Anglo-French Declaration

In the first days of November 1918 a short text appeared on noticeboards in the towns and villages of Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia, in newspapers and in communiqués read aloud, and it went down in history as the Anglo-French Declaration. In it Britain and France announced that the aim for which they had waged war in the East was “the complete and final liberation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks, and the establishment of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations”. The British chronology of the war records the joint declaration on policy in Syria and Mesopotamia under 9 November. The text itself is dated 7 November, and on that day, according to the Arab historian George Antonius, the headquarters of the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force issued it as an official communiqué. Some documents and studies give the date as 8 November.

Content

The two powers announced that they would encourage and assist the setting up of indigenous governments and administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia, “already liberated by the Allies”, and in the territories whose liberation was still in progress, and would recognise them as soon as they were actually established. They gave assurances that they did not wish to impose any institutions on the population of these countries, but only to ensure, by their support and assistance, the smooth working of the governments that the population freely chose for itself. They were also to guarantee impartial and equal justice for all, to promote economic development and education, and to put an end to the divisions which, as the text put it, Turkish policy had exploited for too long. According to Antonius the original text was written in French, and the English versions in circulation were translations. British troops were instructed to give it the widest possible publicity. Where the population could not read, officials of the military administration read the text out in Arabic.

Why now

The declaration was issued in haste, because the situation in the occupied Arab lands had become dangerous. At the beginning of October supporters of Emir Faisal had raised the Arab flag in Beirut, but after French protests General Edmund Allenby had it taken down and placed the coast under French administration. Damascus seethed, and rumours reached the Arab leaders of the powers’ secret agreements, above all the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which divided Syria and Mesopotamia into zones of influence and of direct British and French control, and the Balfour Declaration. Faisal warned Allenby that he could not keep his troops in check unless the Allies said clearly what they intended. In the background was also President Wilson’s programme, whose twelfth point promised the peoples under Turkish rule an opportunity of autonomous development.

According to Antonius the declaration worked at once, and within a few days the agitation subsided. The Arabs read it as a commitment that their future would be decided by the will of the inhabitants, not by a division into zones. The powers, however, did not renounce their plans. As early as December 1918 the prime ministers Lloyd George and Clemenceau reached an understanding on the future borders, and in 1920 Syria and Lebanon came under a French mandate, and Iraq and Palestine under a British one. For years Arab activists invoked the 1918 declaration as a broken promise, among other occasions during the Iraqi revolt of 1920.