The title of the book suggests that it is about the man who has become a legend, but that is misleading. The real focus of "Lawrence in Arabia" is the Middle East and how the events of the First World War shaped the region into what it is today. Anderson clearly did some exhaustive research when writing this book. It is intimately detailed. He poured over personal diaries from many of the people he writes about and some of the reports he was given access to have only recently been declassified by the British government. All of this allows Anderson a chance to give a fresh take on a subject that has been tackled by countless authors over the last century and contextualize the mythology of the legend of Lawrence of Arabia into the broader story of the Great War. Anderson takes you step by step from the childhoods of the people involved in the story, their experiences through the war, and right up to their deaths. The book is not about one man. It is an ensemble cast working together, often with no knowledge of one another, to shape the course of momentous events: an American oil man, a German spy master, a Jewish agronomist. However, TE Lawrence was such a remarkable force in the Arab peninsula during the war that telling the story of the region absolutely requires that he gets the lion's share of the spotlight.
As a young man, Lawrence was prone to challenging himself to feats of endurance. This quality would later serve him well since riding a camel for hundreds of miles through desert wastelands is about as grueling as it gets. Before any clouds of war were gathering, Lawrence went on a walking tour of the Holy Land. Westerners simply did not do this. Tours were fine, but not intimacy with the people of the region. Lawrence flew in the face of that convention (and so many others as his life unfolded) and fell in love with the people native to those Holy Lands and they, in turn, fell in love with him. The hospitality of the people entranced him and he gathered a crowd of followers everywhere he went. In a prophetic letter to his family, he wrote, "I will have such difficulty becoming English again." He was more right than he knew. Showing that he viewed the region and the people differently than any other Westerner, Lawrence wrote, "The foreigner comes here always to teach, whereas they had much better learn."
And so he did go there to learn. After his formal education, Lawrence learned Arabic, became an archaeologist, and went to study sites in the Sinai peninsula. After The Great War broke out, he was stationed in Cairo as an intelligence officer. Soon he was traveling the length and breadth of the Middle East and befriended several of the tribal leaders of the Bedouins there. After watching his countrymen being thrown back from their assaults on the Turkish-held borders of Palestine and squandered in a futile and stupid amphibious invasion at Galipoli, he decided to encourage the Arab peoples to rise up against the Turks and do more than just assist the British in their war efforts. Rather than seeing the Arab tribes as mere vassals or even obstacles, he saw their promise to defeat an ancient empire in the heart of a region that was soon to become vital to fueling the ambitions of the 20th century. He incited the Arabs to fight for their independence.
Lawrence even committed treason against his king when he informed Prince Faisal ibn Hussein of the classified details of the Sykes-Picot agreement. The secret deal between France and England outlined how the entire Middle East was to be carved up after the war into the imperial holdings each nation preferred. No concern was wasted on thoughts of Arab self rule. This information proved to be enough to inspire the tribes to fight for their freedom.
One of the main reasons TE Lawrence has been so lionized in our culture (other than that amazing movie) is that his experience during the Great War was so vastly different from most soldiers. In a war characterized by entrenched front lines and No Man's Land that stayed static for years, by immobility and mud and futility, by infantry charges that were wiped out yards from their starting points, Lawrence's war had a distinctly contrasting feel. He saw cavalry charges that drove the enemy from their positions, he lead daring raids far behind any front lines, he took part in massive pincer movements, sweeping thousands of men hundreds of miles to envelop enemy strongholds.
The Arab rebels harassed the Turks and forced them out of strategically vital areas. Every victory they won was one more promise of independence. The Arab Revolt created the conditions that allowed the British army to occupy Jerusalem in late 1917 and become the first Christian power to rule in Jerusalem in the 600 years since the Crusades.
Ironically, considering the last 60 years of the conflicts in the area, the Arab Revolt was heavily aided by the information coming out of Palestine supplied by a Jewish spy ring. This spy network, the one that would prove vital for establishing an independent, Arab controlled Middle East, was comprised almost exclusively by Jews. The leader of this spy ring, Chaim Weizmann, was later to become the first president of Israel. The nations established by the information he snuck out of the region would later swear to drive his own nation back into the sea. "Lawrence in Arabia" was a great lesson in recognizing the extraordinary complexities in a story that has always felt fairly simple and well established.
As you read the book, you wondered, if Lawrence were alive today, would he be discouraged by the state of the Middle East? Would he be ashamed of the people he once championed? Would he be impressed? Would he be surprised that the only Middle Eastern power to have truly thrown off the shackles of Western influence is Iran? Or would an Islamic fundamentalist state terrify him as much as it has so many American presidents?
After the war, on their way to the Peace Conference in Paris, Lawrence, Faisal Hussein, and Chaim Weizmann worked out a plan to bring to the conference. Their plan fell apart when met by the imperial ambitions of the British and French leaders. Weizmann would later become Israel's first president. Lawrence would fade into mythology. Faisal would be publicly skewered for his close relationship with such a Zionist as Weizmann and he would be usurped in Arabia by a fundamentalist Wahhabist Sunni sect lead by the house of Saud. This family would soon name their (sort of) independent Arabian country after themselves; Saudi Arabia. Hussein would be installed as ruler of Iraq. What if an independent Israel had been welcomed by other Arab nations in a spirit of friendship borne from war-time alliances, as these three men had planned? What if ethnic groups had not been separated by empires into arbitrary countries with regional minorities foolishly thrust into positions of power? What if jihad and sectarianism were not common words in the world today? That was the world Lawrence was fighting for, and the Arabs he lead. It was the world many who fought in Iraq over the past decade were also fighting for.
Over the last few years, the world has seen nation after nation throughout the Middle East and North Africa rise up against the governments that were mostly put in place immediately after the First World War. The 2010 Arab Spring probably should have happened a century before, but empires have a hard time suppressing their thirst for power, their lust for control. The Arab Spring is the first time since 1918 that Arab peoples have had a say in how they are governed. It is messy and violent and terrifying to many of us in the West, but there is a good chance that it is ultimately a good thing. We will never know, but it is possible that the world might already be a much much better place today if those with the most influence a century ago had listened to those with the most knowledge.
"Lawrence in Arabia" may have reminded you of the complexities of the world and its history, it may have reminded you that momentous events are the result of processes, that they don't happen spontaneously. But it reminded you of one more thing as well. In a world that is so complex, in stories that are subtly influenced by the choices of millions of people over the course of centuries, sometimes individual people do make a difference.
On to the next book!
P.S. TurnerClassicMovies has a wonderful archive of clips from the amazing movie "Lawrence of Arabia." Anderson references the movie throughout the book. He is obviously a big fan too.
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/296450/Lawrence-Of-Arabia-Movie-Clip-A-Great-Hero.html
P.P.S. In the section of the book about the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Anderson praises the book "Paris 1919" by Margaret MacMillan. He calls it "definitive." You've been trying to read that daunting chronicle of the Byzantine machinations of the "great powers and national supplicants" for a while now. You had almost given up on it, but Anderson's endorsement has inspired you to keep pecking away at it. You love it when books you are reading reference other books you are reading! It's so meta.
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