The
King-Crane Commission was an official investigation during 1919 by the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
government into the circumstances and conditions existing in certain parts of the former
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
, in order to inform American policy with regard to the future of the region regarding the
partitioning of the Ottoman EmpireThe Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire was a political event that occurred after World War I. The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples formerly ruled by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new nations....
. The commission visited
PalestinePalestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...
,
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
,
LebanonLebanon , officially the Republic of Lebanon
[Republic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies...]
and
AnatoliaAnatolia is a geographic region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Iranian plateau to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west...
.
The commission was originally proposed by the United States as an international effort to determine if the region was ready for
self-determinationSelf-determination is defined as free choice of one’s own acts without external compulsion; and especially as the freedom of the people of a given territory to determine their own political status. In other words, it is the right of the people of a nation to decide how they want to be governed...
and to see what nations, if any, the locals wanted to act as
mandatory powersA League of Nations mandate refers to a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League...
.
The
King-Crane Commission was an official investigation during 1919 by the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
government into the circumstances and conditions existing in certain parts of the former
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
, in order to inform American policy with regard to the future of the region regarding the
partitioning of the Ottoman EmpireThe Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire was a political event that occurred after World War I. The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples formerly ruled by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new nations....
. The commission visited
PalestinePalestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...
,
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
,
LebanonLebanon , officially the Republic of Lebanon
[Republic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies...]
and
AnatoliaAnatolia is a geographic region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Iranian plateau to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west...
.
History
The commission was originally proposed by the United States as an international effort to determine if the region was ready for
self-determinationSelf-determination is defined as free choice of one’s own acts without external compulsion; and especially as the freedom of the people of a given territory to determine their own political status. In other words, it is the right of the people of a nation to decide how they want to be governed...
and to see what nations, if any, the locals wanted to act as
mandatory powersA League of Nations mandate refers to a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League...
. The plan received little support from the other nations, with many claimed delays. The Americans gradually came to realize that the British and French had already come to their own backroom deals about the future of the region, and new information could only serve to muddy the waters in their view. So, the commission was sent out sponsored by the United States alone.
President WilsonThomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States. A leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
picked
Henry Churchill KingHenry Churchill King was an American theologian and educator.At Oberlin from 1884, he taught in mathematics, philosophy, and theology. From 1902 to 1927, he was president of the college. In 1919, he served on the King-Crane Commission...
, a theologian and fellow college president (of
Oberlin CollegeOberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. It was founded in 1833 by Presbyterian ministers, and is home to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, making it the only top-ranked liberal arts college with a top-ranked conservatory...
), and Charles R. Crane, a prominent Democratic party contributor.
The commission's effectiveness was hampered by the fact that it was the British army that actually protected them and controlled the translators, giving a skewed view of opinion where it was considerably easier to decry the French than the British. In spite of this, based on interviews with local elites, the commission came to the conclusion that while independence was preferred, the Americans were considered the second-best choice for a colonial power, the British the third-best, and the French easily the worst possible choice.
Based on these interviews, King came to the conclusion that while the Middle East was "not ready" for independence, a colonial government would not serve the people well either. He recommended instead that the
Americans move in to occupy the region, because only the United States could be trusted to guide the people to self-sufficiency and independence rather than become an imperialist occupier. From King's personal writings, it seems that his overriding concern was the
morally correct course of action, not necessarily tempered by politics or pragmatism. The Republicans had regained control of the United States Senate in 1918, and as isolationists, the probability of a huge military adventure and occupation overseas, even given British and French approval, was practically nil.
The British Foreign Office was willing to allow either the United States or Great Britain to administer the proposed Palestine mandate, but not the French or the Italian governments. The point ended up being moot in any case, as
Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British statesman and the only Welsh Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; he is also the only one to have spoken English as a second language, Welsh having been his first.During a long tenure of office, mainly as Chancellor of the...
and
Georges ClemenceauGeorges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman, physician, and journalist. He served as the prime minister of France from 1906-1909 and 1917-1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles...
, heads of governments of
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
and
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
, prevailed in drafting the provisions of the
San Remo conferenceThe San Remo Conference was an international meeting of the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council, held in Sanremo, Italy, from 19 to 26 April 1920. It was attended by the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I who were represented by the Prime Ministers of Britain , France and Italy and...
and the
Treaty of SèvresThe Treaty of Sèvres was the peace treaty between the Ottoman Empire and Allies at the end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles was signed with Germany before this treaty to annul the German concessions including the economic rights and enterprises. Also, France, Great Britain and Italy...
. Lloyd George commented that "the friendship of France is worth ten Syrias." France received
SyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south and Israel to the southwest....
and Britain would get
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
(
IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
and
PalestinePalestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...
), contrary to the expressed wishes of both the interviewees and the Commission itself. In the United States, the report floundered with Wilson's sickness and later death.
Delay in publication
Publication was intended to be suppressed until the Senate actually passed the Treaty of Versailles, which it never did. As a result, the report was only released to the public in 1922, after the Senate and House had passed a joint resolution favoring the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine along the lines of the Balfour Declaration. Public opinion was divided when it was learned that the Arab majority had requested an American mandate with a democratically elected constituent assembly.
Syria and Palestine
One feature for which the report is still remembered today was an early statement skeptical of the viability of a Jewish state in Syria. The logic of the commission went along the lines that the first principle to be respected must be self-determination. Since the commission had a very
"maximalist" view of SyriaGreater Syria , also known simply as Syria, is a term that denotes a region in the Near East bordering the Eastern Mediterranean Sea or the Levant....
what would today encompass Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and the Gaza Strip it pointed out that a majority of Syrians were against the formation of a Jewish state. Therefore, the only way to establish a viable Jewish state would be with armed force to enforce it. This was precisely what the Commission wanted to avoid, so they dismissed the idea, saying that Zionists anticipated "a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants to Palestine". That said, there would be nothing wrong with Jews coming to "Israel" and simply living as Jewish Syrian citizens, but noted "nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
Instead, the Commission hoped for a Syria built along
liberalLiberal democracy is the dominant form of democracy in the 21st century. During the Cold War, liberal democracies were contrasted with the Communist People's Republics or "Popular Democracies", which claimed an alternative conception of democracy...
and nationalistic grounds that would become a modern democracy that protected the rights of its minorities. The Commission succeeded in convincing many of the educated, secular elite of this goal, but this didn't affect the negotiations at Versailles. Historian
James GelvinJames Gelvin is an American scholar of Middle Eastern history. He has been a faculty member in the department of history at the University of California, Los Angeles since 1995 and has written extensively on the history of the modern Middle East, with particular emphasis on nationalism and the...
believes that the Commission actually weakened the stature of the pro-Western elites in Syria, as their vocal support of complete independence made no impact upon the end result. The
French Mandate of SyriaThe French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was a League of Nations mandate created after the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire...
was the end result regardless, and the native elites were left either powerless or granted power only at the whim of the French. This helped set back the cause of an actual Syrian liberal democracy in Gelvin's view.
Armenia
The commission also tackled the issue of whether there should be an
ArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
n state, and came to the conclusion that there should be one. While one explanation might be mere favoritism (the Armenians are Christian), the arguments used for an Armenian state are quite similar to later arguments for the existence of
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
after World War II. The report noted that the Armenians had suffered a traumatic experience in the
genocideThe Armenian Genocide , also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Calamity , was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
, that they couldn't trust the Turkish state to respect their rights anymore, and that they were "a people." Therefore, Armenian independence should be respected and ensured.
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