Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Margaret Lothian Bell (1868-1926) was an English author and adventurer who influenced the formation of Iraq, when, in 1932, that state gained independence from the United Kingdom. At a memorial service for her in 1927, at the Royal Geographic Society, she was called the most powerful woman in the British Empire after the First World War, the "uncrowned queen of Iraq", and possibly the brains behind T. E. Lawrence and the definer of Mideast policy for Winston Churchill.

Churchill, Bell, Lawrence: 1921

A 1921 photograph is informative in multiple ways. Taken on 22 March, the "last day of the Cairo Conference and the final opportunity for the British to determine the postwar future of the Middle East. Like any tourist, the delegation makes the routine tour of the pyramids and have themselves photographed on camels in front of the Sphinx. Standing beneath its half-effaced head, two of the most famous Englishmen of the twentieth century confront the camel in some disarray: Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, who has just, to the amusement of all, fallen off his camel, and T. E. Lawrence, tightly constrained in the pin-striped suit and trilby of a senior civil servant. Between then, at her ease, rides Gertrude Bell, the sole delegate possessing knowledge indispensable to the Conference. Her face, in so far as it can be seen beneath the brim of her rose-decorated straw hat, is transfigured with happiness. Her dream of an independent Arab nation is about to come true, he choice of a king endorsed: her Iraq is about to become a country. Just before leaving the hotel that morning, Churchill has cabled to London the vital message "Sharif's son Faisal offers hope of best and cheapest solution."

There are eerie parallels to today's situation in Iraq "...Faisal, the protege of Bell and T. E. Lawrence (better known as Lawrence of Arabia), was imported from Mecca to become the "roof." In early 2004, David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post about the offer of Prince Hassan of Jordan, the great nephew of Faisal, to mediate among Iraqi religions factions to bring them together and become a "provisional head of state."

Early life

Her mother died when Gertrude was three, after her brother Maurice's birth. This increased her bonds with her father, Hugh. She was a literate child; in the first known letter, written when she was five, she told her grandmother, "My dolls have given me great amusement. You wer very good to get them for me." Her governesses found her a "handful". Her father remarried when she was eight, and she formed an excellent relationship with her stepmother, Florence Oliff.

She led her brother Maurice into endless adventures, with Maurice often falling from walls while Gertrude landed gracefully, a foretaste of her later mountaineering.

Unusually for a girl in the late 19th centure she went to Queen's College in Harley Street, first as a day scholar living with her maternal grandmother, and then as a boarder. She was emphatic about the studies she liked and disliked, and rejected music and Scripture.

University

The Bell family had been growing in status during her girlhood, opening opportunities.

She enrolled at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 1886.

While women still could not receive degrees at Oxford, she did earn a "First" at Oxford, in Modern History. No woman had previously won first-class honors in any field.

Educational travel

Within the culture of the time, however, she was an apparent failure, as no one had asked for her hand in marriage.

Gertrude Bell, aged 26

Romania

To correct her perceived failings, family friends, the Lascelles family, invited her to spend the winter season of 1889 in Bucharest, Romania. Whatever this may have done for her social life, it was her introduction to the diplomatic world, and to Turkey and the Ottoman Empire.

Persia

Travel was an acceptable second chance, in the times, to find a husband. Before traveling to Persia, however, she studied Farsi and gained conversational and reading knowledge. In 1892, she journeyed to visit an uncle, who was then the British Ambassador to Persia, stationed in Tehran. She was impressed with a young diplomat, Henry Cadogan, with whom she had both an emotional and intellectual connection, with whom she could "talk vigorous politics." His income, however, was small. When he asked her father for her hand in marriage, but was refused. Cadogan died of cholera in 1893.

She continued her Farsi studies, using French with a native tutor. Upon her return in 1894, she published a small book, calledd "safar Nameh " i.e., "Persian Pictures." This was followed by a translation of the Divan of Hafiz in 1897. Lady Bell observes the breadth of her standards of comparison: "She draws a parallel between Hafiz and his contemporary Dante: she notes the similarity of a passage with Goethe: she compares Hafiz with Villon, on every side gathering fructifying examples which link together the inspiration of the West and of the East."

Europe

In April 1893, she spent time in Weimar, studying German, and then returned to Britain until 1896. Lady Bell reports no surviving letters until 1896, when she spent some time in Italy, again studying the language.

Jerusalem and environs

After an around-the-world trip, in November 1899 she journeyed to Jerusalem. Lady Bell said she intended to learn more Arabic, arranging studies "Dr. Fritz Rosen was then German Consul at Jerusalem. He had married Nina Roche, whom we had known since she was a child, the daughter of Mr. Roche of the Garden House, Cadogan Place. Charlotte Roche was Nina's sister. " She found Arabic difficult, but continued to study 4-6 hours per day. With the Rosens, she had her first contact with the Druze.

Mountaineering

While she loved the desert, mountains challenged her as well. She traveled to Switzerland in 1900 and 1902, doing increasingly difficult technical rock climbing. Mountain climbing was considered acceptable for women at the time, but she took on exceptionally hard climbs. Her professional guide, Ulrich Furher, said "had she not been full of courage and determination, we would all have perished. Of all amateur climbers, men and women, he had known, very few surpassed herin technical sno one came to her standard in "coolness, bravery and judgment."

Developing world experience

Traveling to India, and then the Pacific, she had an important first meeting with the British consul in Muscat, Percy Cox, learning of details of tribal struggle in the Arabian peninsula, and determining to explore it. As part of preparation, in 1905, she undertook private tutoring in archeology with Salomon Reinach, and discussed Arabia with her friend David Hogarth, whom she met socially in 1899 but who became a mentor. Hogarth advised her it was premature for her to journey there, and she returned to the Jordan Valley for more serious archeological study. She took guns and maps, prohibited by the Ottomans. She bonded with the often secretive Druze, who sought alliance with Britain, but also formed friendships with Turkish officials.

Her first book, The Desert and the Sown, was finished in 1906. While many Europeans simply dismissed the "natives", she understood some key concepts, explicitly saying that "Syria" was a European construct:

Islam is the bond that unites the western and central parts of the continent, as it is the electric current by which the transmission of sentiment is effected, and its potency is increased by the fact that there is little or no sense of territorial nationality tgo counterbalance it. A Turk or a Persian does not think or speak of "my country" [as does a Western European]...his patriotism is confined to the town in which he is a native, or at most the district in which that town lies."

One of the drivers of British policy came with the technological revolution in the Royal Navy, as ship power plants changed from coal to oil. HMS Dreadnought (1905) already had been a leap forward in gunnery and speed; she had dual oil and coal propulsion. Newer vessels, however, were exclusively oil, and Britain needed to secure oil to maintain naval dominance. As a result, Churchill, in 1912, committed to a major British share in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, based around Basra.

First journey to Mesopotamia (Iraq)

After spending most of 1907 and 1908 in England, she arrived in Beirut in February 1909, and followed the Euphrates River to the Shatt-al-Arab. This, in fact, was her first trip that went beyond archeology, but produced strategically accurate geographic information. In later histories of the Arab Revolt, there are many references to her maps.

While women did not have authority in most of the tribal societies, a European woman was so unusual that she was more outside the rules in the Muslim groups than with her countrymen.

Search for new governance

She recognized that the dominant dynasties were to be the House of Saud (i.e., Wahabbis) of Ibn Saud and the Hashemites of Faisal. The two forces had different backers in the British government. Bell first met Abdul Aziz ibn Saud in November 1916, when he came to Basra by Percy Cox and the British Indian government. Cox and his faction had hoped he might start the revolt, but London and Cairo had backed the Hashemite Sharif or Mecca. Ibn Saud and Cox, however, had signed a treaty that was intended to prevent the Saudis from attacking the Hashemites.

Ibn Saud and Bell were impressed with one another, although from totally different cultures. Wallach suggests he was "dismayed" by "this unveiled female was not only allowed in his sight but accorded priorities and permitted to engage in all the procedures, whether they were discussions on Arabian politics or social functions in his honor." She characterized him in a manner consistent with later Arab political leaders.

Politician, ruler and raider, Ibn Sa'ud illustrates a historic type. Such men as he are the exception in any community, but they are thrown up persistently by the Arab race in its own sphere, and in that sphere they meet its needs...The ultimate sourc of power, here as in the whole course of Arab history, is the personality of the commander. Through him, whether he be an Abbasid Khalif or an Amir of Nejd, the political entity holds, and with his disappearance it breaks.

Replacing the Ottomans

By 1918, Britain was searching for a king or other acceptable ruler of the area that was to become Iraq. Russian revolutionaries had stirred the situation by releasing the Sykes-Picot Agreeement.