to biff the French out of Syria,” did not at the time envisage a single Arab state like the one to which Sir Henry McMahon and the sharif had agreed in their correspondence. In any case, every British plan for the future of the Middle East bore within the text two escape clauses: the first was that the Arabs would have to fight the Turks and make a significant contribution to the Allies’ victory; the second was that any agreement made by the British would be (in McMahon’s words) “without detriment” to French claims, whatever these might be. The first had not yet happened, and the second was exactly what Sykes and Picot were trying to put down on paper.

What they came up with was very much like the famous description of a camel as a horse designed by a committee. The French received as a direct colonial possession the so-called Blue Area, including Lebanon, the port of Alexandretta, and a large chunk of what is now Syria and southern Turkey; the British received the Red Area, consisting of a good deal of what is now Iraq, from Basra to Baghdad; the A Area, consisting of what is now modern Syria and a large part of Iraq, would be reserved for a French-controlled Arab state; the B Area, consisting roughly of modern Jordan and southwestern Iraq, would be reserved for a British-controlled Arab state. Palestine would be shared by the French and British.

Even a glance at the map will show that the areas for the Arab states consisted basically of the leftovers, without ports on the Mediterranean or the Persian Gulf. As envisioned, the Arab states had no natural geographic boundaries; nor did they have any control over the great rivers or over the oil fields in Mesopotamia. The Middle East was carved up like a carcass by a careless butcher, with the Arabs being thrown the parts that nobody wanted to eat. By design, the Arab states, if they ever came to exist, would be isolated and separated; and by lack of foresight, the vast area to the south (what is now Saudi Arabia) was excluded from the map. Ibn Saud was at the time one of half a dozen ferocious rival warrior chieftains in the great desert; his capital at Riyadh was virtually unreachable. He kept the golden sovereigns he received from the government of India to prevent him from attacking the coastal sheikhdoms on the Persian Gulf, as well as the gold coins he received from the Turks to stop him from raiding Turkish outposts, locked in a wooden strongbox, bound in iron, in his tent, under the guard of his slaves. The idea that he might shortly emerge as the ruler over the world’s richest supply of oil had not yet occurred to anyone, least of all himself. The wide swath of French influence, stretching from the Mediterranean to Mosul and the Persian Gulf, was due to the concern of the British about Russia—they assumed correctly that Russia would have to be cut in on the deal, and wanted the French to provide a buffer zone separating Russia from the areas to the south that protected the approaches to the west bank of the Suez Canal. It was hoped that a French zone would prevent any future attempt on the part of the Russians to march south and seize the canal, or would at least bring the French into the fight against them. Far from Picot’s having cleverly squeezed Mosul and its oil fields out of a reluctant Sykes, Sykes had instead forced it on Picot.