Monday 19th April 1920 – San Remo: a seaside conference 90 years ago decided where the Middle East is today

The Italian resort city of San Remo is perhaps more associated with the holidaymakers and high-rollers who visit its beaches and casinos than with international diplomacy. Nonetheless on 19th April 1920, Allied leaders including the Prime Ministers of Britain, France and Italy chose this setting for the international conference that was to decide the future shape of the Middle East.

Caption: Lord Balfour and Chaim Weizmann

Two books are published on Monday, the 90^th anniversary of that fateful conference looking at the outcome from very different perspectives. Under the subtitles, The Dream of Arabia and The Zionist Dream Robert McNamara and T G Fraser, *both from Northern Ireland, examine the outcome from the Paris Peace Treaties following the First World War as part of the Makers of the Modern World series from Haus Publishing. The series looks at the issues from the point of view of the leaders around the table.

Caption:Prince Feisal and T. E. Lawrence

(of Arabia)

For Arabs, The Dream of Arabia was in the hands of Prince Feisal. For Jews seeking a homeland The Zionist Dream was in the hands of Chaim Weizmann.

Allied leaders met at San Remo to flesh out the future shape of the Arab lands which had been part of the defeated Ottoman empire. League of Nations Mandates for Lebanon and Syria were assigned to France, while Britain was given those for Iraq and Palestine.

The boundaries which were to form the political basis of much of the Arab world as we know it were coming into shape, albeit in the form of unwanted British and French control. In addition, the British Mandate for Palestine was to include the implementation of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, promising to facilitate a Jewish national home, a victory for the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, but resented by the country’s Arabs.

Immediately he had been ordered to Jeddah in October 1916, TE Lawrence (of Arabia) had recognised Prince Feisal as a potential Arab leader: “I felt at first glance that this was the man I had come to Arabia to seek – the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt to full glory”. At that stage of the First World War, destabilising the Ottomans was to Britain’s advantage and Lawrence used his knowledge of Arab life and terrain to advise and help Feisal fight.

Only days before the San Remo conference opened, serious violence in Jerusalem had seen the deaths of five Jews and four Arabs. In effect the conference can only be seen as a defeat for Arab hopes of independence. After San Remo, Prince Feisal was soon expelled from Damasacus by the French.

To understand how the Middle East came to be where it is, we must turn to San Remo.

Peace-meal

*Robert McNamara lectures in International History at the University of Ulster and is a specialist in the 20^th Century history of the Middle East.

T.G. Fraser MBE is Professor Emeritus of History and Honorary Professor of Conflict Research at the University of Ulster.

The Hashemites: The Dream of Arabia by Robert McNamara (ISBN 978-1-905791-66-8), and Chaim Weizmann: The Zionist Dream by T G Fraser (ISBN 978-1-905791-67-5), are both published on Monday 19th April 2010 by Haus Publishing in the Makers of the Modern World series price £12.99 hb, the 90th anniversary of the opening of the San Remo Conference.

Alice, Lewis and Jenny

Lewis Carroll: 10 Facts
Jenny Woolf is the author of our new book The Mystery of Lewis Carroll. She shared with us ten intriguing facts about the life of one of literature's most enigmatic figures.

1. Although Carroll went part way towards ordination as a priest of the Church of England, he was never fully ordained. He did not want to be a vicar with a parish, and was content to remain a mere deacon of the church and assist at service. Nobody has ever discovered exactly why this was.

2. Carroll paid for the publication of his books himself. Macmillan & Co’s name is on the spine, but Carroll organised and paid for the illustrations, printing and binding himself, in an early version of self-publishing. Carroll thought he’d be lucky to sell 2,000 copies, but “Alice” has sold so many copies that nobody can count them.

3. Alice’s illustrator, John Tenniel, was a really unusual choice of illustrator. A political cartoonist, he’d never illustrated any other children’s books. He was also very famous, and very expensive. But Carroll knew he was the right man for the job, and backed his intuition by paying Tenniel’s high fee.

4. At first, Tenniel refused to illustrate Through the Looking Glass, the follow-up to Wonderland. Carroll considered several other top illustrators before Tenniel finally changed his mind. Carroll paid him a fee for Looking Glass that was well over half his own annual income.

5. All his life, Carroll was very close to his family. The oldest son of eleven children, he took on all responsibility for his brothers and sisters after his father’s death.

6. When Carroll was young, his family was poor. They grew their own food and kept animals, and his father took in pupils to make money. He also educated Carroll at home till the boy was 12.

7. His father helped him find a good post at Christ Church, Oxford, where he became a mathematics tutor. Carroll was expected to be ordained as a priest and stay celibate as part of his job. If he did decide to marry, that was fine – but he would lose the job.

8. Even though it’s often said that Lewis Carroll was in love with little Alice Liddell, there’s no evidence for this at all. In fact, in his diary and letters, Carroll mentioned Alice’s brother Harry and her sister Ina more than he mentioned Alice. And he stayed friendly with Ina, not Alice, in later life.

9. Although Carroll is popularly supposed to have been a drug user, there’s no evidence that he took recreational drugs. In reality, he was a fan of homeopathy, using homeopathic remedies and administering them to his friends.

10. Carroll financially supported many humanitarian and medical charities without telling anyone. He also gave large sums of money to friends who were in need. This information was hidden in his bank account for 100 years, and only recently discovered.

Jenny's book has had some great reviews, including in The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal Europe. To see more about the book and reviews, click here.

Mandela and Smuts: Two anniversaries, two great leaders of South Africa. Could Smuts have prevented the Second World War?

(Both leaders have statues in Parliament Square)

Nelson Mandela was released from Victor-Verster Prison in Paarl 20 years ago today.

90 years ago today, the Council of the League of Nations met in London for the first time. The man responsible for much of the Covenant of the League – and 25 years and a World War later for the Charter of the United Nations – was General Jan Christian Smuts.

As a founding father of the Union of South Africa, Smuts originally favoured apartheid. Yet Mandela wrote magnanimously of Smuts: ‘I cared more that he had helped the foundation of the League of Nations, promoting freedom throughout the world, than the fact that he had repressed freedom at home.’

As a student, Nelson Mandela went to hear Smuts speak. He recalls in his memoirs that his first impression was that he spoke better English than Smuts, but it is clear that he admired him.

In a book published today, General Smuts: South Africa author Antony Lentin recounts how, had Smuts’s advice on the Treaty of Versailles been heeded in 1919, a Second World War might have been prevented. The Treaty, he warned, ‘should not be capable of moral repudiation by the German people hereafter’.

Time and again at the Paris Peace Conference, greatly influenced by the magnanimity Britain had shown him and his Afrikaners after the Boer War, Smuts pleaded with the leaders of the Great Powers to negotiate with the Germans face to face. But he was outmanoeuvred – not least by our own Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

Smuts said that direct negotiation with the German delegation, representing after all the hopes of a liberal democratic Germany, would make the treaty’s ‘moral authority’ ‘all the more binding, free of unnecessary dictation’. And if you don’t, you will get a Diktat ‘signed at the point of the bayonet’, that will prove a mere ‘scrap of paper’.

Author, Antony Lentin, formerly a Professor of History at the Open University, is a Senior Member of Wolfson College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a barrister. Antony Lentin says, “Both were magnanimous men who embodied reconciliation.”

In all, three books are published today by Haus Publishing in the Makers of the Modern World series (£12.99 hb), marking the 90th anniversary of the meeting of the Council of The League of Nations in London:

The League of Nations by Ruth Henig (ISBN 978-1-905791-75-0);

General Smuts: South Africa by Antony Lentin (ISBN 978-1-905791-82-8); and

Paul Hymans: Belgium by Sally Marks (ISBN 978-1-905791-81-1)

The first title examines the League and its legacy today, one is on the extraordinary General Smuts, and his instrumental role in the formation of the League (and a great deal more besides), and one is on Belgium and Paul Hymans, the first President of the League.

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Launch event at the House of Lords

This week we celebrated three upcoming titles in our Makers of the Modern World series.

On Wednesday evening, The Baroness Henig, author of The League of Nations, sponsored an event at the House of Lords.

The three new titles are all published by Haus Publishng on Thursday 11th January:

1) The League of Nations by Ruth Henig;

2) Paul Hymans: Belgium by Sally Marks; and

3) General Smuts: South Africa by Antony Lentin.

The 11th of February is a significant date, being the anniversary of the first time the League of Nations met in London in 1920. For Haus Publishing, the publication of these three titles brings us to the half-way point in the release of the 32-volume Makers of the Modern World series.

“the vastness of the work still called for”

The words of President Woodrow Wilson on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919

Caption: President Barack Obama, 2009, with a detail of President Woodrow Wilson from Sir William Orpen’s painting: The Signing of the peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles 28 June 1919.

Exactly 90 years ago today (10th December 2009) as President Barack Obama receives the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009, President Woodrow Wilson would have received his Nobel Peace Prize for 1919 on 10 December, following the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty 6 months earlier. Yet unusually Wilson’s award was delayed and finally presented 10 December 1920 in a double ceremony with that year’s winner. The first presentation of the Prize following the end of the First World War.

In his acceptance speech, in an observation that mirrors today’s presentation, President Wilson said that he was moved “by a very poignant humility before the vastness of the work still called for by this cause".

One of Wilson’s lasting achievements following the Paris Peace Treaties, was his work in the formation of the League of Nations on 10 January 1920 – but only as a springboard to the United Nations after the Second World War. The League was to fail just before the outbreak of that war.

As part of their ambitious series Makers of the Modern World (32 books describing the personalities, events and legacy of the Paris Peace Treaties for each the 32 countries that took part in the war), Haus Publishing has recently published:

Woodrow Wilson: United States by Brian Morton.

On 10 January 2010, the 90 anniversary of the birth of The League of Nations, they will publish:

The League of Nations by Ruth Henig

Ruth Henig CBE is an Honorary Fellow at Lancaster University where she lectured in Modern History. She was made a Life Peer in 2004, becoming Baroness Henig of Lancaster. Her books include League of Nations (ed) (1973), Versailles and After 1919–33 (1984), The Origins of the Second World War (1985), The Origins of the First World War (1989), Weimar Republic (1998), and, as co-author, Modern Europe 1870–1945 (1997).

Peace-meal

Haus starts a new partnership - supporting READ International

November 2009 marked the beginning of an exciting, new, sustainable partnership between Haus Publishing and READ International.

READ International, the 2007 Charity Times award winner for Best New UK Charity, began in 2004 and has shipped over 564,000 books to Tanzania for under-resourced and disadvantaged schools. READ is also currently supporting the renovation of dozens of school libraries so that access to these books is improved.

Learn more about READ and their work at: http://www.readinternational.org.uk/

Haus has provided READ with over 200 gratis books on history, biography and travel to support their 'recycling education' initiative.

Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy (Published by Haus in November 2009)

“Mannerheim spent much of his life, as he put it, ‘racing the storm’, watching the political horizon… He was cursed, as he might have observed himself, ‘to live in interesting times’”

Gustaf Mannerheim was one of the key figures of the twentieth century, and is still a national symbol in his home country of Finland, where a 2004 television survey voted him the ‘Greatest Finn of All Time.’ Born in 1867, he served in the Russian army during his youth, witnessing the coronation of the last Tsar in 1896 and fighting in the Russo-Japanese war, then spent two years undercover in Asia, posing as a Swedish anthropologist as he took part in the ‘Great Game’ of espionage. He crossed China on horseback, stopping en route to teach the 13th Dalai Lama how to shoot with a pistol, and spying on the Japanese navy on his way home. When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, he narrowly escaped St Petersburg, then led anti-Bolshevik forces during the civil war in Finland. However, his finest hour arguably came at the age of 73, when he led Finland in the 1940 ‘Winter War’ against the Russians, his former masters.

Jonathan Clements’ biography is the first life of Mannerheim to be published for over a decade, and includes a significant amount of new historical material on Mannerheim’s time in China. Avoiding both the reverent attitude of older Swedish and Finnish accounts, and the sensational, myth-busting tendency of more modern writing, Clements portrays Mannerheim as human enough to grumble, when a long-coveted promotion brought with it a stamp duty charge of 4000 Finnish marks, ‘It’s a good thing they haven’t made me a more important man’, but also as the legendary leader who stated ‘The rights of nations are not defended by means of declarations… There must be the desire to defend one’s country by deeds and sacrifices.’ This encapsulated his country’s attitude; on hearing of the declaration of war between Finland and Russia in 1940, in which the Finns would be outnumbered at least five to one, one of his countrymen remarked: ‘We are so few, and they are so many. Where will we find the room to bury them all?’

Jonathan Clements lives and works in Finland and London. He has written biographies of Mao, Marco Polo and most recently of Wellington Koo and Prince Saionji in the Makers of the Modern World series.

He was interviewed on Finnish TV this week on the launch of his book: http://areena.yle.fi/video/542830

Jonathan will be speaking at the Finnish Institute at 6pm on Wednesday 18th November 2009 as part of the launch of this biography. If you would like more information about this event or the book itself, please contact Haus Publishing (telephone: 020 7838 9055) or email sustainability@hauspublishing.com

Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy
by Jonathan Clements is published by Haus Publishing in November 2009 (£17.99 hardback)