Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T18:33:45.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

INTELLIGENCE AND LLOYD GEORGE'S SECRET DIPLOMACY IN THE NEAR EAST, 1920–1922*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

DANIEL-JOSEPH MACARTHUR-SEAL
DANIEL-JOSEPH MACARTHUR-SEAL*
Affiliation:
St John's College, Cambridge
*
St John's College, Cambridge CB2 1TP[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article seeks to establish the significance of intercepted Greek diplomatic messages as both historical source and catalyst in Britain's Near Eastern policy in the crucial years of 1920–2. Specifically, the intercepts reveal how members of the British government, foremost among them the prime minister, covertly supported Greek expansion in Asia Minor even after declaring neutrality in the conflict. Such evidence confirms rumours that were dismissed as fallacious by those implicated and by their defenders in later historiography. Aside from their value as historical sources, the intercepts had an immediate and significant impact which has also been neglected. Intelligence regarding a distant conflict became central to a war at the heart of Westminster and helped mobilize a cross-party, transnational coalition against Lloyd George's foreign policy in the region. Although Lloyd George's opponents, incited by intelligence revelations, eventually succeeded in transforming British policy, this reverse did little to reduce the scale of the resultant catastrophe.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 707 - 728
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Tim Harper, Lucy Noakes, and Julian Hoppit for their valuable feedback, as well as the article's two anonymous reviewers for their comments. I am grateful to the librarians and archivists at all the institutions I visited for their help in accessing the documents cited below.

References

1 Ferris, John, ‘“Far too dangerous a gamble”? British intelligence and policy during the Chanak crisis, September–October 1922’, in Goldstein, Erik and McKercher, B. J. C., eds., Power and stability: British foreign policy, 1865–1965 (London, 2003), p. 139Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 144.

3 Walder, David, The Chanak affair (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Darwin, J. G., ‘The Chanak crisis and the British cabinet’, History, 65 (1980), pp. 32–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Macfie, A. L., ‘The Chanak affair, September–October 1922’, Balkan Studies, 20 (1979), pp. 309–41Google Scholar; Ferris, ‘“Far too dangerous a gamble”?’.

4 Ernest Hemingway, ‘On the quai at Smyrna’, in his The fifth column: the first forty-nine stories (New York, NY, 1938), pp. 185–7; de Berniers, Louis, Birds without wings (London, 2011), p. 521Google Scholar.

5 K. C. Roy to J. Dove, 19 Aug. 1922, Oxford, Bodelian Library (BODL), Grigg papers, MSS Film 999.

6 Craig, G. A., ‘The British foreign office from Grey to Austen Chamberlain’, in Craig, G. A. and Gilbert, F., eds., The diplomats, 1919–1939 (Princeton, NJ, 1953), p. 18Google Scholar.

7 Mayer, Arno Joseph, Political origins of the new diplomacy, 1917–1918 (New Haven, CT, 1959), pp. 322–3Google Scholar.

8 Macfie, A. L., ‘British foreign policy in the Near East: questions of responsibility’, Balkan Studies, 40 (1999), pp. 327–37Google Scholar, at pp. 328–9.

9 Churchill to Lloyd George, 24 Mar. 1920, Cambridge, Churchill Archives Centre (CAC), Churchill papers, CHAR 22/2/59.

10 Nicolson, Harold, Peacemaking, 1919 (London, 1933), p. 113Google Scholar.

11 Kerr to Lloyd George, 20 Nov. 1920, London, Parliamentary Archives (PA), Lloyd George papers, F/90/1/20.

12 Churchill, , The world crisis: the aftermath (London, 1929), p. 386Google Scholar; George, Lloyd, Memoirs of the peace conference (New York, 1972), p. 867Google Scholar.

13 Lloyd George to Curzon, 15 Sept. 1922, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/13/3/33.

14 Smith, Michael Llewellyn, Ionian vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922 (London, 1998), p. 162Google Scholar.

15 Eleftheria Daleziou, ‘Britain and the Greek–Turkish war and settlement of 1919–1923: the pursuit of security by “proxy” in western Asia Minor’ (Ph.D. thesis, Glasgow, 2002), p. 187.

16 Goldstein, Erik, ‘Great Britain and greater Greece, 1917–1920’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), pp. 339–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 356.

17 Morning Post, 8 Nov. 1922.

18 Toynbee, Arnold J., The Western question in Greece and Turkey (London, 1923), pp. 2–5Google Scholar.

19 Aitken, Max, The decline and fall of Lloyd George (London, 1963), p. 159Google Scholar.

20 Nicolson, Harold, Curzon: the last phase (London, 1934), p. 96Google Scholar.

21 Sylvester, A. J., The real Lloyd George (London, 1947), p. 1Google Scholar.

22 Montgomery, A. E., ‘Lloyd George and the Greek question, 1918–1922’, in Taylor, A. J. P., ed., Lloyd George: twelve essays (New York, NY, 1971), p. 257Google Scholar.

23 Morgan, K. O., Consensus and disunity: the Lloyd George coalition government, 1918–22 (Oxford, 1979), p. 113Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 303.

25 Daleziou, ‘Britain and the Greek–Turkish war’, p. 15.

26 Morgan, Consensus and disunity, p. 319.

27 Johnson, G., ‘Curzon, Lloyd George and the control of British foreign policy, 1919–1922: a reassessment’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 11 (2000), pp. 49–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 58.

28 Montgomery, ‘Lloyd George and the Greek question’, p. 284.

29 Bennett, G. H., British foreign policy during the Curzon period, 1919–1924 (New York, NY, 1995), p. 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Rose, I. A., Conservatism and foreign policy during the Lloyd George coalition, 1918–1922 (London, 1999), pp. 246–7Google Scholar.

31 Jeffery, Keith and Sharp, Alan, ‘Lord Curzon and secret intelligence’, in Andrew, Christopher M. and Noakes, Jeremy, eds., Intelligence and international relations, 1900–1945 (Exeter, 1987), p. 109Google Scholar; Daleziou, ‘Britain and the Greek–Turkish war’, p. 167.

32 Ferris, ‘“Far too dangerous a gamble”?’, pp. 143–4; Daleziou, ‘Britain and the Greek–Turkish war’, pp. 181–2.

33 Kalogeropoulos to Baltazzis, 1 Mar. 1921, London, The National Archives (TNA), HW 12/20.

34 Kalogeropoulos to Baltazzis, 28 Feb. 1921, TNA, HW 12/20.

35 Kalogeropoulos to Baltazzis, 5 Mar. 1921, TNA, HW 12/20.

36 Baltazzis to Greek legation, London 16 Feb. 1921, CAC, Churchill papers, CHAR 22/5/27.

37 Gounaris to Greek legation, London, 21 June 1921, TNA, HW 12/23.

38 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 20 June 1921, TNA, HW 12/23.

39 Rangabé to ministry of foreign affairs, 21 Oct. 1921, TNA, HW 12/28.

40 Gounaris to Baltazzis, 3 Nov. 1921, TNA, HW 12/28.

41 Baltazzis to Greek legation, London, 3 Mar. 1921, TNA, HW 12/22.

42 Rangabé to Metaxas, 5 May 1921, TNA, HW 12/22.

43 Gounaris to ministry of foreign affairs, 21 Oct. 1921, TNA, HW 12/28.

44 Rangabé to Metaxas, 9 May 1921, TNA, HW 12/22.

45 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 7 Mar. 1922, TNA, HW 12/32.

46 Rangabé to ministry of foreign affairs, 5 Aug. 1922; London, British Library (BL), Curzon papers, F112/224.

47 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 31 Mar. 1922, TNA, HW 12/33.

48 Rangabé to ministry of foreign affairs, 30 Mar. 1922, TNA, HW 12/33.

49 For the story of the establishment of the Koraes Chair, see Clogg, Richard, Politics and the academy (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

50 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 23 May 1921, TNA, HW 12/22; Rangabé to Baltazzis, 30 Mar. 1922, TNA, HW 12/33.

51 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 22 Apr. 1922, TNA, HW 12/33.

52 Minutes of a conversation between Venizelos, Lloyd George and Grigg, 30 May 1922, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/86/2/3.

53 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 25 Apr. 1921, TNA, HW 12/22.

54 Baltazzis to Kalogeropoulos, 14 Feb. 1921, TNA, HW 12/22.

55 Rangabé to Kerr, 25 Feb. 1921, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/55/2/4.

56 Kalogeropoulos to ministry of foreign affairs, 19 Mar. 1921, TNA, HW 12/20.

57 Gounaris to Stergiades, 25 Mar. 1921, TNA, HW 12/20.

58 Mark Kerr to Curzon, n.d., BL, Curzon papers, F112/224b.

59 Kalogeropoulos to Baltazzis, 6 Mar. 1921, TNA, HW 12/20.

60 Baltazzis to Greek legation, 10 Mar. 1921, TNA, HW 12/20.

61 Jensen, Peter Kincaid, ‘The Greco-Turkish war, 1920–1922’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 10 (1979), pp. 553–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 560–1.

62 George, David Lloyd, Memoirs of the peace conference (New Haven, CT, 1939), p. 870Google Scholar.

63 Grigg to Lloyd George, 2 June 1921, BODL, Grigg papers, MSS Film 1006.

64 Hankey to Lloyd George, 2 June 1921, BODL, Grigg papers, MSS Film 1006; Churchill to Lloyd George, 2 June 1921, BODL, Grigg papers, MSS Film 1006.

65 Hankey to Lloyd George, 23 Nov. 1920, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/24/3/25.

66 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 4 June 1921, TNA, HW 12/23.

67 Papoulas to Gounaris, 5 Jan. 1922, TNA, HW 12/30.

68 Papoulas to Gounaris, 5 Feb. 1922, TNA, HW 12/31.

69 Ibid.

70 Roufos to Baltazzis, 17 May 1922, HW 12/35.

71 Papoulas to Davies, 14 Sept. 1921, BODL, Grigg papers, MSS Film 1007.

72 Lloyd George to Curzon, 16 June 1921, BL, Curzon papers, F112/220a.

73 Minutes of a conversation between Lloyd George, Grigg, and Venizelos, 30 May 1922, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/86/2/3.

74 Curzon to Lloyd George, 20 Apr. 1921, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/13/2/15; Vansittart to Kerr, 26 Apr. 1921, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/13/2/18.

75 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 4 Apr. 1921, TNA, HW 12/21.

76 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 19 Apr. 1921, TNA, HW 12/21.

77 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 25 May 1921, TNA, HW 12/22.

78 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 28 May 1921, TNA, HW 12/23.

79 Baltazzis to Rangabé, 3 June 1922, TNA, HW 12/35.

80 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 24 May 1921, TNA, HW 12/22.

81 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 25 May 1921, TNA, HW 12/23.

82 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 28 May 1921, TNA, HW 12/23.

83 Gounaris to Baltazzis, 18 Nov. 1921, TNA, HW 12/28; Long to Lloyd George, 15 Nov. 1921, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/34/1/73.

84 Long to Lloyd George, 24 Nov. 1921, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/34/1/73.

85 Curzon to Montagu, 5 Apr. 1921, Cambridge, Trinity College Library (TCL), Montagu papers, AS1/12/127.

86 Gounaris to Baltazzis, 24 Dec. 1921, TNA, HW 12/30.

87 Ibid.

88 Rangabé to Gounaris, 30 Dec. 1921, TNA, HW 12/30.

89 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 21 Dec. 1921, TNA, HW 12/30.

90 Gounaris to Baltazzis, 3 Feb. 1922, TNA, HW 12/31.

91 Gounaris to Baltazzis, 27 Feb. 1922, TNA, HW 12/32.

92 Long to Curzon, 24 Aug. 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/226a.

93 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 17 May 1921, HW 12/22.

94 Curzon to Montagu, 6 Mar. 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/226b.

95 Vansittart to Curzon, 30 Mar. 1921, BL, Curzon papers, F112/221b.

96 Curzon to Derby, 30 May 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/224; Derby to Curzon, 1 June 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/224.

97 Curzon to Lloyd George, 5 Oct. 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/224.

98 Curzon to Lloyd George, 5 Oct. 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/224.

99 Gilmour, David, Curzon (London, 1994), p. 536Google Scholar; Craig, ‘The British foreign office from Grey to Austen Chamberlain’, p. 33.

100 Grigg to Curzon, 10 Aug. 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/224.

101 Lloyd George, The parliamentary debates, 5th ser., 1909–81, Hansard, vol. 157, col. 1997, 4 Aug. 1922.

102 Curzon to Montagu, 5 Apr. 1921, TCL, Montagu papers, AS1/12/127.

103 Montagu to Chelmsford, 12 Apr. 1921, TCL, Montagu papers, AS4/8/66.

104 Curzon to Bryce, 24 Jan. 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/208b.

105 Curzon to Churchill, n.d., CAC, Churchill papers, CHAR 22/3/71.

106 Churchill to Lloyd George, 22 Feb. 1921, CAC, Churchill papers, CHAR 22/5/30.

107 Ferris, John, ‘The British empire vs. the hidden hand: British intelligence and strategy and “the CUP–Jew–German–Bolshevik combination”, 1918–1924’, in Neilson, Keith, Kennedy, Greg, and French, David, eds., The British way in warfare: power and the international system, 1856–1956 (Farnham, 2010), p. 338Google Scholar.

108 Jeffery, Keith, The British army and the crisis of empire, 1918–22 (Manchester, 1984), p. 160Google Scholar.

109 M. M. H. J. Chotani, Sheikh M. H. Kidwai, and M. A. Ansari to Montagu, 1 Apr. 1921, TCL, Montagu papers, AS1/3/10.

110 Churchill to Montagu, 15 July 1921, TCL, Montagu papers, AS1/3/11.

111 Rangabé to Gounaris, 9 Jan. 1922, TNA, HW 12/30.

112 Minutes of a conversation between Lloyd George, Grigg, and Venizelos, 30 May 1922, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/86/2/3.

113 Curzon to Montagu, 6 Mar. 1922, BL, Curzon papers, F112/226b.

114 Ross, C. N. B., ‘Lord Curzon and E. G. Browne confront the “Persian question”’, Historical Journal, 52 (2009), pp. 385–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 392; Gilmour, Curzon, pp. 167–9.

115 Kalogeropoulos to Baltazzis, 9 Mar. 1921, TNA, HW 12/20.

116 Daleziou, ‘Britain and the Greek–Turkish war’, p. 309.

117 Ibid., p. 242.

118 Ibid., p. 165.

119 Morgan, Consensus and disunity, p. 303.

120 Curzon to Bonar Law, 2 Dec. 1922, PA, Bonar Law papers, 111/12/37.

121 Finerock, Michael, ‘Ataturk, Lloyd George and the Megali idea: cause and consequence of the Greek plan to seize Constantinople, June–August 1922’, Journal of Modern History, 52 (1980), pp. 1047–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 1055.

122 Rangabé to ministry of foreign affairs, 17 May 1921.

123 A. J. Sylvester minute on a press bulletin from Athens, 8 Aug. 1921, PA, Lloyd George papers, F/55/2/10.

124 Rangabé to Baltazzis, 21 Aug. 1922, TNA, HW 12/37.