This article examines Elie Kedouri's views and outlook relating the Sykes-Picot agreement and British Middle Eastern policy before and after WWI. Kedourie considered the agreement as a signifier of a British ideal and political... more
This article examines Elie Kedouri's views and outlook relating the Sykes-Picot agreement and British Middle Eastern policy before and after WWI. Kedourie considered the agreement as a signifier of a British ideal and political shift from a policy based on an imperial reason and a certain understanding of liberalism to the encouragement of nationalism in the Middle East in general and of Arab nationalism in particular. However by presenting Kedourie's version (to use Toynbee's critical phraseology relating his stands ) this article gives a wider reference to his agency since this version was not only a product of his unique personal style or his conservatism but of a broader set of biographical, historiographical and structural contexts in varied fields of knowledge and other academic aspects of the time. By that It demonstrates the intertextuality of Kedourie's 'biographical' and 'historiographical' texts and suggests to read him historically. The Sykes-Picot agreement is discussed here not only as a historical turning point via Kedourie, but also as a starting point for examining his imperial cultural world , the meanings it lent to the way he saw British control in the Middle East, to nationalism, and to the way he wrote and red their histories and historiographies.
