Arabia after World War I

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Narrator: As we entered in to World war I

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the British already had a
presence in the Middle East.

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Egypt was already a British protectorate

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and it formalized this as we entered in to

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World War I and they don't
get their independence

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until 1922.

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The British don't just hand it to them,

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they fight for this, they have a revolt

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against the British rule and they win,

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so you have an independent Egypt in 1922.

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The British also had
Kuwait as a protectorate

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and this is from the
1800's and they don't get

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their independence until 1961.

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We also know that the British were eager

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to get the help of the Arab's,

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to essentially convince
the Arab's to revolt

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against the Ottoman's so
that they could successfully

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fight the Ottoman's on the
Sinai and Palestine fronts

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and on the Mesopotamia front.

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In particular, they tried
to convince this gentleman,

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Hussein bin Ali, who at the time,

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at the beginning of World War I

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is the Sharif of Mecca.

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In order to convince him
they made promises to him.

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We have a whole video
on the McMahon-Hussein

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correspondence.

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They say look if you help
up us we will give you

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and independent state,
an independent Arab state

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that would include all of this territory

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except for maybe, except
for maybe this region

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right up here.

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So, with those British
assurances he agrees

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to commit his forces to
fight in the Arab revolt,

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to rise up and to help the British.

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From that point on in 1916 where you have

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the Arab revolt, he declares himself as

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the King of the Hejaz.

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Just as a little bit
of a geography tangent

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right over here, this is the Hejaz.

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It's kind of the west coast of the Arabian

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peninsula and it contains
the very influential towns

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of Mecca and Medina.

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You might say, well whatever
happened to the Hejaz?

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Isn't all of this region
right now Saudi Arabia?

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And you are correct.

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What happened shortly after, so in 1916

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he declares himself King of the Hejaz

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but then you had another
group, the Saudi's

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in the Nejd region, which is
this area right over here.

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They are able to, in 1925, successfully,

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successfully, successfully
conquer the Nejd

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and you have Ibn Saud who declares himself

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King of the Nejd and
Hejaz from 1926 to 1932.

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He later merges them into Saudi Arabia

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and he's the first King of Saudi Arabia

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all the way until 1953.

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That's how you get Saudi Arabia.

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Now, let's continue, let's rewind back to

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World War I.

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You have the Arab revolt.

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Hussein bin Ali declares himself the King

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of the Hejaz.

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Two of his sons are very
active in collaborating

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with the British to fight
against the Ottoman's.

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This right over here
is Faisal bin Hussein.

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Bin Hussein literally
means son of Hussein.

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This right over here is Abdullah.

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By the end of the war,
and we covered this in the

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Sinai, Palestine and
Mesopotamia Campaigns,

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the combined British
and Arab forces are able

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to move all the way into,
all the way into what

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is now northern Syria.

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They're all able to move into what is now

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northern Iraq.

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You can imagine at this
point, the Arab's are eager

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in a post world environment
to have their state.

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The reason why they're
a little bit unceratin

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about their future is based
on what some of the things

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that came out during the war.

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We now know that while
the British were trying to

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convince Hussein bin Ali to
get his forces to rise up

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against the Ottoman's
they were dealing with

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the French in the secret
Sykes-Picot Agreement

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to essentially carve
up this whole territory

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between the British and the French.

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They really weren't talking
about independent states

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for the Arab's.

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A few years later in 1917,
this was still during the war,

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while the war was happening,

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you have the Balfour Declaration,

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which declared the
British intent to create

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a homeland for the Jewish people.

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Then a month later, really
the end of that month,

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November 1917, the Russian's make the

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Sykes-Picot Agreement public,
so all of these things

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made the Arab's very uneasy.

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They got assurances from the British that

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oh that wasn't that
serious of an agreement,

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just keep fighting with us.

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So, at the end of the war
they were eager to get,

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what they thought, was their just claim.

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So you have Faisal bin
Hussein, he attends the

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Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

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(writing) So in 1919 you have the Paris,

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Paris Peace Conference
and just to be clear

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at that point in time it
wasn't obvious that you

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necessarily had to have
this, what we now have,

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is this conflict between
what is now Israel

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and the Arab people.

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Faisal bin Hussein was
actually eager to kind of

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reach out to the World
Zionist Organization,

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to the Zionist movement to
hopefully get their help

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in establishing an independent Arab state.

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He didn't think that they would,

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that it would establish an
independent Jewish state,

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but he said hey look if they
can have a homeland here

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but in order to get that homeland,

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they're willing to support
me for an independent

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Arab state then I might
kind of send out an

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olive branch to them.

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This right over here is a
quote by Faisal bin Hussein.

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This is while he was trying to get support

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for an independent Arab
state, one that he would

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argue, was promised to him by

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the McMahon Correspondences
with his father.

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So, this is Faisal.

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"We Arabs, look with the deepest sympathy

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"on the Zionist movement.

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"Our deputation here in Paris is fully

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"acquainted with the
proposal submitted yesterday

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"by the Zionist Organization
to the Peace Conference

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"and we regard them as
moderate and proper.

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"We will do our best, in
so far as we are concerned

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"to help them through,
we will wish the Jews

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"a most hearty welcome home.

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"I look forward, and my
people with me look forward

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"to a future in which we
will help you and you will

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"help us so that the
countries in which we are

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"mutually interested may
once again take their

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"places in the community
of the civilized peoples

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"of the world."

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But he did throw in this
caveat, he was doing this

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because he wanted their support for

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an independent state and
he did throw in the caveat,

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look this only applies,
I'm only supportive,

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essentially, of the Balfour Declaration

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if we get our independent state.

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He really wanted ... he
really wanted an independent,

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(writing) independent state.

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He explicitly said, hey
look if we don't get

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an independent state all
the stuff I said here,

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doesn't really apply.

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So you end of with the
Treaty of Sev in 1920.

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It turns out that the
Sykes-Picot Agreement

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held a lot more weight than the assurances

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between McMahon and Hussein because in the

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Treaty of Sev, this area
was divided, essentially,

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according to the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

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Up here, this whole region
was given to France,

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they called it a mandate,
which is essentially

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it was allowed to be occupied by France

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but they called it a mandate.

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The allies wanted it
to be called a mandate

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so it didn't look like
France was getting something.

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A mandate is kind of,
hey you have to come help

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these people to transition
them to establish a state,

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to help them transition
institutions so eventually they

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can get independence.

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The allies wanted it to appear that,

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look central powers, look Ottoman's,

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you're not giving us something,

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you're not giving us this territory,

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you're giving us a responsibility.

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Needless to say, they were eager to occupy

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this territory, so eager
that when Faisal bin Hussein,

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in 1920, declared himself King of Syria,

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they booted him out.

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He was in really no power
to contest that booting out.

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This area right over
here, this was pretty much

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in line with the Sykes-Picot Agreement,

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became a British, this
whole area right over here

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became a British mandate.

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Now, in what is now Iraq,
you essentially have

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an uprising in 1920,
they don't appreciate,

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they thought that they
were going to become

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independent now.

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They were free of the Ottoman's,

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but now all of a sudden the British come

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and say that they are in charge.

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So you have this revolt
against the British in 1920.

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The British start to realize, gee this is

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kind of expensive trying
to keep control of this

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maybe we should install someone,

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and we'll still kind of
keep this as a protectorate

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as a mandated territory, but why don't we

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install someone, an
Arab leader, as the King

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of this region.

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So, the install Faisal bin Hussein

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as a King of Iraq.

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He is a King of Iraq,
essentially under protection,

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or under influence of the British

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from 1921 until 1933 and
that's when they finally

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get independence of the British, in 1932.

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When they get booted out of Syria,

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his brother Abdullah,
son of Hussein bin Ali,

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he's allowed to become
King of trans Jordan.

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They later get independence in 1946

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after World War II at
which point he becomes

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the King of Jordan.

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Syria and Lebanon, they
don't get independence

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until during or after World War II.

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Lebanon gets independence in 1943,

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Syria gets independence
from the French in 1946.

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And we know that the mandate of Palestine,

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which the British kept,
this would continue

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to be a sore point through World War II

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and then with the
establishment of the state

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of Israel shortly afterwards,
it becomes a very,

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I guess we could say, hot
point in international affairs.


Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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As we've already seen,

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the end of fighting in World War I,

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or I guess we have the end

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of fighting in World War I

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at the end of 1918.

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In 1919 it's time to talk about

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the terms for peace.

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This happens at the
Paris Peace Conference.

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At this conference, you have all the

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parties of all the major warring parties,

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but the terms of peace

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are dictated by the winners.

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The major powers among the winners

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are led by these
gentlemen right over here.

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This is Prime Minister
Lloyd George of the UK,

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Vittorio Orlando of Italy,

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Georges Clemenceau of France,

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President Woodrow Wilson
of the United States.

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They come to the Paris Peace Conference

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with very different outlooks of

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what the peace should look like.

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We already learned about

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President Wilson's "Fourteen Points".

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It was very idealistic.

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It talked about making the world

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safe for democracy, how people should

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determine their own fate,

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how we should have the self-determination,

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the end of empires, free trade,

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creating a League of Nations so that

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you can avoid things
like World War I again.

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The European side was not quite

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as idealistic, especially the French.

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As you can imagine, the U.S. lost a lot

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of soldiers in World War I, but

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the French lost a significant fraction

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of their adult males in World War I.

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The ugly western front was fought

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in their country, so they were much more

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eager to make Germany
pay for what it's done.

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The terms of the treaty with Germany,

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the Treaty of Versailles,

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and the Treaty of Versailles,

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it's important to note, is only one of

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several treaties that came out of the

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Paris Peace Conference.

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It tends to get the most attention

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because it was a treaty with Germany,

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Treaty of Versailles, and many people

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blame it for being part of the cause

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for World War II.

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It so humiliated Germany that it was

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so unacceptable, that it allowed

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a character like Hitler to come along

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and lead Germany back into war.

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The Treaty of Versailles was the treaty

00:01:51.231 --> 00:01:52.259
with Germany .

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You have other treaties; with
the Austrians and now since

00:01:54.215 --> 00:01:56.598
the Austro-Hungarian
empire is being broken up,

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the Hungarians, the
Ottomans, so on and so forth.

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The Treaty of Versailles
did several things.

00:02:02.256 --> 00:02:04.143
First, this was kind of in line

00:02:04.143 --> 00:02:06.821
especially with the French-thinking, is

00:02:06.821 --> 00:02:08.816
it assigned the guilt to Germany ...

00:02:08.816 --> 00:02:10.276
So war guilt.

00:02:10.276 --> 00:02:14.646
War guilt for Germany.

00:02:14.646 --> 00:02:16.065
And depending on where you view,

00:02:16.065 --> 00:02:17.311
you could view this as
a fairly strong thing.

00:02:17.311 --> 00:02:19.276
The argument for saying Germany is

00:02:19.276 --> 00:02:21.241
responsible for the war is in

00:02:21.287 --> 00:02:25.457
late July, early August of 1914,

00:02:25.457 --> 00:02:27.630
it didn't take much for Germany

00:02:27.630 --> 00:02:29.544
to declare war on Russia, then on France,

00:02:29.544 --> 00:02:31.411
and then invade Belgium.

00:02:31.411 --> 00:02:33.457
This was literally a matter of days.

00:02:33.457 --> 00:02:34.756
It was pretty clear that Germany was

00:02:34.756 --> 00:02:36.320
already mobilized to do this,

00:02:36.320 --> 00:02:37.364
it was eager to do this,

00:02:37.364 --> 00:02:40.796
and it did do this
without much provocation.

00:02:40.796 --> 00:02:42.047
At that point, it was really just based on

00:02:42.047 --> 00:02:43.463
Russian mobilization.

00:02:43.463 --> 00:02:45.659
Those who would argue
this was a little strong,

00:02:45.659 --> 00:02:48.394
would say Germany definitely played a role

00:02:48.394 --> 00:02:50.602
in the war, in maybe escalating the war,

00:02:50.602 --> 00:02:52.663
but it didn't start the war.

00:02:52.663 --> 00:02:54.299
You have the assassination of

00:02:54.299 --> 00:02:57.468
the Archduke of Franz Ferdinand,

00:02:57.468 --> 00:02:59.337
of Austro-Hungary.

00:02:59.337 --> 00:03:04.128
It was supported by elements in Serbia.

00:03:04.128 --> 00:03:05.793
Then you have the Austro-Hungarians who

00:03:05.793 --> 00:03:08.659
put out these very hard terms to

00:03:08.659 --> 00:03:10.395
the Serbians, bring
these people to justice

00:03:10.395 --> 00:03:12.617
immediately, otherwise
we're declaring war.

00:03:12.617 --> 00:03:14.398
It seemed like they wanted to declare war.

00:03:14.398 --> 00:03:16.809
They do declare war in July of 1914.

00:03:16.809 --> 00:03:18.331
The Russians, they don't let that be

00:03:18.331 --> 00:03:19.250
a little regional conflict,

00:03:19.250 --> 00:03:22.214
the Russians decide to start mobilizing,

00:03:22.214 --> 00:03:26.213
giving the Germans the pretext to

00:03:26.213 --> 00:03:27.962
justify their invasions,

00:03:27.962 --> 00:03:29.468
to kind of trigger this blank check

00:03:29.468 --> 00:03:31.292
that they've given the Austro-Hungarians.

00:03:31.292 --> 00:03:34.001
There's a lot of blame
that could go around,

00:03:34.001 --> 00:03:36.121
but the Treaty of Versailles places it

00:03:36.121 --> 00:03:37.976
with Germany.

00:03:37.976 --> 00:03:40.386
This justifies the rationale to make

00:03:40.386 --> 00:03:42.028
Germany pay for the war.

00:03:42.028 --> 00:03:45.270
This leads to reparations ...

00:03:45.270 --> 00:03:46.685
Reparations for Germany,

00:03:46.685 --> 00:03:47.510
which is essentially is like,

00:03:47.510 --> 00:03:49.620
"Look, Germany, you don't have to pay

00:03:49.620 --> 00:03:51.394
the ally powers for all of their lost,

00:03:51.394 --> 00:03:53.532
especially their losses to their

00:03:53.532 --> 00:03:55.949
economy due to the fact that you

00:03:55.949 --> 00:04:01.539
are guilty of starting of this war guilt."

00:04:01.539 --> 00:04:02.660
The reparations were not just in

00:04:02.660 --> 00:04:05.050
paper currency, the reparations were

00:04:05.050 --> 00:04:07.138
in gold, in resources.

00:04:07.138 --> 00:04:10.547
It was a very tangible reparations.

00:04:10.547 --> 00:04:11.799
It's an interesting question because

00:04:11.799 --> 00:04:14.127
these reparations are often referred to

00:04:14.127 --> 00:04:15.623
when people talked to,

00:04:15.623 --> 00:04:17.212
these were disabling reparations.

00:04:17.212 --> 00:04:19.332
They brought the German economy down.

00:04:19.332 --> 00:04:22.423
It is an open question. They were large.

00:04:22.423 --> 00:04:24.549
In modern dollars, the
estimates I've seen,

00:04:24.549 --> 00:04:25.664
they were approximately

00:04:25.664 --> 00:04:31.056
$400 billion in 2013 money.

00:04:31.056 --> 00:04:33.398
That is a very, very large number,

00:04:33.398 --> 00:04:34.801
but it's not a huge number for

00:04:34.801 --> 00:04:37.208
a reasonably-sized economy like Germany.

00:04:37.208 --> 00:04:38.887
Although the economy was in bad shape

00:04:38.887 --> 00:04:40.633
at the end of World War I.

00:04:40.633 --> 00:04:43.547
It's not clear whether it by itself

00:04:43.547 --> 00:04:46.243
would have debilitated their economy.

00:04:46.243 --> 00:04:48.712
More likely, or if you were to think

00:04:48.712 --> 00:04:50.541
it's a cause, it's more
the humiliation of it,

00:04:50.541 --> 00:04:52.539
that generations of Germans,

00:04:52.539 --> 00:04:54.792
many of them; 10, 20,
30 years in the future,

00:04:54.792 --> 00:04:56.540
had nothing to do with World War I,

00:04:56.540 --> 00:04:57.730
would be continuing to pay

00:04:57.730 --> 00:05:00.191
reparations to the allies.

00:05:00.191 --> 00:05:01.887
So there's a question of its impact on

00:05:01.887 --> 00:05:05.626
the economy and there's just the question

00:05:05.626 --> 00:05:10.331
of how humiliating it was.

00:05:10.331 --> 00:05:12.273
As we go, the reparations only last

00:05:12.273 --> 00:05:14.133
for about 10 years and

00:05:14.133 --> 00:05:16.323
Germany pays the equivalent of about

00:05:16.323 --> 00:05:18.657
$60 billion in modern terms,

00:05:18.657 --> 00:05:20.803
$60 billion in 2013 dollars.

00:05:20.803 --> 00:05:22.469
That's equivalent to about $5 billion

00:05:22.469 --> 00:05:25.654
in 1920 money.

00:05:25.654 --> 00:05:27.454
On top of the reparations,

00:05:27.454 --> 00:05:29.796
the allies were not interested in

00:05:29.796 --> 00:05:31.609
fighting another war with Germany,

00:05:31.609 --> 00:05:33.236
although ironically, by having very harsh

00:05:33.236 --> 00:05:34.805
terms of the treaty, they might have

00:05:34.805 --> 00:05:37.126
triggered the next war in World War II,

00:05:37.126 --> 00:05:38.126
The Rise of Hitler.

00:05:38.126 --> 00:05:40.292
Since they didn't want to have another

00:05:40.292 --> 00:05:41.667
war with Germany, they essentially limited

00:05:41.667 --> 00:05:44.924
the German army to 100,000 men,

00:05:44.924 --> 00:05:46.660
which is a very small army,

00:05:46.660 --> 00:05:48.955
as we've seen in many of the battles.

00:05:48.955 --> 00:05:51.393
You had battles with
400,000 or 500,000 men,

00:05:51.393 --> 00:05:53.598
so this is pretty much just like a

00:05:53.598 --> 00:05:56.130
police force, it's not really an army.

00:05:56.130 --> 00:05:57.948
They weren't allowed any longer to have

00:05:57.948 --> 00:06:01.201
submarines, U-boats, any kind of

00:06:01.201 --> 00:06:03.824
heavy military equipment, artillary,

00:06:03.824 --> 00:06:06.255
heavy artillary, military airplanes,

00:06:06.255 --> 00:06:09.160
battleships of any kind.

00:06:09.160 --> 00:06:11.186
It was really just a scaffold of an army

00:06:11.186 --> 00:06:14.893
so that there wouldn't be another,

00:06:14.893 --> 00:06:16.527
or they hoped there would not be,

00:06:16.527 --> 00:06:18.642
another German invasion.

00:06:18.642 --> 00:06:23.035
On top of that, Germany
was stripped of territory.

00:06:23.115 --> 00:06:24.677
... Territory ...

00:06:24.677 --> 00:06:27.121
Some of that was directly in Germany.

00:06:27.121 --> 00:06:33.020
Poland was carved out of part of

00:06:33.020 --> 00:06:34.623
the German empire.

00:06:34.623 --> 00:06:36.475
This is the new Poland that's carved out

00:06:36.475 --> 00:06:38.403
out of the Paris Peace Conference.

00:06:38.403 --> 00:06:40.448
You see right over here, it cuts Germany

00:06:40.448 --> 00:06:41.672
into two pieces.

00:06:41.672 --> 00:06:43.136
East Prussia is still part of Germany,

00:06:43.136 --> 00:06:45.730
but it's all by itself right out here.

00:06:45.730 --> 00:06:46.465
Poland is cut out,

00:06:46.465 --> 00:06:48.672
Germany loses Alsace-Lorraine, which

00:06:48.672 --> 00:06:50.540
it captured in 1871 after the

00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:52.030
Franco-Prussian war.

00:06:52.030 --> 00:06:54.468
Mineral-rich region, the French had been

00:06:54.468 --> 00:06:55.775
eager to get it back.

00:06:55.775 --> 00:06:57.581
The Germans, actually
that was one of their

00:06:57.581 --> 00:06:59.532
arguable justification why they wanted

00:06:59.532 --> 00:07:00.619
to premptively attack France,

00:07:00.619 --> 00:07:02.107
because they knew that France was

00:07:02.107 --> 00:07:03.787
eager to capture it back

00:07:03.787 --> 00:07:05.571
at some point in the future.

00:07:05.571 --> 00:07:09.147
On top of that, Germany lost its colonies.

00:07:09.147 --> 00:07:11.660
Germany was nowhere near as big of an

00:07:11.660 --> 00:07:13.604
empire as the British or even the French,

00:07:13.604 --> 00:07:14.804
it was actually a fairly new country

00:07:14.804 --> 00:07:19.463
formed in 1871, but it did have an empire.

00:07:19.463 --> 00:07:22.340
It had colonies in southwest Africa,

00:07:22.340 --> 00:07:23.862
I'll do this in darker colors,

00:07:23.862 --> 00:07:27.934
actually throughout
Africa and had colonies

00:07:27.934 --> 00:07:29.436
in the Pacific.

00:07:29.436 --> 00:07:34.603
It even had a colony in China.

00:07:34.603 --> 00:07:37.912
All of that was then given over to

00:07:37.912 --> 00:07:40.106
the allies.

00:07:40.106 --> 00:07:42.830
The big idea, from the
Treaty of Versailles,

00:07:42.830 --> 00:07:44.930
is that, most historians would say it

00:07:44.930 --> 00:07:46.667
was really kind of sticking it to

00:07:46.667 --> 00:07:47.522
the Germans.

00:07:47.522 --> 00:07:48.850
The Germans felt it was humilating

00:07:48.850 --> 00:07:51.311
and one could argue that it led to

00:07:51.311 --> 00:07:53.150
some of the extremism that we'll see

00:07:53.150 --> 00:07:55.338
in the next few decades of Germany.

00:07:55.338 --> 00:07:57.090
The one win that Woodrow Wilson was able

00:07:57.090 --> 00:07:59.503
to get out the Treaty of Versailles,

00:07:59.503 --> 00:08:01.516
is it did set up the League of Nations.

00:08:01.516 --> 00:08:05.840
The League of Nations.

00:08:05.840 --> 00:08:08.344
The irony here is that the US does not

00:08:08.344 --> 00:08:09.883
ratify the Treaty of Versailles because

00:08:09.883 --> 00:08:11.176
it's suspicious of these kind of

00:08:11.176 --> 00:08:13.355
extra national organizations.

00:08:13.355 --> 00:08:14.888
It actually wasn't happy with some of the

00:08:14.888 --> 00:08:16.942
territorial distribution, that it was

00:08:16.942 --> 00:08:18.754
just giving it from empire to another

00:08:18.754 --> 00:08:21.335
as opposed to having self-determination.

00:08:21.335 --> 00:08:23.633
The US was not actually a signatory,

00:08:23.633 --> 00:08:26.167
it did not actually sign the treaty.

00:08:26.167 --> 00:08:28.275
It did not ratify the
Treaty of Versailles.

00:08:28.275 --> 00:08:30.586
Regardless of that, the
Treaty of Versailles

00:08:30.586 --> 00:08:34.811
had a huge impact in
sticking it to the Germans.

00:08:34.811 --> 00:08:36.571
On top of that, the
Paris Peace Conference,

00:08:36.571 --> 00:08:37.600
as we've already said,

00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:39.427
had various treaties with the other

00:08:39.427 --> 00:08:42.520
central powers and some of the,

00:08:42.520 --> 00:08:43.470
and I'm not going to go into detail

00:08:43.470 --> 00:08:44.539
on what happened, especially

00:08:44.539 --> 00:08:46.682
the Ottoman Empire, that's
worth another video,

00:08:46.682 --> 00:08:50.068
but the big effect on the Austro-Hungarian

00:08:50.068 --> 00:08:51.689
Empire is that it essentially is not

00:08:51.689 --> 00:08:52.491
an empire anymore.

00:08:52.491 --> 00:08:54.267
It was split up into various countries.

00:08:54.267 --> 00:08:57.270
Austria was set up as a separate country.

00:08:57.270 --> 00:08:59.455
Actually the Treaty of Versailles,

00:08:59.455 --> 00:09:00.300
in the Treaty of Versailles,

00:09:00.300 --> 00:09:03.068
Germany is forbidden from in any way

00:09:03.068 --> 00:09:06.641
merging with Austria, a
German-speaking country.

00:09:06.641 --> 00:09:11.481
You have Hungary becoming
a separate state.

00:09:11.481 --> 00:09:14.069
You have a new state of Czechoslovakia.

00:09:14.069 --> 00:09:18.332
You have a new state of Yugoslavia.

00:09:18.332 --> 00:09:23.140
All of a sudden, the trigger of

00:09:23.140 --> 00:09:24.745
World War I, the desire of having this

00:09:24.745 --> 00:09:26.669
unified southern Slavik state is now

00:09:26.669 --> 00:09:28.337
becoming a reality.

00:09:28.337 --> 00:09:32.019
You have Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia ...

00:09:32.019 --> 00:09:33.615
and Slovenia are taken out of

00:09:33.615 --> 00:09:36.534
the Austro-Hungarian empire.

00:09:36.534 --> 00:09:38.894
You have a major redrawing of the map

00:09:38.894 --> 00:09:39.755
of Europe.

00:09:39.755 --> 00:09:41.734
Some of these new nations here

00:09:41.734 --> 00:09:44.267
in eastern Europe are out of

00:09:44.267 --> 00:09:45.878
the old Russian empire.

00:09:45.878 --> 00:09:47.452
They were able to declare
their independence,

00:09:47.452 --> 00:09:49.402
some of it short-lived before becoming

00:09:49.402 --> 00:09:50.918
satellite states or becoming part of

00:09:50.918 --> 00:09:53.060
the USSR, but they had their

00:09:53.060 --> 00:09:56.056
short-lived independence after the fall

00:09:56.056 --> 00:09:57.672
of the Russian empire.

00:09:57.672 --> 00:10:00.257
The map of Europe is dramatically changed

00:10:00.257 --> 00:10:01.923
due to the Paris Peace Conference,

00:10:01.923 --> 00:10:02.916
the Treaty of Versailles,

00:10:02.916 --> 00:10:04.814
the fall of the Russian empire,

00:10:04.814 --> 00:10:07.915
the other treaties that were outcomes

00:10:07.915 --> 00:10:09.591
of World War I.


Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.391 --> 00:00:02.235
Narrator: As we'll see in this video

00:00:02.235 --> 00:00:06.099
and in others, the roots
of a lot of the current

00:00:06.099 --> 00:00:08.615
disagreements in the Middle East

00:00:08.615 --> 00:00:10.069
and a lot of the conflict
in the Middle East

00:00:10.069 --> 00:00:13.495
can actually be traced
back to World War I.

00:00:13.495 --> 00:00:15.893
I realize this is an
incredibly touchy subject

00:00:15.893 --> 00:00:17.405
that there are people who
have very strong feelings

00:00:17.405 --> 00:00:20.077
on either side of it and
my goal here is to really

00:00:20.077 --> 00:00:24.872
give my best attempt at
what really happened.

00:00:24.872 --> 00:00:28.102
I encourage you to doubt any of this

00:00:28.102 --> 00:00:31.247
and look it up yourself and come, frankly,

00:00:31.247 --> 00:00:32.810
to your own conclusions.

00:00:32.810 --> 00:00:36.465
Let's rewind back to October of 1915,

00:00:36.465 --> 00:00:38.069
or 1915 in particular.

00:00:38.069 --> 00:00:41.046
The British were already
at war with the Ottoman's.

00:00:41.046 --> 00:00:42.403
Just as a reminder of
some of what happened

00:00:42.403 --> 00:00:45.131
in 1915, the Gallipoli campaign,

00:00:45.131 --> 00:00:47.003
by the end of 1915 it was pretty clear

00:00:47.003 --> 00:00:49.132
that this was a disaster for the allies.

00:00:49.132 --> 00:00:51.287
The Ottoman's were able
to fend off the allies,

00:00:51.287 --> 00:00:52.953
they were in retreat.

00:00:52.953 --> 00:00:55.398
The British were able to
fend off the Ottoman's

00:00:55.398 --> 00:00:58.662
when they tried to attack
the Suez canal in 1915.

00:00:58.662 --> 00:01:00.936
This is the background,
you can imagine the British

00:01:00.936 --> 00:01:04.013
are eager to get any other allies they can

00:01:04.013 --> 00:01:07.584
in their battle against the Ottoman's.

00:01:07.584 --> 00:01:09.010
In particular, they are
eager to get the help

00:01:09.010 --> 00:01:11.403
of the Arab's who have been under the rule

00:01:11.403 --> 00:01:13.823
of the Ottoman's for hundreds of years.

00:01:13.823 --> 00:01:15.668
That's the backdrop where you have

00:01:15.668 --> 00:01:17.812
this correspondence between
the high commissioner

00:01:17.812 --> 00:01:19.669
in Egypt, the British high commissioner,

00:01:19.669 --> 00:01:22.667
Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca,

00:01:22.667 --> 00:01:25.709
Hussein bin ʿAli, who
had his own aspirations

00:01:25.709 --> 00:01:28.564
to essentially be the
king of an independent

00:01:28.564 --> 00:01:30.079
Arab state.

00:01:30.079 --> 00:01:32.601
They kept going back
and forth from mid 1915

00:01:32.601 --> 00:01:36.561
to early 1916 talking about
what the state could be.

00:01:36.561 --> 00:01:38.066
Obviously the British want his support,

00:01:38.066 --> 00:01:43.004
wants him to lead a revolt
against the Ottoman's.

00:01:43.004 --> 00:01:46.077
He's already articulated the boundaries

00:01:46.077 --> 00:01:48.891
for a state that he would like to see.

00:01:48.891 --> 00:01:50.929
So, that gives us a context
for this correspondence

00:01:50.929 --> 00:01:52.819
in October of 1915.

00:01:52.819 --> 00:01:55.727
This is from Sir Henry McMahon to Hussein.

00:01:55.727 --> 00:01:57.944
"... it is with great pleasure
that I communicate to you

00:01:57.944 --> 00:02:00.475
"on their behalf," the
British government's behalf,

00:02:00.475 --> 00:02:02.559
"the following statement,
which I am confident

00:02:02.559 --> 00:02:04.196
"you will receive with satisfaction.

00:02:04.196 --> 00:02:08.535
"The two districts of
Mersina and Alexandretta

00:02:08.535 --> 00:02:10.182
"and portions of Syria lying to the west

00:02:10.182 --> 00:02:12.581
"of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama,

00:02:12.581 --> 00:02:15.331
"and Aleppo cannot be
said to be purely Arab,

00:02:15.331 --> 00:02:17.912
"and should be excluded
from the limits demanded."

00:02:17.912 --> 00:02:19.980
This is referring to the limits that

00:02:19.980 --> 00:02:22.072
Hussein bin Ali had demanded

00:02:22.072 --> 00:02:23.750
in previous correspondence.

00:02:23.750 --> 00:02:25.684
"With the above modifications,"
so just that region

00:02:25.684 --> 00:02:28.569
right over there, this right over here is

00:02:28.569 --> 00:02:31.404
Mersina, Alexandretta, this is Hama,

00:02:31.404 --> 00:02:34.979
Homs, Damascus, so really
what he's referring to

00:02:34.979 --> 00:02:39.338
is this region, the west,
the west of those cities

00:02:39.338 --> 00:02:40.408
right over here.

00:02:40.408 --> 00:02:42.068
He's saying look, you
can't really consider

00:02:42.068 --> 00:02:44.067
this to be purely Arab,
I'm going to exclude

00:02:44.067 --> 00:02:46.228
this out of the boundaries
of this potential

00:02:46.228 --> 00:02:48.738
independent Arab state.

00:02:48.738 --> 00:02:51.204
"With the above modification,
and without prejudice

00:02:51.204 --> 00:02:52.871
"to our existing treaties with Arab chiefs

00:02:52.871 --> 00:02:56.945
"we accept those limits,"
we accept those limits.

00:02:56.945 --> 00:02:59.616
"As for those regions lying
within those frontiers

00:02:59.616 --> 00:03:01.390
"wherein Great Britain is free to act

00:03:01.390 --> 00:03:03.721
"without determinant to
the interest of her ally,

00:03:03.721 --> 00:03:05.707
"France," so as long as
I'm not getting in trouble

00:03:05.707 --> 00:03:07.872
with France, "I'm empowered in the name of

00:03:07.872 --> 00:03:09.796
"the Government of Great
Britain to give the following

00:03:09.796 --> 00:03:12.957
"assurances and make the following reply

00:03:12.957 --> 00:03:15.739
"to your letter; Subject to
the above modifications,"

00:03:15.739 --> 00:03:19.212
so taking this part out,
"Great Britain is prepared

00:03:19.212 --> 00:03:22.727
"to recognize and support the independence

00:03:22.727 --> 00:03:25.992
"of the Arabs in all the
regions within the limits

00:03:25.992 --> 00:03:27.527
"demanded by the Sharif of Mecca."

00:03:27.527 --> 00:03:30.285
So, essentially it
included all of this region

00:03:30.285 --> 00:03:32.707
and actually much beyond
what I'm showing here,

00:03:32.707 --> 00:03:36.055
kind of present day Syria, Jordan, Iraq,

00:03:36.055 --> 00:03:38.659
parts of present day Saudi Arabia.

00:03:38.659 --> 00:03:40.700
All of that is essentially,
the British are saying,

00:03:40.700 --> 00:03:43.202
yeah we're going to
allow you to have that,

00:03:43.202 --> 00:03:44.758
an independent state there.

00:03:44.758 --> 00:03:46.681
"Great Britain will
guarantee the Holy Places

00:03:46.681 --> 00:03:48.120
"against all external aggression

00:03:48.120 --> 00:03:50.121
"and will recognize their inviolability.

00:03:50.121 --> 00:03:52.654
"... I am convinced that
this declaration will assure

00:03:52.654 --> 00:03:54.656
"you beyond all possible doubt,"

00:03:54.656 --> 00:03:57.593
beyond all possible
doubt, "of the sympathy

00:03:57.593 --> 00:04:00.878
"of Great Britain towards
the aspiration of her friends

00:04:00.878 --> 00:04:03.022
"the Arabs, and will result in a firm

00:04:03.022 --> 00:04:06.275
"and lasting alliance,
the immediate results

00:04:06.275 --> 00:04:08.124
"of which will be the
expulsion of the Turks

00:04:08.124 --> 00:04:10.204
"from the Arab countries and the freeing

00:04:10.204 --> 00:04:12.098
"of the Arab peoples
from the Turkish yoke,

00:04:12.098 --> 00:04:14.600
"which for so many years
has pressed heavily

00:04:14.600 --> 00:04:16.255
"upon them."

00:04:16.255 --> 00:04:18.690
This actually does help
to convince the Arab's

00:04:18.690 --> 00:04:21.455
to rise up against the Turks,

00:04:21.455 --> 00:04:23.796
against the Ottoman Empire,
they play a significant

00:04:23.796 --> 00:04:25.470
role in the Palestine Campaign,

00:04:25.470 --> 00:04:28.454
they rise up in June of 1916.

00:04:28.454 --> 00:04:30.620
Now, the video that I did
on the Palestine Campaign,

00:04:30.620 --> 00:04:32.349
I got several comments
of people being cynical

00:04:32.349 --> 00:04:35.842
about Britain's intentions
and it does look like

00:04:35.842 --> 00:04:38.342
the British were, indeed, cynical.

00:04:38.342 --> 00:04:41.387
T.E. Lawrence famous
for Lawrence of Arabia

00:04:41.387 --> 00:04:44.346
was often depicted as
this mystical fellow,

00:04:44.346 --> 00:04:47.127
this guy who had this
kinship with the Arab's.

00:04:47.127 --> 00:04:48.939
His actual correspondence with the

00:04:48.939 --> 00:04:51.550
British government actually
do show that he did have

00:04:51.550 --> 00:04:55.096
a kind of ... he was doing, I guess,

00:04:55.096 --> 00:04:56.863
in the words of George
W. Bush, a little bit of

00:04:56.863 --> 00:04:59.225
strategery, he had a more cynical view

00:04:59.225 --> 00:05:01.922
of this relationship with the Arab's.

00:05:01.922 --> 00:05:03.294
This is some correspondence that he wrote

00:05:03.294 --> 00:05:06.466
in early 1916, so right
about the same time

00:05:06.466 --> 00:05:08.375
that all of this was going on.

00:05:08.375 --> 00:05:11.070
This says he's referring
to a possible Arab revolt,

00:05:11.070 --> 00:05:12.221
or Hussein's activity.

00:05:12.221 --> 00:05:15.578
"Hussein's activity
seems beneficial to us,

00:05:15.578 --> 00:05:17.561
"because it matches
with our immediate aims,

00:05:17.561 --> 00:05:20.247
"the break-up of the Islamic 'bloc'

00:05:20.247 --> 00:05:22.030
"and the defeat and disruption of the

00:05:22.030 --> 00:05:23.521
"Ottoman Empire."

00:05:23.521 --> 00:05:24.966
Assuming he didn't really talk about this,

00:05:24.966 --> 00:05:28.025
this being one of the
... the British didn't

00:05:28.025 --> 00:05:30.321
talk about that when they
were talking to Hussein.

00:05:30.321 --> 00:05:32.404
"If we can arrange that
this political change

00:05:32.404 --> 00:05:35.036
"shall be a violent one,
we will have abolished

00:05:35.036 --> 00:05:38.278
"the threat of Islam, by
dividing it against itself,

00:05:38.278 --> 00:05:39.487
"in its very heart."

00:05:39.487 --> 00:05:41.276
"There will then be a Khalifa,"

00:05:41.276 --> 00:05:42.789
kind of a seat of Islam, "in Turkey

00:05:42.789 --> 00:05:47.001
"and a Khalifa in Arabia,
in theological warfare."

00:05:47.001 --> 00:05:48.751
This is T.E. Lawrence, I got this from

00:05:48.751 --> 00:05:50.122
The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend

00:05:50.122 --> 00:05:51.932
of Lawrence of Arabia.

00:05:51.932 --> 00:05:54.540
Even this, somewhat
portrayed as a heroic figure,

00:05:54.540 --> 00:05:57.382
was doing things in very strategic,

00:05:57.382 --> 00:05:59.298
strategic terms.

00:05:59.298 --> 00:06:01.761
To make things worse for the Arab's,

00:06:01.761 --> 00:06:04.246
while the British were
trying to convince them

00:06:04.246 --> 00:06:06.210
to revolt, they were also
in secret negotiations

00:06:06.210 --> 00:06:08.656
with the French on how they would divide

00:06:08.656 --> 00:06:11.701
the Middle East if they were able

00:06:11.701 --> 00:06:13.448
to beat the Ottoman's.

00:06:13.448 --> 00:06:15.601
At this point in the war
the British were already

00:06:15.601 --> 00:06:17.697
making some progress in Mesopotamia,

00:06:17.697 --> 00:06:19.715
but they really hadn't really started

00:06:19.715 --> 00:06:22.055
on the Palestine Campaign right here.

00:06:22.055 --> 00:06:23.564
So, this was all conjecture.

00:06:23.564 --> 00:06:25.720
The British representatives was Sykes,

00:06:25.720 --> 00:06:27.718
the French representative was Picot,

00:06:27.718 --> 00:06:29.822
this was done with the
consent of the Russian's.

00:06:29.822 --> 00:06:32.240
You didn't have a revolution in Russia

00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:37.572
as of now, so in early
1916, in May this agreement

00:06:37.572 --> 00:06:39.046
was concluded, this secret agreement.

00:06:39.046 --> 00:06:46.221
You have the Sykes-Picot Agreement,

00:06:46.221 --> 00:06:47.518
it's secret.

00:06:47.518 --> 00:06:49.053
Let me write that, it
is a secret agreement

00:06:49.053 --> 00:06:52.397
between Britain and France
and essentially they are

00:06:52.397 --> 00:06:54.717
carving up the entire
Middle East between them.

00:06:54.717 --> 00:06:56.884
This blue area right here,
this would be occupied

00:06:56.884 --> 00:06:59.719
by the French, part of eastern Turkey

00:06:59.719 --> 00:07:01.880
or modern day eastern
Turkey would be given

00:07:01.880 --> 00:07:03.428
to the Russian's.

00:07:03.428 --> 00:07:06.238
The British would be able to occupy,

00:07:06.238 --> 00:07:09.051
would occupy southern Mesopotamia

00:07:09.051 --> 00:07:12.264
essentially insuring protection of the oil

00:07:12.264 --> 00:07:13.929
that is coming out of Persia.

00:07:13.929 --> 00:07:15.589
Oil is becoming more
and more of a relevant

00:07:15.589 --> 00:07:18.060
factor in kind of global power.

00:07:18.060 --> 00:07:19.545
Then you have these two protectorates

00:07:19.545 --> 00:07:20.985
right over here, which in theory could be

00:07:20.985 --> 00:07:23.129
independent or an independent Arab state,

00:07:23.129 --> 00:07:25.886
or two independent Arab
states under the protection.

00:07:25.886 --> 00:07:27.484
Let me put that in quotes,

00:07:27.484 --> 00:07:29.892
because "protectorate"
is always not as nice

00:07:29.892 --> 00:07:32.722
as it sounds, under the
protection of the French

00:07:32.722 --> 00:07:33.948
or the British which means,

00:07:33.948 --> 00:07:35.518
"Hey you're an independent
state, but we will

00:07:35.518 --> 00:07:38.304
"protect you in case
anyone wants to invade."

00:07:38.304 --> 00:07:40.669
The reality of protectorate
is that it usually involves

00:07:40.669 --> 00:07:44.198
the people doing the protecting have all

00:07:44.198 --> 00:07:47.629
the real power and all the real influence.

00:07:47.629 --> 00:07:49.597
The Sykes-Picot Agreement
also give this little

00:07:49.597 --> 00:07:52.095
carve out to Britain so
they would have access

00:07:52.095 --> 00:07:53.513
to the Mediterranean.

00:07:53.513 --> 00:07:57.041
Palestine, or the Roman Kingdom of Judea,

00:07:57.041 --> 00:08:04.472
this is carved out as a
separate international property

00:08:04.472 --> 00:08:06.547
something that would be
administered by multiple

00:08:06.547 --> 00:08:08.470
states and I guess the argument would be,

00:08:08.470 --> 00:08:09.863
this is where the Holy Land's are,

00:08:09.863 --> 00:08:12.557
multiple religions have
some of their holiest sites

00:08:12.557 --> 00:08:15.539
within here and so they
carved it out like this.

00:08:15.539 --> 00:08:17.349
Once again, this is all in secret,

00:08:17.349 --> 00:08:19.270
they obviously don't want
the Arab's to find out

00:08:19.270 --> 00:08:21.102
because they're about
to convince the Arab's

00:08:21.102 --> 00:08:24.167
to join in a revolt against the Ottoman's.

00:08:24.167 --> 00:08:27.689
Now, to make things ... once
again, this was all secret

00:08:27.689 --> 00:08:30.839
up to this point in 1916
when it was all agreed on.

00:08:30.839 --> 00:08:34.871
Then you forward to 1917 where we have

00:08:34.871 --> 00:08:36.672
the famous Balfour Declaration.

00:08:36.672 --> 00:08:42.068
This right over here is
the Balfour Declaration

00:08:42.068 --> 00:08:43.888
and it was essentially a letter from

00:08:43.888 --> 00:08:47.674
the Foreign Secretary
of the U.K., Balfour,

00:08:47.674 --> 00:08:52.869
to Lord Rothschild who was
a leading [Briticizen] ,

00:08:52.869 --> 00:08:54.701
a leading member of the Jewish community.

00:08:54.701 --> 00:08:57.670
In it he writes, "Dear Lord Rothschild,

00:08:57.670 --> 00:08:59.864
"I have much pleasure in conveying to you,

00:08:59.864 --> 00:09:01.454
"on behalf of His Majesty's Government,

00:09:01.454 --> 00:09:03.680
"the following declaration of sympathy

00:09:03.680 --> 00:09:06.792
"with Jewish Zionist
aspirations which has been

00:09:06.792 --> 00:09:09.490
"submitted to, and
approved by, the Cabinet.

00:09:09.490 --> 00:09:12.423
"His Majesty's Government view with favor

00:09:12.423 --> 00:09:15.515
"the establishment in
Palestine of a national home,"

00:09:15.515 --> 00:09:18.418
of a national home,
"for the Jewish people,

00:09:18.418 --> 00:09:20.408
"and will use their best
endeavors to facilitate

00:09:20.408 --> 00:09:22.328
"the achievement of this objective.

00:09:22.328 --> 00:09:25.046
"It being clearly understood
that nothing shall be done

00:09:25.046 --> 00:09:27.718
"which may prejudice the
civil and religious rights

00:09:27.718 --> 00:09:31.086
"of existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine,

00:09:31.086 --> 00:09:34.285
"or the rights and political
status enjoyed by Jews

00:09:34.285 --> 00:09:35.868
"in any other country.

00:09:35.868 --> 00:09:37.204
"I should be grateful if you would bring

00:09:37.204 --> 00:09:38.832
"this declaration to the knowledge of the

00:09:38.832 --> 00:09:40.275
"Zionist Federation."

00:09:40.275 --> 00:09:42.415
Signed Artur Balfour.

00:09:42.415 --> 00:09:44.196
In here, he's not explicitly saying ...

00:09:44.196 --> 00:09:45.780
and they're being very careful here,

00:09:45.780 --> 00:09:49.502
he's not saying we're supporting a state

00:09:49.502 --> 00:09:51.000
for the Jewish people, but he's saying

00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.513
he is supporting the
return of national home

00:09:53.513 --> 00:09:55.010
for the Jewish people,
but at the same time,

00:09:55.010 --> 00:09:57.035
he's saying that it
being clearly understood

00:09:57.035 --> 00:09:59.237
that nothing shall be
done which may prejudice

00:09:59.237 --> 00:10:01.025
the civil and religious
rights of the existing

00:10:01.025 --> 00:10:02.825
non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

00:10:02.825 --> 00:10:05.293
Needless to say, you
can imagine that this is

00:10:05.293 --> 00:10:08.255
making the Arab's fairly uncomfortable.

00:10:08.255 --> 00:10:10.983
On one side it seems, based on some of the

00:10:10.983 --> 00:10:14.541
McMahon-Hussein
correspondences that were ...

00:10:14.541 --> 00:10:17.241
especially in 1915, that
they were being promised

00:10:17.241 --> 00:10:19.414
an independent Arab state which included

00:10:19.414 --> 00:10:21.561
much of this territory,
but at the same time,

00:10:21.561 --> 00:10:23.742
in the Balfour Declaration
the British were promising

00:10:23.742 --> 00:10:27.593
to, kind of the Jewish diaspora,

00:10:27.593 --> 00:10:29.304
that they could have a homeland there

00:10:29.304 --> 00:10:31.845
and it might one day, who
knows, it might one day

00:10:31.845 --> 00:10:34.534
turn in to some type of a state.

00:10:34.534 --> 00:10:36.524
To make the Arab's even
more uncomfortable,

00:10:36.524 --> 00:10:39.267
this was in November 2, 1917.

00:10:39.267 --> 00:10:40.992
By the end of November,
you have to remember

00:10:40.992 --> 00:10:44.357
that 1917 you first had a revolution,

00:10:44.357 --> 00:10:46.332
in Russia the Czar was
overthrown in February

00:10:46.332 --> 00:10:48.747
and in March of 1917, and October

00:10:48.747 --> 00:10:50.339
the Bolshevik's take over.

00:10:50.339 --> 00:10:52.691
They want to get out of the war,

00:10:52.691 --> 00:10:53.995
they don't like all these secret deals,

00:10:53.995 --> 00:10:56.260
not clear that they
would even get what they

00:10:56.260 --> 00:10:57.348
were entitled to these secret deals,

00:10:57.348 --> 00:11:00.430
so they actually release
all the entire text

00:11:00.430 --> 00:11:02.694
of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

00:11:02.694 --> 00:11:04.025
They released this, so in the same month

00:11:04.025 --> 00:11:06.479
you have the Arab's and the Ottoman's

00:11:06.479 --> 00:11:08.029
and the Ottoman's were
very happy to see this

00:11:08.029 --> 00:11:12.494
because it would undermine
the Arab's belief

00:11:12.494 --> 00:11:14.354
in maybe supporting the allies,

00:11:14.354 --> 00:11:16.904
but in one month you have
the Arab's finding out

00:11:16.904 --> 00:11:18.764
about the Balfour Declaration,
which was a pulbic

00:11:18.764 --> 00:11:20.439
declaration and then later that month

00:11:20.439 --> 00:11:22.861
because of the Russian release of it,

00:11:22.861 --> 00:11:25.680
the formally secret Sykes-Picot Agreement,

00:11:25.680 --> 00:11:28.026
so it makes them very,
or at least a little bit

00:11:28.026 --> 00:11:29.408
more suspicious.

00:11:29.408 --> 00:11:33.040
So you can imagine the British Empire

00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:35.041
trying to have it both
ways, to kind of have

00:11:35.041 --> 00:11:37.255
support from the Jewish Diaspora

00:11:37.255 --> 00:11:39.699
while at the same time have
support from the Arab's

00:11:39.699 --> 00:11:41.596
in their revolt against the Ottoman's

00:11:41.596 --> 00:11:44.069
would lead to very significant conflicts

00:11:44.069 --> 00:11:45.849
over the decades to come.

00:11:45.849 --> 00:11:47.625
Regardless of which side
of the issue you fall on,

00:11:47.625 --> 00:11:51.012
a lot of the seed is
happening right around now,

00:11:51.012 --> 00:11:52.358
right around World War I.

00:11:52.358 --> 00:11:54.544
This has been admitted by
the British government.

00:11:54.544 --> 00:11:57.633
This is right here, this was the then

00:11:57.633 --> 00:11:59.670
Secretary, or Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw,

00:11:59.670 --> 00:12:01.691
U.K Foreign Secretary in 2002.

00:12:01.691 --> 00:12:03.831
This is a statement he made to the

00:12:03.831 --> 00:12:07.095
News Statesman Magazine in 2002.

00:12:07.095 --> 00:12:09.615
"A lot of the problems we
are having to deal with now,

00:12:09.615 --> 00:12:11.365
"I have to deal with now,"

00:12:11.365 --> 00:12:12.996
he's the Foreign Secretary,
"are a consequence

00:12:12.996 --> 00:12:14.667
"of our colonial past ..."

00:12:14.667 --> 00:12:16.563
Consequence of our colonial past.

00:12:16.563 --> 00:12:19.332
"The Balfour Declaration
and the contradictory

00:12:19.332 --> 00:12:22.116
assurances," "and the
contradictory assurances

00:12:22.116 --> 00:12:25.313
"which were being given to Palestinian's

00:12:25.313 --> 00:12:27.519
"in private at the same time as they were

00:12:27.519 --> 00:12:29.154
"being given to the Israelis ...

00:12:29.154 --> 00:12:32.597
"again, an interesting history for us,

00:12:32.597 --> 00:12:34.419
"but not an honorable one."

00:12:34.419 --> 00:12:35.572
This is really just the beginning

00:12:35.572 --> 00:12:37.591
as we'll see in future
videos as we go to the

00:12:37.591 --> 00:12:41.577
Interwar period, the British
kind of go back and forth

00:12:41.577 --> 00:12:44.610
on this issue over, over, and over again,

00:12:44.610 --> 00:12:47.595
but needless to say,
it's lead to a very messy

00:12:47.595 --> 00:12:50.917
situation in the modern Middle East.


Theodor Herzl and the birth of political Zionism

WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:00.527 --> 00:00:02.155
The history of the Jewish people

00:00:02.155 --> 00:00:04.672
goes back roughly 4,000 years.

00:00:04.672 --> 00:00:07.873
In order to understand the desire

00:00:07.873 --> 00:00:11.335
by Jewish people in the late 1800s

00:00:11.335 --> 00:00:13.602
and early 1900s for a Jewish homeland,

00:00:13.602 --> 00:00:17.606
we have to go back
roughly 17 or 1800 years

00:00:17.606 --> 00:00:24.003
to the year 135 in the Common Era.

00:00:24.003 --> 00:00:27.499
It was then that Judea was a province

00:00:27.499 --> 00:00:30.667
of the Roman Empire.
Judea is the biblical home

00:00:30.667 --> 00:00:34.337
of the Jewish people. It's the location of

00:00:34.337 --> 00:00:37.505
Jerusalem. In 135 of the Common Era the

00:00:37.505 --> 00:00:40.585
Roman emperor, Hadrian,
is able to suppress

00:00:40.585 --> 00:00:44.118
a rebellion by the Jews in Judea and after

00:00:44.118 --> 00:00:46.019
suppressing that rebellion, he expels the

00:00:46.019 --> 00:00:54.419
Jews from Judea. Hadrian expels the Jews

00:00:54.419 --> 00:00:59.506
from Judea. Not only did he expel them

00:00:59.506 --> 00:01:02.273
from Judea, but he actually
renamed the province.

00:01:02.273 --> 00:01:04.799
This province up here
in red was Roman Syria.

00:01:04.799 --> 00:01:07.183
He merges these two
provinces and calls them

00:01:07.183 --> 00:01:10.606
Syria Palaestina. Let me write that down.

00:01:10.606 --> 00:01:17.653
He renames it Syria Palaestina,

00:01:17.653 --> 00:01:19.865
which is essentially why for the next

00:01:19.865 --> 00:01:23.090
1700 years or so and
even parts of it today

00:01:23.090 --> 00:01:26.271
are referred to as Palestine.

00:01:26.271 --> 00:01:28.470
Now, we will fast forward over the next

00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:34.417
more than 1700 years. Over this period

00:01:34.417 --> 00:01:37.869
most of the Jewish people are not now

00:01:37.869 --> 00:01:40.669
living in what was then Judea.

00:01:40.669 --> 00:01:44.009
They have settled in groups in Europe,

00:01:44.009 --> 00:01:46.940
in the Middle East, in Africa. There were

00:01:46.940 --> 00:01:50.599
even groups of Jews who
had settled in India.

00:01:50.599 --> 00:01:52.506
For the most part they thrived in their

00:01:52.506 --> 00:01:54.401
various communities, but unfortunately

00:01:54.401 --> 00:01:57.839
their history had a fairly large amount

00:01:57.839 --> 00:02:01.539
of persecution, of
discrimination, of kind of

00:02:01.539 --> 00:02:03.872
using them as a scapegoat.
This was particularly

00:02:03.872 --> 00:02:06.838
the case in Europe where you have the

00:02:06.838 --> 00:02:09.604
Christian church often kind of blamed the

00:02:09.604 --> 00:02:12.601
Jews on religious
grounds. They were an easy

00:02:12.601 --> 00:02:14.698
scapegoat any time things went hard.

00:02:14.698 --> 00:02:16.609
You had ethnic cleansing. You had pogroms.

00:02:16.609 --> 00:02:19.008
This was the Russian empire, especially

00:02:19.008 --> 00:02:21.671
as we get into the 1800s, was especially

00:02:21.671 --> 00:02:24.726
infamous in its treatment of the Jews.

00:02:24.726 --> 00:02:27.846
You have this long history
of Jewish persecution.

00:02:27.846 --> 00:02:30.542
In fact, much of Jewish tradition today

00:02:30.542 --> 00:02:32.943
is around remembrances of these various

00:02:32.943 --> 00:02:35.620
tragedies, these various persecutions.

00:02:35.620 --> 00:02:38.335
With that as the context, we then get into

00:02:38.335 --> 00:02:44.422
the late 1800s. Let's go to 1860. 1860.

00:02:44.422 --> 00:02:46.424
You have the birth of Theodor Herzl.

00:02:46.424 --> 00:02:50.497
1860. You have the birth of this gentleman

00:02:50.497 --> 00:02:54.507
right over here. Theodor Herzl born.

00:02:54.507 --> 00:02:59.734
He's born to a
German-speaking Jewish family

00:02:59.734 --> 00:03:01.939
in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

00:03:01.939 --> 00:03:04.612
The family he's born into
isn't particularly religious.

00:03:04.612 --> 00:03:08.272
As a young man, he remains fairly secular.

00:03:08.272 --> 00:03:10.524
He's not a particularly religious person.

00:03:10.524 --> 00:03:13.360
As he grows and he becomes
a journalist, he is

00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:16.345
able to observe the
anti-Semitism, especially

00:03:16.345 --> 00:03:18.753
that's occurring especially
in the late 1800s

00:03:18.753 --> 00:03:20.948
in Russia, but throughout much of Europe.

00:03:20.948 --> 00:03:23.506
In 1894, so at this
point he's 34 years old,

00:03:23.506 --> 00:03:26.590
still a fairly young man, in 1894 in Paris

00:03:26.590 --> 00:03:30.205
he directly observes the Dreyfus affair.

00:03:30.205 --> 00:03:37.337
The Dreyfus affair, in
which a French Jewish

00:03:37.337 --> 00:03:40.115
officer in the military
is accused of treason,

00:03:40.115 --> 00:03:42.133
accused of spying for the Germans.

00:03:42.133 --> 00:03:43.996
This leads to all sorts of kind of public

00:03:43.996 --> 00:03:46.869
anti-Semitism. It later
is shown that it was

00:03:46.869 --> 00:03:51.671
false claims on Dreyfus. Some people would

00:03:51.671 --> 00:03:54.273
debate whether this directly led to

00:03:54.273 --> 00:03:56.676
Theodor Herzl's articulation of a need

00:03:56.676 --> 00:03:58.884
for a Jewish homeland,
but it was something

00:03:58.884 --> 00:04:00.587
that he directly observed, so it must have

00:04:00.587 --> 00:04:02.752
influenced him in some way. It was this

00:04:02.752 --> 00:04:04.917
and all the other
anti-Semitism that he observed

00:04:04.917 --> 00:04:07.068
either directly or
indirectly his entire life,

00:04:07.068 --> 00:04:09.147
or even that he was able to
read in the history books.

00:04:09.147 --> 00:04:11.874
Taking all of that in, and this is coming

00:04:11.874 --> 00:04:16.276
from a fairly secular individual, in 1896

00:04:16.276 --> 00:04:22.608
at the age of 36, he
writes Der Judenstaat,

00:04:22.608 --> 00:04:25.496
which literally translates
as the Jewish State.

00:04:25.496 --> 00:04:27.494
Der Judenstaat.

00:04:27.494 --> 00:04:31.273
This was a very articulate description or

00:04:31.273 --> 00:04:35.111
desire, or articulation I
guess I should say, of the need

00:04:35.111 --> 00:04:38.537
for a Jewish homeland and a Jewish State.

00:04:38.537 --> 00:04:42.310
It's really the birth
of political Zionism.

00:04:42.310 --> 00:04:47.261
Political Zionism.

00:04:47.261 --> 00:04:50.098
Now, where does the
word Zionism come from?

00:04:50.098 --> 00:04:52.755
The root is Zion from Mount Zion.

00:04:52.755 --> 00:04:55.448
Mount Zion is essentially
a hill in modern-day

00:04:55.448 --> 00:04:58.264
Jerusalem, but the word
Zion is often equated

00:04:58.264 --> 00:05:03.179
with Jerusalem, with the Holy Land, with

00:05:03.179 --> 00:05:05.044
kind of the home of the Jews.

00:05:05.044 --> 00:05:06.736
That would be roughly right over here,

00:05:06.736 --> 00:05:10.208
Jerusalem is roughly right over here.

00:05:10.208 --> 00:05:12.536
I stress the modifier "political,"

00:05:12.536 --> 00:05:14.439
political Zionism,
because there was already

00:05:14.439 --> 00:05:17.583
a movement to bring the Jewish people back

00:05:17.583 --> 00:05:21.095
to their ancient homeland in Judea,

00:05:21.095 --> 00:05:24.085
which could be referred to as Zionism.

00:05:24.085 --> 00:05:27.977
It was really Herzl who articulated a need

00:05:27.977 --> 00:05:29.995
to set up a political state and start to

00:05:29.995 --> 00:05:34.375
organize around trying to
create a political state.

00:05:34.375 --> 00:05:37.919
Over here I quote some of what
he wrote in Der Judenstaat.

00:05:37.919 --> 00:05:40.439
"We are a people, one
people. We have sincerely

00:05:40.439 --> 00:05:42.410
tried everywhere to
merge with the national

00:05:42.410 --> 00:05:44.546
communities in which we live, seeking only

00:05:44.546 --> 00:05:47.405
to preserve the faith of
our fathers. It is not

00:05:47.405 --> 00:05:50.334
permitted us. In vain
we are loyal patriots,

00:05:50.334 --> 00:05:53.540
sometimes super loyal.
In vain do we make the

00:05:53.540 --> 00:05:55.767
same sacrifices of life
and property as our

00:05:55.767 --> 00:05:58.346
fellow citizens. In vain
do we strive to enhance

00:05:58.346 --> 00:06:00.869
the fame of our native
lands in the arts and

00:06:00.869 --> 00:06:03.584
sciences, or her wealth
by trade and commerce.

00:06:03.584 --> 00:06:06.197
In our native lands,
where we have lived for

00:06:06.197 --> 00:06:08.257
centuries, we are still decried as aliens

00:06:08.257 --> 00:06:11.601
often by men whose
ancestors had not yet come

00:06:11.601 --> 00:06:14.009
at a time when Jewish sighs had long been

00:06:14.009 --> 00:06:16.142
heard in the country.
Oppression and persecution

00:06:16.142 --> 00:06:19.422
cannot exterminate us.
No nation on earth has

00:06:19.422 --> 00:06:23.204
endured such struggles
and sufferings as we have.

00:06:23.204 --> 00:06:28.203
Palestine is our unforgettable homeland."

00:06:28.203 --> 00:06:30.350
This ends up getting huge traction,

00:06:30.350 --> 00:06:33.202
resonates with the Jewish diaspora,

00:06:33.202 --> 00:06:35.842
gives him the power to
essentially, the next year,

00:06:35.842 --> 00:06:43.268
organize in 1897 the
first Zionist Congress,

00:06:43.268 --> 00:06:49.303
first Zionist Congress

00:06:49.303 --> 00:06:52.092
where he's able to bring
together likeminded,

00:06:52.092 --> 00:06:55.936
or at least people who
are looking to organize

00:06:55.936 --> 00:06:59.189
a way to eventually
establish a Jewish State,

00:06:59.189 --> 00:07:01.269
preferably in Palestine.
I say preferably in

00:07:01.269 --> 00:07:04.805
Palestine, and it's clear
that this was the first

00:07:04.805 --> 00:07:07.345
choice, to go back to
the historical homeland

00:07:07.345 --> 00:07:09.541
of Judea, but even Herzl
himself had considered

00:07:09.541 --> 00:07:12.339
Argentina, which at the
time was very open-minded,

00:07:12.339 --> 00:07:14.811
very open towards immigration.
There was some talk

00:07:14.811 --> 00:07:18.754
of East Africa, British East Africa.

00:07:18.754 --> 00:07:22.436
In fact, the British
offered Uganda in 1903

00:07:22.436 --> 00:07:25.169
to the what would later be called the

00:07:25.169 --> 00:07:27.272
Zionist Organization. It was considered

00:07:27.272 --> 00:07:30.351
and I believe it was the
sixth Zionist Congress.

00:07:30.351 --> 00:07:32.269
These were things that
were actually considered.

00:07:32.269 --> 00:07:35.028
But Palestine was always,
because of historical

00:07:35.028 --> 00:07:40.521
reasons, the hopeful home
of the Zionist Movement.

00:07:40.521 --> 00:07:42.789
I fully realize this is
an incredibly touchy issue

00:07:42.789 --> 00:07:45.759
regardless of where people stand on their

00:07:45.759 --> 00:07:48.269
views of Zionism or of Theodor Herzl.

00:07:48.269 --> 00:07:49.603
Some would view him as a visionary,

00:07:49.603 --> 00:07:51.939
view him as a hero, some would view him as

00:07:51.939 --> 00:07:54.945
starting the seed that led to the eventual

00:07:54.945 --> 00:07:58.932
occupation of Palastine
and the settlements

00:07:58.932 --> 00:08:01.429
that are going on there.
I will try my best

00:08:01.429 --> 00:08:05.536
to stay out of picking sides there.

00:08:05.536 --> 00:08:08.759
Regardless of where you
are in that argument,

00:08:08.759 --> 00:08:12.010
it's pretty amazing how much foresight he

00:08:12.010 --> 00:08:14.938
actually had and his ability
to get this thing going.

00:08:14.938 --> 00:08:18.940
Even from the get-go, he
had some conversations

00:08:18.940 --> 00:08:20.876
with the Ottomans and other folks about

00:08:20.876 --> 00:08:22.936
being able to get land in
Palestine and all the rest.

00:08:22.936 --> 00:08:25.069
He wasn't successful in his own lifetime.

00:08:25.069 --> 00:08:27.877
But even after that first
Zionist Congress, which

00:08:27.877 --> 00:08:31.869
was held in Basel, he
understood what he was doing

00:08:31.869 --> 00:08:34.520
and he was looking
beyond his own lifetime.

00:08:34.520 --> 00:08:36.677
This is a quote here from his journal and

00:08:36.677 --> 00:08:38.204
it's pretty telling. "Were I to sum up the

00:08:38.204 --> 00:08:40.917
Basel Congress in a
word, which I shall guard

00:08:40.917 --> 00:08:43.220
against pronouncing
publically, it would be this:

00:08:43.220 --> 00:08:47.216
At Basel I founded the
Jewish State. If I said

00:08:47.216 --> 00:08:49.215
this out loud today I would be greeted by

00:08:49.215 --> 00:08:52.176
universal laughter. In five years perhaps,

00:08:52.176 --> 00:08:55.472
and certainly in 50 years, everyone will

00:08:55.472 --> 00:08:57.549
perceive it." This is
an amazing impresison

00:08:57.549 --> 00:08:59.065
because the state of
Israel would come into

00:08:59.065 --> 00:09:04.028
a reality in roughly 50 years.

00:09:04.028 --> 00:09:06.223
With that said, and once
again I know this is

00:09:06.223 --> 00:09:08.260
an incredibly touchy issue, the one thing

00:09:08.260 --> 00:09:10.850
that is probably surprising
to many people is

00:09:10.850 --> 00:09:15.800
that he was not an extreme
individual. It comes

00:09:15.800 --> 00:09:17.939
out from some of his other writing that

00:09:17.939 --> 00:09:20.410
even though he wanted
this Jewish State, he

00:09:20.410 --> 00:09:22.864
was a fairly tolerant
individual and he did not

00:09:22.864 --> 00:09:24.870
view this only for the Jews and he didn't

00:09:24.870 --> 00:09:26.671
feel that it should be taken by force or

00:09:26.671 --> 00:09:28.874
in any other way. It
comes out in his writing

00:09:28.874 --> 00:09:30.531
right over here. This is from his diary.

00:09:30.531 --> 00:09:33.344
"It goes without saying
that we shall respectfully

00:09:33.344 --> 00:09:35.292
tolerate persons of
other faiths and protect

00:09:35.292 --> 00:09:37.539
their property, their
honor and their freedom

00:09:37.539 --> 00:09:39.298
with the harshest means of coercion."

00:09:39.298 --> 00:09:41.210
So protect their property, honor and ...

00:09:41.210 --> 00:09:43.846
using the harshest means
of coercion to protect

00:09:43.846 --> 00:09:46.076
their property, their
honor and their freedom.

00:09:46.076 --> 00:09:47.516
This is a tolerant thing to do.

00:09:47.516 --> 00:09:49.936
"This is another area
in which we shall set

00:09:49.936 --> 00:09:52.740
the entire world a wonderful example.

00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:55.070
Should there be many such immovable owners

00:09:55.070 --> 00:09:57.205
in individual areas
who will not sell their

00:09:57.205 --> 00:09:59.538
property to us." So, hey,
if we want to go there

00:09:59.538 --> 00:10:01.547
and properly buy land
but people don't want

00:10:01.547 --> 00:10:04.427
to sell it to us, "we shall
simply leave them there

00:10:04.427 --> 00:10:06.431
and develop our commerce
in the direction of

00:10:06.431 --> 00:10:08.770
other areas which belong to us."

00:10:08.770 --> 00:10:10.841
He wasn't in the mood to really get into a

00:10:10.841 --> 00:10:12.975
confrontation or to antagonize anyone.

00:10:12.975 --> 00:10:14.939
And he recognized that
there were other people

00:10:14.939 --> 00:10:17.678
there that might not
want to sell their land

00:10:17.678 --> 00:10:21.195
to those that might settle this new State.

00:10:22.175 --> 00:10:24.761
Later on his life, actually shortly before

00:10:24.761 --> 00:10:26.518
his death, he actually
writes a novel about

00:10:26.518 --> 00:10:29.622
this potential State
that might be created.

00:10:29.622 --> 00:10:33.086
He writes, and this is
written in Altneuland,

00:10:33.086 --> 00:10:35.011
it literally translates
to The Old New Land,

00:10:35.011 --> 00:10:38.140
"It is founded on the ideas which are a

00:10:38.140 --> 00:10:40.139
common product of all civilized nations.

00:10:40.139 --> 00:10:43.151
It would be immoral if
we would exclude anyone

00:10:43.151 --> 00:10:46.177
whatever his origin, his
decent, or his religion,

00:10:46.177 --> 00:10:48.295
from participating in our achievements,

00:10:48.295 --> 00:10:50.214
for we stand on the shoulders of other

00:10:50.214 --> 00:10:53.617
civilized peoples. What
we own we owe to the

00:10:53.617 --> 00:10:56.181
preparatory work of
other peoples. Therefore,

00:10:56.181 --> 00:10:59.603
we have to repay our
debt. There's only one

00:10:59.603 --> 00:11:03.760
way to do it. The highest
tolerance. Our motto must

00:11:03.760 --> 00:11:09.091
therefore be, now and ever:
Man, you are my brother."