July 21, 2018 • 22 mins
The second installment of this Sarah and Deblina classic two-parter follows Gertrude Bell on her adventures after World War I begins. The British army asked her to help them retain their influence in the Middle East. But how did she get from there to helping found modern Iraq?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday everybody. Today we are picking up where we
left off in our two parter on Gertrude Bell. This
two parter originally came out in twelve and it was
the work of previous hosts Sarah and Doublina, and today's
installment gets into the work that Bell did that influenced
the founding of modern Iraq. So enjoy. Welcome to stuff
(00:22):
you missed in history class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Deblie a Chalk reporting
and I'm far A Dowdy, and we're continuing on here
with our discussion of Gertrude Bell, who is a British archaeologist,
mountain climber, and desert explorer, and as we'll see in
(00:45):
this episode, also an intelligence officer and a diplomat too.
She said to have been one of the most powerful
women in the British Empire at one time, but today
her name really isn't that widely known, so we wanted
to take a look at her life and why she
was called the uncrowned Queen of Rock. So let's recap
just a little bit before we get too far into this.
(01:05):
In part one of this podcast, we talked a bit
about Gertrude's scholarly pursuits, plus some of her daredevil adventures
as a young woman climbing the Alps. We followed her
on some of her early adventures through the Middle East,
during times when she explored areas that no woman, in
many cases, nobody at all, had ever explored before, places
(01:26):
that were considered extremely dangerous. One of the most exciting
of these adventures was when she explored the territory of
the secretive Druz sect and charmed the Drews King. And
in these cases, and I mean especially with that example,
it was her bravery and her charm that really seemed
to pay off, really seemed to win over the locals,
(01:47):
and in doing so, by by becoming so friendly with
the people she met, she was really able to learn
a lot about the area and its history, things that
really were not previously known by foreigners, and also to
her with her various archaeological pursuits though too, which we
outlined a bit in the last episode, And we also
discussed her first meeting with Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known
(02:09):
as Lawrence of Arabia, and we haven't seen the last
of him. He's going to pop up again in Gertrude
Bell's story, so stay tuned for that. But although she
didn't necessarily think this of all women, Gertrude also obviously
believed herself capable of many things, but as we'll see
in this episode, there were some instances in which people
were ready to challenge that before that, though, we should
(02:31):
really dwell on this idea of Bell being capable of
anything that I just mentioned for just for a second,
because it certainly seemed like she was when it came
to most pursuits. But we do know that up to
this point in our story, she hasn't been able to
sort things out in her personal life really that well,
especially in the marriage department, even though it would have
been expected of a woman with her background to have
worked that out early on. So we talked about her
(02:54):
first love a little bit in that first episode. It
was a young British diplomat named Henry could Suggan, whom
Bell's father didn't approve of because he just didn't have
the financial exactly the financial means to take care of her,
and he actually passed away soon after their courtship, closing
that door for good for her. But somehow in the
(03:16):
midst of all these adventures and scholarly pursuits, Gertrude did
manage to find love again. I mean, she sounds kind
of like she's our sitcom hero and we're talking about
right now, But she she did find a second love.
When she was in her forties. She'd come across the
British diplomat and army officer Richard Doughty Wiley while traveling
in Turkey, where he had been stationed, and when the
(03:38):
two of them were back in London for a time
in nineteen thirteen, they really clicked. Finally they started up
an affair, and according to Janet Wallack's article in The Smithsonian,
they apparently had a lot of passion between them. At
least early on. They had a lot in common they
were both adventurers. But their relationship didn't last very long.
It flamed out pretty quickly. For one thing, Doughtie Wiley
(03:59):
was married, and he also got reassigned. He was reassigned
to the Balkans. And after that, Gertrude just really threw
herself into another great adventure, this time going to the
desert of northern Arabia, where no westerner had traveled. In
twenty years, so really looking for something new to do
after this this second flame, right, and not only was
(04:22):
this area not well traveled, I mean, just to give
an idea of how dangerous it really was, there were
two tribes in the area that were they had a
brutal war going on between them at the time, so
dangerous exactly, and the British, because of that, advised her
not to go. And she also didn't have permission from
the Turks to travel there, but she did it anyway.
She went ahead and and set off on this journey,
(04:44):
and she reached her goal of making it to Hail,
which is a walled city which was once a stop
for pilgrims on route to Mecca. But among other misadventures,
she ended up during this journey being held captive by
a powerful tribe there for nearly ten days. You can
imagine during this time she really thought she wasn't going
to get away. The tribe apparently had quite the reputation
(05:06):
for for murder and mayhem, so she she just feared
for her life, really, but finally her anger just sort
of overcame her fear, I guess, and she demanded that
they set her free, and surprisingly they did not really
sure why they did that. Maybe they were just really
shocked and impressed. She she spoke up for herself. I
don't know. Maybe they said of charm is sometimes effective.
(05:30):
It seems true. Um. By the summer of nineteen fourteen,
she was back in England and um, you might think
she'd be relieved to be home and be safe and
be alive, but she was feeling kind of down, feeling
a letdown that you might feel after a particularly exhilarating trip,
or in her case, a life threatening trip. According to
Walax article, she wrote to Doughtie Wiley at this time
(05:53):
and said the end of an adventure always leaves one
with a feeling of disillusion, just nothing, and she went
on to say dust and ashes in one's hand, dead
bones that look as if they would never rise and dance.
So she's feeling poetic, but also clearly sad about where
she is. She needs This is a woman who needs
(06:13):
something to do, so in nineteen fourteen she was kind
of presented with some new possibilities. In June of that year,
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was aired to the throne of
Austria Hungary, was assassinated, which helped set world War one
into motion, and the Turks entered into a secret treaty
with the Germans and they became allies. So suddenly Gertrude's
(06:35):
singular knowledge of the Arabian desert and its people became
really invaluable to the British because they wanted to keep
their influence in the Middle East. She'd explored, as we mentioned,
and mapped places that most Westerners have never been, so
what she knew was then a hot commodity. It was,
and according to Carrie Ellis's History Today article, the British
(06:56):
director of military operations in Cairo did ask Bell to
to get him a report including basically everything that she
had ever learned on her travels in Syria and Mesopotamia
and Arabia. And she had, you know, she she hadn't
just observed all this time, she had formed some opinions
of her own too, and clearly with the world so
in balance at this point she was ready to speak
(07:17):
her mind. Right. She believed in a strategy of organizing
the Arabs in a revolt against the Ottoman Turks, because
she knew that the Ottomans were losing their influence with
the Arabs, and so she shared her knowledge of this,
but she wanted to go beyond that. She really thought
that she could help with this, with organizing this revolt,
and so she asked for an official post in the
(07:37):
Middle East, but she was denied that because it was
thought to be too dangerous for a woman. So she
went off to France for a while to volunteer with
the Red Cross, probably also pretty dangerous. Right by November
of nineteen fifteen, though, the military had had a bit
(07:59):
of a change of heart and Gertrude was called to
the Arab Bureau and Cairo to work for a small
espionage team that they had there in the Savoy Hotel.
There were a couple of other archaeologists working for this
little intelligence outfit to including Leonard Woolley who we mentioned recently,
I think in the Agatha Christie podcast, and also Lawrence,
and they were making maps and geological reports, and Gertrude
(08:22):
was drafted to catalog Arab tribes which she had learned
a lot about on her travels too, So she was
catalog of these tribes in detail so that British officials
could reach out to their leaders and form alliances. And
just incidentally, you just mentioned Lawrence again. This is where
he and Gertrude Bell got to be really good friends,
really tight. They'd share meals together, they would talk all
(08:44):
the time. In her article while it even calls them
quote soul mate, so good buddies. But the work that
Gertrude was doing during this time, well clearly very valuable
to the British still wasn't really in an official capacity.
It was idle. It was increasingly influential, but it wasn't official.
Just some examples though, the kind of stuff she was doing.
(09:07):
She was sent to India to convince the viceroy there
to put up men in cash and support of the
Arab revolt. In March of nineteen sixteen, she was sent
to Mesopotamia to use her relationships with various tribes there
to try to convince locals to cooperate with the British effort.
So she's really on the ground, getting people involved, stirring
(09:28):
up British loyalties. Um. And then her maps too, I mean,
that's just a very practical side of things. Her maps
really helped the British Army reach Baghdad. So as a
result of all these contributions, her work in Mesopotamia under
the leadership of Chief Political Officer Percy Cox. Gertrude was
given the title of Liaison Officer Correspondent to Cairo, which
(09:49):
made her official and, according to Ellis, made her the
sole female political officer in the British forces, and then
in nineteen seventeen, after the British Army took Baghdad, she
was given the title of Oriental Secretary. By late nineteen
eighteen things changed. Though the Allies had made peace with
Germany and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, the Arab world
(10:10):
was pretty much in a total state of chaos as
France and England tried to figure out how they were
going to divvy up their sphere of influence in the
Middle East, and there was also the question of how
these areas were going to be governed. For example, would
the areas under British influence, which at the time included Mesopotamia.
Would these be under British rule or would they be
(10:31):
allowed to govern themselves? And of course, as you can imagine,
Bell had an opinion on this. In January of nineteen nineteen,
she was asked for a report that addressed this very question,
which was a task that she was understandably quite passionate
about having known the people and and studied and worked
with them for so long, and according to Ellis's article,
(10:53):
it took her ten months to put something together, though
she was so thorough on it, and the idea that
it ultimately got across her report was her belief that
the Arab should be able to govern themselves. She wrote,
quote an Arab state in Mesopotamia within a short period
of years is a possibility, and the recognition or creation
(11:13):
of a logical scheme of government on those lines and
supersession of those on which we are now working on
Mesopotamia would be practical and popular. So very report kind
of language there, but clear what her what her view
on on the situation is. Unfortunately, though her superior at
the time A. T. Wilson, because Cox had been called
(11:35):
away to another post, Wilson didn't agree with her at
all on this point. He sent her report over with
a cover letter that expressed how he felt her ideas
were quote erroneous. So Wilson basically believed that the British
should retain control there and he wasn't. Incidentally, the only
British officer in Baghdad that Bell didn't get along with
in general, she was pretty much disliked by her peers
(11:57):
in those postwar years. According to Wall article, colleagues express
this in a number of different ways. For example, they
would keep her out of the loop on cables and
secret documents. Maybe on a lighter note, maybe not as serious.
They would shun her in the dining hall. They would
make jokes about her and laugh behind her back. So
just an example here, she used to throw these teas
(12:20):
for British and Arab dignitaries to get together and sort
of get to know each other a little better, and
the other officers referred to them mockingly as p s
a s, which stood for Pleasant Sunday Afternoons. They also
referred to her house as chastity Chase, which is pretty mean.
It is pretty mean. I mean all of the shunning
her in the dining myth, that's pretty mean, pretty childish.
(12:41):
And we certainly don't want to make it sound as
if she invited this kind of behavior, because it just
sounds like mean stuff to do, But in some cases
she may have encouraged it a little bit. With the
officers wives especially, she was quite rude to them. She
would make pointed remarks about what they wore. You know,
if they were wearing things that she didn't consider very
(13:02):
culturally appropriate, like a low cut dress, um, she would
she would call him out on it. She even said
about that quote, I do wish that our women would
show some suitability in attire um. But but basically she
didn't do anything to try to be friendly to most
of the people she worked with. So meanwhile, eighteen months
after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, there still wasn't an Arab
(13:25):
government in place in Mesopotamia and the British were still
in control, so the Arab tribes rebelled. Wilson basically tried
to squash this uprising with brute force, bombs and the like,
but this only made things worse. Ten thousand Arabs lost
their lives during this time, and a few hundred British
did as well. Things changed though by October eleventh, nineteen twenty.
(13:47):
By then Wilson had been forced out and Belle's old
friend Percy Cox returned. He shared her view that the
Arabs should govern themselves, so this helped to kind of
set things in motion well. It also coincided nicely with
the fact that the then Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill was
ready to put a stop to the enormous economic drain
(14:08):
of these Arab rebellions. They were quite expensive, so he
called his best experts in the Middle East together to
a conference in Egypt to figure out how exactly they
were going to make this new Arab government work. He
invited forty experts total, only one woman was there, Gertrude.
Of course, her old buddy Lawrence was in attendance as well.
(14:29):
And while it describes her showing up in Cairo in
her signature accessories, which were a hat and furs and
really getting right down to business, she helped determine the
borders of the new nation of Iraq, and the real
tricky part that was figuring out not where the country
would be, where its borders would be, but who was
going to lead this new nation. Yeah, because there were
(14:52):
so many different groups to consider, just to name a few,
the Shiites, the Sunanees, the Kurds, the Jewish community as well.
Who could they find this was the question. Who could
they find who would be accepted by all of these people.
So they finally decided on making them a key the
Sunni holy Man of Baghdad, the Prime Minister and for
(15:13):
that King position that was so key. They thought of
Prince Faisal, whose family was said to be descendants of
the prophet Muhammad. Because of that connection, he'd appealed to
both the Shiites and the Sunni Muslims, but he also
had military administrative experience that he'd proven during the war
and during the rebellion. Both Belle and Lawrence argued heavily
(15:35):
in his favor. They wanted Faisel as king, and they
convinced Churchill too, but of course the real test was
going to be whether they could convince the Iraqi people.
One major problem was that Fisel didn't have any roots
in Iraq. He had never even been to the the
future country before, and according to Ellis, he even spoke
a different dialect of Arabic, so he really had a
(15:56):
lot to learn. But the Arabs didn't want to ruler
who was just so obviously a puppet of the British.
So it wasn't just about him learning things, it was
coming across authentic almost so after he arrived in Baghdad,
Gertrude really took him under her wing, and again she
used her vast knowledge of the region to help bring
him up to speed, you know, helping him learn about
(16:18):
the different tribes and tribal geography, teaching him little things
like how to deal with businessmen and Baghdad, and using
her influence with tribal leaders to to win them over.
I mean, it's kind of ironic when you think about it,
if this British woman is training this man to be
king and helping him really be authentic by sharing all
(16:38):
of her knowledge. But it seemed to work well. She
and Fisil ultimately became good friends. It took a few months,
but Fisel did win the widespread support of the Iraqis
and he won the throne by a virtually unanimous vote.
He was crowned king on August twenty nine, and after
(17:02):
he took the throne, Gertrude remained one of his closest advisers,
both personally and politically, for for some time, and that's
how she became known in England and in Baghdad as
the uncrowned Queen of Iraq. So of course this whole
process was a huge thrill for Gertrude, I mean, nation
building and and being almost the personal tutor for the king.
(17:24):
Um She wrote home at one point quote, I feel
at times like the creator about the middle of the week,
he must have wondered what it was going to be like,
as I do. I think that's kind of a little
nod to some of the earlier notes we made about
Gertrude being quite confident. Sure so um. But as Iraq's
government strengthened under its new leadership, Wallec writes that Bell
(17:47):
became more of a social secretary defisal than anything else.
He he had learned what he needed to to function. Also,
Percy Cox retired, so her duties there were sort of
diminished in her all, uh, phasing out a little bit
at this point. For a while, she went back into
her roots in archaeology, just kind of to have something
(18:08):
to do because she was a little bit bored. She
went to the Sumerian city of Ric and found all
of these relics, and with fiss permission, she founded the
country's first museum of antiquities, temporarily housed in the Palace
at Baghdad, and that became her focus for a while.
She would supervise digs and she would save and catalog
these treasures of ancient Iraq that she found. In June
(18:31):
of her archaeological museum officially opened with a collection of
more than three thousand items. Still, though, and despite that accomplishment,
I mean opening a museum, Gertrude still felt really depressed
and lonely, and had become increasingly so in the years
leading up to to this point. She had lost a
(18:51):
lot of her influence in in Baghdad, as we mentioned,
and also many of her friends had left by this
point to her health had deteriorated her, her family fortune
had dwindled and they lost their home in England. Her
her brother died, and she really regretted to not having
uh married earlier and having a family of her own,
something she she was upset about. So most people seem
(19:14):
to believe that it's this combination of reasons that on Sunday,
July she went to bed and purposely took an extra
dose of sleeping pills. She never woke up, but it
is good to know that she was at least fully
honored in death. She was given a full military funeral
by the British in Baghdad. She was buried there, which
(19:36):
seems quite fitting because at one point she even wrote quote,
I don't care to be in London much. I like
Baghdad and I like Iraq. It's the real East, and
it's stirring. Things are happening here, and the romance of
it all touches me and absorbs me. Um So clearly
she considered this her home and where she wanted to be,
and others there seemed to have connected with her as well.
(19:58):
Arabs apparently lined the streets to say goodbye to her,
and her influence was felt there for a while. The
regime that she helped establish with Faissal was in power
for thirty seven years before it finally fell to revolutionaries again.
Just really, it's interesting, especially because of the way Iraq
has made headlines in recent years, that Gertrude's name isn't
(20:20):
more widely known, but it may be more widely known soon.
Rumors of a movie project have been kind of swirling
around for a while. One rumor, I think connected a
Riddley Scott idea to Angelina Jolie, who would have played
Gertrude Bell, But I don't know. I think that maybe
that has fizzled out a little bit. But there's a
(20:41):
more recent rumor also involving do Law, Robert Pattinson, and
Naomi Watts as Gertrude Bell that's set to begin filming,
and I think in two thousand thirteen that may be
more than a rumor that me that maybe. I mean,
we'll see, because we'll know soon enough, don't we. It
certainly seems like good movie material. Um, I think it
is funny. I mean, you were just mentioning it's strange
(21:02):
she hasn't made, um, I don't know, made more news
or been connected to more news stories, or her name
just isn't that widely known. I always have thought of
her as one of the Lady Travelers, but clearly they're
so much more going on. The Lady Travelers is probably
not a great category to put her in. Um. Nation Builder,
(21:26):
you know, something like that. So many things, and I
still love that mountain climber aspect of her personality too.
It's easy to forget with all this other stuff that
she has this stint in her youth climbing the Alps
and a mountain that's named after her. Yeah, Gertrude Pizza
or something. Um. Pretty pretty great all around, So very
(21:49):
interesting to learn about her. I'm glad that we now
know the bigger picture, and I think it will certainly
inform just how I see current events too. I mean,
this is fairly recent history. It's not that long ago.
It's still pretty applicable in certain ways. Absolutely, I love
how these podcasts kind of and they give us more
(22:10):
knowledge about how the world sort of came to its
present state, and we learn a lot more about about
different areas. Thank you so much for joining us for
this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive,
if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
r L or something similar during the course of the show,
that may be obsolete now. So here is our current
(22:32):
contact information. We are at history Podcasts at how stuff
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and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works
dot com.
Happy Saturday everybody. Today we are picking up where we
left off in our two parter on Gertrude Bell. This
two parter originally came out in twelve and it was
the work of previous hosts Sarah and Doublina, and today's
installment gets into the work that Bell did that influenced
the founding of modern Iraq. So enjoy. Welcome to stuff
(00:22):
you missed in history class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Deblie a Chalk reporting
and I'm far A Dowdy, and we're continuing on here
with our discussion of Gertrude Bell, who is a British archaeologist,
mountain climber, and desert explorer, and as we'll see in
(00:45):
this episode, also an intelligence officer and a diplomat too.
She said to have been one of the most powerful
women in the British Empire at one time, but today
her name really isn't that widely known, so we wanted
to take a look at her life and why she
was called the uncrowned Queen of Rock. So let's recap
just a little bit before we get too far into this.
(01:05):
In part one of this podcast, we talked a bit
about Gertrude's scholarly pursuits, plus some of her daredevil adventures
as a young woman climbing the Alps. We followed her
on some of her early adventures through the Middle East,
during times when she explored areas that no woman, in
many cases, nobody at all, had ever explored before, places
(01:26):
that were considered extremely dangerous. One of the most exciting
of these adventures was when she explored the territory of
the secretive Druz sect and charmed the Drews King. And
in these cases, and I mean especially with that example,
it was her bravery and her charm that really seemed
to pay off, really seemed to win over the locals,
(01:47):
and in doing so, by by becoming so friendly with
the people she met, she was really able to learn
a lot about the area and its history, things that
really were not previously known by foreigners, and also to
her with her various archaeological pursuits though too, which we
outlined a bit in the last episode, And we also
discussed her first meeting with Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known
(02:09):
as Lawrence of Arabia, and we haven't seen the last
of him. He's going to pop up again in Gertrude
Bell's story, so stay tuned for that. But although she
didn't necessarily think this of all women, Gertrude also obviously
believed herself capable of many things, but as we'll see
in this episode, there were some instances in which people
were ready to challenge that before that, though, we should
(02:31):
really dwell on this idea of Bell being capable of
anything that I just mentioned for just for a second,
because it certainly seemed like she was when it came
to most pursuits. But we do know that up to
this point in our story, she hasn't been able to
sort things out in her personal life really that well,
especially in the marriage department, even though it would have
been expected of a woman with her background to have
worked that out early on. So we talked about her
(02:54):
first love a little bit in that first episode. It
was a young British diplomat named Henry could Suggan, whom
Bell's father didn't approve of because he just didn't have
the financial exactly the financial means to take care of her,
and he actually passed away soon after their courtship, closing
that door for good for her. But somehow in the
(03:16):
midst of all these adventures and scholarly pursuits, Gertrude did
manage to find love again. I mean, she sounds kind
of like she's our sitcom hero and we're talking about
right now, But she she did find a second love.
When she was in her forties. She'd come across the
British diplomat and army officer Richard Doughty Wiley while traveling
in Turkey, where he had been stationed, and when the
(03:38):
two of them were back in London for a time
in nineteen thirteen, they really clicked. Finally they started up
an affair, and according to Janet Wallack's article in The Smithsonian,
they apparently had a lot of passion between them. At
least early on. They had a lot in common they
were both adventurers. But their relationship didn't last very long.
It flamed out pretty quickly. For one thing, Doughtie Wiley
(03:59):
was married, and he also got reassigned. He was reassigned
to the Balkans. And after that, Gertrude just really threw
herself into another great adventure, this time going to the
desert of northern Arabia, where no westerner had traveled. In
twenty years, so really looking for something new to do
after this this second flame, right, and not only was
(04:22):
this area not well traveled, I mean, just to give
an idea of how dangerous it really was, there were
two tribes in the area that were they had a
brutal war going on between them at the time, so
dangerous exactly, and the British, because of that, advised her
not to go. And she also didn't have permission from
the Turks to travel there, but she did it anyway.
She went ahead and and set off on this journey,
(04:44):
and she reached her goal of making it to Hail,
which is a walled city which was once a stop
for pilgrims on route to Mecca. But among other misadventures,
she ended up during this journey being held captive by
a powerful tribe there for nearly ten days. You can
imagine during this time she really thought she wasn't going
to get away. The tribe apparently had quite the reputation
(05:06):
for for murder and mayhem, so she she just feared
for her life, really, but finally her anger just sort
of overcame her fear, I guess, and she demanded that
they set her free, and surprisingly they did not really
sure why they did that. Maybe they were just really
shocked and impressed. She she spoke up for herself. I
don't know. Maybe they said of charm is sometimes effective.
(05:30):
It seems true. Um. By the summer of nineteen fourteen,
she was back in England and um, you might think
she'd be relieved to be home and be safe and
be alive, but she was feeling kind of down, feeling
a letdown that you might feel after a particularly exhilarating trip,
or in her case, a life threatening trip. According to
Walax article, she wrote to Doughtie Wiley at this time
(05:53):
and said the end of an adventure always leaves one
with a feeling of disillusion, just nothing, and she went
on to say dust and ashes in one's hand, dead
bones that look as if they would never rise and dance.
So she's feeling poetic, but also clearly sad about where
she is. She needs This is a woman who needs
(06:13):
something to do, so in nineteen fourteen she was kind
of presented with some new possibilities. In June of that year,
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was aired to the throne of
Austria Hungary, was assassinated, which helped set world War one
into motion, and the Turks entered into a secret treaty
with the Germans and they became allies. So suddenly Gertrude's
(06:35):
singular knowledge of the Arabian desert and its people became
really invaluable to the British because they wanted to keep
their influence in the Middle East. She'd explored, as we mentioned,
and mapped places that most Westerners have never been, so
what she knew was then a hot commodity. It was,
and according to Carrie Ellis's History Today article, the British
(06:56):
director of military operations in Cairo did ask Bell to
to get him a report including basically everything that she
had ever learned on her travels in Syria and Mesopotamia
and Arabia. And she had, you know, she she hadn't
just observed all this time, she had formed some opinions
of her own too, and clearly with the world so
in balance at this point she was ready to speak
(07:17):
her mind. Right. She believed in a strategy of organizing
the Arabs in a revolt against the Ottoman Turks, because
she knew that the Ottomans were losing their influence with
the Arabs, and so she shared her knowledge of this,
but she wanted to go beyond that. She really thought
that she could help with this, with organizing this revolt,
and so she asked for an official post in the
(07:37):
Middle East, but she was denied that because it was
thought to be too dangerous for a woman. So she
went off to France for a while to volunteer with
the Red Cross, probably also pretty dangerous. Right by November
of nineteen fifteen, though, the military had had a bit
(07:59):
of a change of heart and Gertrude was called to
the Arab Bureau and Cairo to work for a small
espionage team that they had there in the Savoy Hotel.
There were a couple of other archaeologists working for this
little intelligence outfit to including Leonard Woolley who we mentioned recently,
I think in the Agatha Christie podcast, and also Lawrence,
and they were making maps and geological reports, and Gertrude
(08:22):
was drafted to catalog Arab tribes which she had learned
a lot about on her travels too, So she was
catalog of these tribes in detail so that British officials
could reach out to their leaders and form alliances. And
just incidentally, you just mentioned Lawrence again. This is where
he and Gertrude Bell got to be really good friends,
really tight. They'd share meals together, they would talk all
(08:44):
the time. In her article while it even calls them
quote soul mate, so good buddies. But the work that
Gertrude was doing during this time, well clearly very valuable
to the British still wasn't really in an official capacity.
It was idle. It was increasingly influential, but it wasn't official.
Just some examples though, the kind of stuff she was doing.
(09:07):
She was sent to India to convince the viceroy there
to put up men in cash and support of the
Arab revolt. In March of nineteen sixteen, she was sent
to Mesopotamia to use her relationships with various tribes there
to try to convince locals to cooperate with the British effort.
So she's really on the ground, getting people involved, stirring
(09:28):
up British loyalties. Um. And then her maps too, I mean,
that's just a very practical side of things. Her maps
really helped the British Army reach Baghdad. So as a
result of all these contributions, her work in Mesopotamia under
the leadership of Chief Political Officer Percy Cox. Gertrude was
given the title of Liaison Officer Correspondent to Cairo, which
(09:49):
made her official and, according to Ellis, made her the
sole female political officer in the British forces, and then
in nineteen seventeen, after the British Army took Baghdad, she
was given the title of Oriental Secretary. By late nineteen
eighteen things changed. Though the Allies had made peace with
Germany and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, the Arab world
(10:10):
was pretty much in a total state of chaos as
France and England tried to figure out how they were
going to divvy up their sphere of influence in the
Middle East, and there was also the question of how
these areas were going to be governed. For example, would
the areas under British influence, which at the time included Mesopotamia.
Would these be under British rule or would they be
(10:31):
allowed to govern themselves? And of course, as you can imagine,
Bell had an opinion on this. In January of nineteen nineteen,
she was asked for a report that addressed this very question,
which was a task that she was understandably quite passionate
about having known the people and and studied and worked
with them for so long, and according to Ellis's article,
(10:53):
it took her ten months to put something together, though
she was so thorough on it, and the idea that
it ultimately got across her report was her belief that
the Arab should be able to govern themselves. She wrote,
quote an Arab state in Mesopotamia within a short period
of years is a possibility, and the recognition or creation
(11:13):
of a logical scheme of government on those lines and
supersession of those on which we are now working on
Mesopotamia would be practical and popular. So very report kind
of language there, but clear what her what her view
on on the situation is. Unfortunately, though her superior at
the time A. T. Wilson, because Cox had been called
(11:35):
away to another post, Wilson didn't agree with her at
all on this point. He sent her report over with
a cover letter that expressed how he felt her ideas
were quote erroneous. So Wilson basically believed that the British
should retain control there and he wasn't. Incidentally, the only
British officer in Baghdad that Bell didn't get along with
in general, she was pretty much disliked by her peers
(11:57):
in those postwar years. According to Wall article, colleagues express
this in a number of different ways. For example, they
would keep her out of the loop on cables and
secret documents. Maybe on a lighter note, maybe not as serious.
They would shun her in the dining hall. They would
make jokes about her and laugh behind her back. So
just an example here, she used to throw these teas
(12:20):
for British and Arab dignitaries to get together and sort
of get to know each other a little better, and
the other officers referred to them mockingly as p s
a s, which stood for Pleasant Sunday Afternoons. They also
referred to her house as chastity Chase, which is pretty mean.
It is pretty mean. I mean all of the shunning
her in the dining myth, that's pretty mean, pretty childish.
(12:41):
And we certainly don't want to make it sound as
if she invited this kind of behavior, because it just
sounds like mean stuff to do, But in some cases
she may have encouraged it a little bit. With the
officers wives especially, she was quite rude to them. She
would make pointed remarks about what they wore. You know,
if they were wearing things that she didn't consider very
(13:02):
culturally appropriate, like a low cut dress, um, she would
she would call him out on it. She even said
about that quote, I do wish that our women would
show some suitability in attire um. But but basically she
didn't do anything to try to be friendly to most
of the people she worked with. So meanwhile, eighteen months
after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, there still wasn't an Arab
(13:25):
government in place in Mesopotamia and the British were still
in control, so the Arab tribes rebelled. Wilson basically tried
to squash this uprising with brute force, bombs and the like,
but this only made things worse. Ten thousand Arabs lost
their lives during this time, and a few hundred British
did as well. Things changed though by October eleventh, nineteen twenty.
(13:47):
By then Wilson had been forced out and Belle's old
friend Percy Cox returned. He shared her view that the
Arabs should govern themselves, so this helped to kind of
set things in motion well. It also coincided nicely with
the fact that the then Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill was
ready to put a stop to the enormous economic drain
(14:08):
of these Arab rebellions. They were quite expensive, so he
called his best experts in the Middle East together to
a conference in Egypt to figure out how exactly they
were going to make this new Arab government work. He
invited forty experts total, only one woman was there, Gertrude.
Of course, her old buddy Lawrence was in attendance as well.
(14:29):
And while it describes her showing up in Cairo in
her signature accessories, which were a hat and furs and
really getting right down to business, she helped determine the
borders of the new nation of Iraq, and the real
tricky part that was figuring out not where the country
would be, where its borders would be, but who was
going to lead this new nation. Yeah, because there were
(14:52):
so many different groups to consider, just to name a few,
the Shiites, the Sunanees, the Kurds, the Jewish community as well.
Who could they find this was the question. Who could
they find who would be accepted by all of these people.
So they finally decided on making them a key the
Sunni holy Man of Baghdad, the Prime Minister and for
(15:13):
that King position that was so key. They thought of
Prince Faisal, whose family was said to be descendants of
the prophet Muhammad. Because of that connection, he'd appealed to
both the Shiites and the Sunni Muslims, but he also
had military administrative experience that he'd proven during the war
and during the rebellion. Both Belle and Lawrence argued heavily
(15:35):
in his favor. They wanted Faisel as king, and they
convinced Churchill too, but of course the real test was
going to be whether they could convince the Iraqi people.
One major problem was that Fisel didn't have any roots
in Iraq. He had never even been to the the
future country before, and according to Ellis, he even spoke
a different dialect of Arabic, so he really had a
(15:56):
lot to learn. But the Arabs didn't want to ruler
who was just so obviously a puppet of the British.
So it wasn't just about him learning things, it was
coming across authentic almost so after he arrived in Baghdad,
Gertrude really took him under her wing, and again she
used her vast knowledge of the region to help bring
him up to speed, you know, helping him learn about
(16:18):
the different tribes and tribal geography, teaching him little things
like how to deal with businessmen and Baghdad, and using
her influence with tribal leaders to to win them over.
I mean, it's kind of ironic when you think about it,
if this British woman is training this man to be
king and helping him really be authentic by sharing all
(16:38):
of her knowledge. But it seemed to work well. She
and Fisil ultimately became good friends. It took a few months,
but Fisel did win the widespread support of the Iraqis
and he won the throne by a virtually unanimous vote.
He was crowned king on August twenty nine, and after
(17:02):
he took the throne, Gertrude remained one of his closest advisers,
both personally and politically, for for some time, and that's
how she became known in England and in Baghdad as
the uncrowned Queen of Iraq. So of course this whole
process was a huge thrill for Gertrude, I mean, nation
building and and being almost the personal tutor for the king.
(17:24):
Um She wrote home at one point quote, I feel
at times like the creator about the middle of the week,
he must have wondered what it was going to be like,
as I do. I think that's kind of a little
nod to some of the earlier notes we made about
Gertrude being quite confident. Sure so um. But as Iraq's
government strengthened under its new leadership, Wallec writes that Bell
(17:47):
became more of a social secretary defisal than anything else.
He he had learned what he needed to to function. Also,
Percy Cox retired, so her duties there were sort of
diminished in her all, uh, phasing out a little bit
at this point. For a while, she went back into
her roots in archaeology, just kind of to have something
(18:08):
to do because she was a little bit bored. She
went to the Sumerian city of Ric and found all
of these relics, and with fiss permission, she founded the
country's first museum of antiquities, temporarily housed in the Palace
at Baghdad, and that became her focus for a while.
She would supervise digs and she would save and catalog
these treasures of ancient Iraq that she found. In June
(18:31):
of her archaeological museum officially opened with a collection of
more than three thousand items. Still, though, and despite that accomplishment,
I mean opening a museum, Gertrude still felt really depressed
and lonely, and had become increasingly so in the years
leading up to to this point. She had lost a
(18:51):
lot of her influence in in Baghdad, as we mentioned,
and also many of her friends had left by this
point to her health had deteriorated her, her family fortune
had dwindled and they lost their home in England. Her
her brother died, and she really regretted to not having
uh married earlier and having a family of her own,
something she she was upset about. So most people seem
(19:14):
to believe that it's this combination of reasons that on Sunday,
July she went to bed and purposely took an extra
dose of sleeping pills. She never woke up, but it
is good to know that she was at least fully
honored in death. She was given a full military funeral
by the British in Baghdad. She was buried there, which
(19:36):
seems quite fitting because at one point she even wrote quote,
I don't care to be in London much. I like
Baghdad and I like Iraq. It's the real East, and
it's stirring. Things are happening here, and the romance of
it all touches me and absorbs me. Um So clearly
she considered this her home and where she wanted to be,
and others there seemed to have connected with her as well.
(19:58):
Arabs apparently lined the streets to say goodbye to her,
and her influence was felt there for a while. The
regime that she helped establish with Faissal was in power
for thirty seven years before it finally fell to revolutionaries again.
Just really, it's interesting, especially because of the way Iraq
has made headlines in recent years, that Gertrude's name isn't
(20:20):
more widely known, but it may be more widely known soon.
Rumors of a movie project have been kind of swirling
around for a while. One rumor, I think connected a
Riddley Scott idea to Angelina Jolie, who would have played
Gertrude Bell, But I don't know. I think that maybe
that has fizzled out a little bit. But there's a
(20:41):
more recent rumor also involving do Law, Robert Pattinson, and
Naomi Watts as Gertrude Bell that's set to begin filming,
and I think in two thousand thirteen that may be
more than a rumor that me that maybe. I mean,
we'll see, because we'll know soon enough, don't we. It
certainly seems like good movie material. Um, I think it
is funny. I mean, you were just mentioning it's strange
(21:02):
she hasn't made, um, I don't know, made more news
or been connected to more news stories, or her name
just isn't that widely known. I always have thought of
her as one of the Lady Travelers, but clearly they're
so much more going on. The Lady Travelers is probably
not a great category to put her in. Um. Nation Builder,
(21:26):
you know, something like that. So many things, and I
still love that mountain climber aspect of her personality too.
It's easy to forget with all this other stuff that
she has this stint in her youth climbing the Alps
and a mountain that's named after her. Yeah, Gertrude Pizza
or something. Um. Pretty pretty great all around, So very
(21:49):
interesting to learn about her. I'm glad that we now
know the bigger picture, and I think it will certainly
inform just how I see current events too. I mean,
this is fairly recent history. It's not that long ago.
It's still pretty applicable in certain ways. Absolutely, I love
how these podcasts kind of and they give us more
(22:10):
knowledge about how the world sort of came to its
present state, and we learn a lot more about about
different areas. Thank you so much for joining us for
this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive,
if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
r L or something similar during the course of the show,
that may be obsolete now. So here is our current
(22:32):
contact information. We are at history Podcasts at how stuff
works dot com, and then we're at missed in the
history all over social media. That is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest,
and Instagram. Thanks again for listening for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works
dot com.
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