Britain And The Sykes-Picot Agreement

The thesis has made a systematic investigation on the evolvement of British foreign policy at the beginning of the World War I and the formation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. It has three chapters:Chapter one analyses the background of the formation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. At the beginning of the World War I, Britian adjusted his Middle East Policies: Before the World War I, Britain kept the integration of the Asian Ottoman Empire, and only defined his influencial area at the brim of the empire, such as Cyprus, Egypt and the Persia Gulf; When the war broke out and Turkey was entangled, Britain wanted to kept Turkey empire alive by way of regime changing, the De Bunsen Report was the embodiment of this ideas; In the autume of 1915, the war situation deteriorated, Britain wanted to replaced Turkey empire with Arab empire for the Arabs appeared more and more important, and came into material contact with them.Chapter two discusses the process of the negotiation. In the course of the negotiation, the focus of it was different, as far as the Anglo-Arab negotiation concerned, British aims changed from neutralising the Arabs to hooking them. With regard to the Anglo-French negotiation, at the first phase, it aimed to hook the Arabs, when Sykes participated in, 'planning for the future' became the main point of the negotiation, while 'Arab question' became the tools of the negotiation. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence and the Constantinople Agreements were interdependent.Chapter three introduces the agreement's final and its influence. After the agreement came into being, the situation of the Middle East changed much. So Britain amended the agreement with French, and established his predominance in the Middle East, but enlarged the divarication between the West World and the Arab at the same time.The tag summarizes British decision-making process, and draws the conclusion that British Middle East policies was influenced by the war situation and made some passive regulation, and constructed a new unified system. But it has the limitation as the imperialism policies, and put in the seeds of defeat.