T. E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward Lawrence was a British Army officer, archaeologist, diplomat and writer known for his role during the Arab Revolt and Sinai and Palestine campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and Lawrence's ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.
Lawrence was born in Tremadog, Carnarvonshire, Wales, the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Chapman, an Anglo-Irish landowner, and Sarah Lawrence, a governess in the employ of Chapman. In 1896, Lawrence moved to Oxford, attending the City of Oxford High School for Boys, and read history at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1907 to 1910. Between 1910 and 1914, he worked as an archaeologist for the British Museum, chiefly at Carchemish in Ottoman Syria.
After the outbreak of war in 1914, Lawrence joined the British Army and was stationed at the Arab Bureau, a military intelligence unit in Egypt. In 1916, he travelled to Mesopotamia and Arabia on intelligence missions and became involved with the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule. Lawrence was ultimately assigned to the British Military Mission in the Hejaz as a liaison to Emir Faisal, a leader of the revolt. He participated in engagements with the Ottoman military culminating in the capture of Damascus in October 1918.
After the war's end, he joined the Foreign Office, working with Faisal. In 1922, Lawrence retreated from public life and served as an enlisted man in the Army and Royal Air Force until 1935. He published the Seven Pillars of Wisdom in 1926, an autobiographical account of his participation in the Arab Revolt. Lawrence also translated books into English and wrote The Mint, which detailed his service in the RAF. He corresponded extensively with prominent artists, writers, and politicians, and also participated in the development of rescue motorboats for the RAF. Lawrence's public image resulted in part from the sensationalised reporting of the Arab Revolt by American journalist Lowell Thomas, as well as from Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In 1935, Lawrence died at the age of 46 after being injured in a motorcycle crash in Dorset.
Early life
Thomas Edward Lawrence was born on 16 August 1888 in Tremadog, Carnarvonshire, in a house named Gorphwysfa, now known as Snowdon Lodge. His Anglo-Irish father Thomas Chapman had left his wife Edith, after he had a first son with Sarah Junner, who had been governess to his daughters. Sarah was herself an illegitimate child, born in Sunderland to Elizabeth Junner, a servant employed by a family named Lawrence. She was dismissed four months before Sarah was born, and identified Sarah's father as "John Junner, Shipwright journeyman".Lawrence's parents did not marry, but lived together under the pseudonym Lawrence. In 1914, his father inherited the Chapman baronetcy based at Killua Castle, the ancestral family home in County Westmeath, Ireland. The couple had five sons, Thomas, called "Ned" by his immediate family, being the second eldest. In 1889, the family moved from Wales to Kirkcudbright, Galloway, in southwestern Scotland, then to the Isle of Wight, then to the New Forest, then to Dinard in Brittany, and then to Jersey.
From 1894 to 1896, the family lived at Langley Lodge, set in private woods between the eastern borders of the New Forest and Southampton Water in Hampshire. At Langley Lodge young Lawrence had opportunities for outdoor activities and waterfront visits.
In the summer of 1896, the family moved to 2 Polstead Road in Oxford, where they lived until 1921. The wooden shed built in the garden for Lawrence to study when a schoolboy is still standing. From 1896 until 1907, Lawrence attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys, where one of the four houses was later named "Lawrence" in his honour. The school closed in 1966. Lawrence and one of his brothers became commissioned officers in the Church Lads' Brigade at St Aldate's Church.
Lawrence claimed that he ran away from home around 1905, and served for a few weeks as a boy soldier with the Royal Garrison Artillery at St Mawes Castle in Cornwall, from which he was bought out. However, no evidence of this appears in army records.
Travels, antiquities, and archaeology
At the age of 15, Lawrence cycled with his schoolfriend Cyril Beeson around Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, visiting almost every village's parish church, studying their monuments and antiquities, and making rubbings of their monumental brasses. Lawrence and Beeson monitored building sites in Oxford and presented the Ashmolean Museum with anything that they found. The Ashmolean's Annual Report for 1906 said that the two teenage boys "by incessant watchfulness secured everything of antiquarian value which has been found." In the summers of 1906 and 1907, Lawrence toured France by bicycle, sometimes with Beeson, collecting photographs, drawings, and measurements of medieval castles. In August 1907, Lawrence wrote home: "the Chaignons and the Lamballe people complimented me on my wonderful French: I have been asked twice since what part of France I came from".From 1907 to 1910, Lawrence read history at Jesus College, Oxford. In July and August 1908, he cycled solo through France to the Mediterranean and back, researching French castles. In the summer of 1909, he set out alone on a three-month walking tour of crusader castles in Ottoman Syria, during which he travelled on foot. While at Jesus College he was a keen member of the University Officers' Training Corps.
He graduated with First Class Honours after submitting a thesis titled The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture—to the End of the 12th Century, partly based on his field research with Beeson in France, and his solo research in France and the Middle East. Lawrence was fascinated by the Middle Ages. His brother Arnold wrote in 1937 that "medieval researches" were a "dream way of escape from bourgeois England".
In 1910, Lawrence was offered the opportunity to become a practising archaeologist at Carchemish, in the expedition that D. G. Hogarth was setting up on behalf of the British Museum. Hogarth arranged a "Senior Demyship", a form of scholarship, for Lawrence at Magdalen College, Oxford, to fund his work at £100 a year. In December 1910, he sailed for Beirut, and went to Byblos in Lebanon, where he studied Arabic.
He then went to work on the excavations at Carchemish, near Jerablus in northern Syria, where he worked under Hogarth, R. Campbell Thompson of the British Museum, and Leonard Woolley until 1914. He later stated that everything that he had accomplished, he owed to Hogarth. Lawrence met Gertrude Bell while excavating at Carchemish. In 1912, he worked briefly with Flinders Petrie at Kafr Ammar in Egypt.
At Carchemish, Lawrence was involved in a high-tension relationship with a German-led team working nearby on the Baghdad Railway at Jerablus. While there was never open combat, there was regular conflict over access to land and treatment of the local workforce. Lawrence gained experience in Middle Eastern leadership practices and conflict resolution.
In January 1914, Woolley and Lawrence were co-opted by the British military as an archaeological smokescreen for a British military survey of the Negev desert. They were funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund to search for an area referred to in the Bible as the Wilderness of Zin, and they made an archaeological survey of the Negev desert along the way. The Negev was strategically important because an Ottoman army attacking Egypt would have to cross it. Woolley and Lawrence published a report of the expedition's archaeological findings, but a more important result was their updated mapping of the area, with special attention to features of military relevance such as water sources. Lawrence also visited Aqaba and Shobek, not far from Petra.
Military intelligence
Following the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, Lawrence did not immediately enlist in the British Army. He held back until October on the advice of S. F. Newcombe, when he was commissioned on the General List as temporary second lieutenant-interpreter. Before the end of the year, he was summoned by renowned archaeologist and historian Lieutenant Commander David Hogarth, his mentor at Carchemish, to the new Arab Bureau intelligence unit in Cairo, and he arrived in Cairo on 15 December 1914. The Bureau's chief was Brigadier-General Gilbert Clayton who reported to Egyptian High Commissioner Henry McMahon.The situation was complex in 1915. There was a growing Arab nationalist movement within the Arabic-speaking Ottoman territories, including many Arabs serving in the Ottoman armed forces. They were in contact with Sharif Hussein, Emir of Mecca, who was negotiating with the British and offering to lead an Arab uprising against the Ottomans. In exchange, he wanted a British guarantee of an independent Arab state including the Hejaz, Syria, and Mesopotamia.
Such an uprising would have been helpful to Britain in its war against the Ottomans, lessening the threat against the Suez Canal. However, there was resistance from French diplomats who insisted that Syria's future was as a French colony, not an independent Arab state. There were also strong objections from the Government of India, which was nominally part of the British government but acted independently. Its vision was of Mesopotamia under British control serving as a granary for India; furthermore, it wanted to hold on to its Arabian outpost in Aden.
At the Arab Bureau, Lawrence supervised the preparation of maps, produced a daily bulletin for the British generals operating in the theatre, and interviewed prisoners. He was an advocate of a British landing at Alexandretta, now İskenderun in Turkey, that never came to pass. He was also a consistent advocate of an independent Arab Syria.
The situation came to a crisis in October 1915, as Sharif Hussein demanded an immediate commitment from Britain, with the threat that he would otherwise throw his weight behind the Ottomans. This would create a credible Pan-Islamic message that could have been dangerous for Britain, which was in severe difficulties in the Gallipoli Campaign. The British replied with a letter from High Commissioner McMahon that was generally agreeable while reserving commitments concerning the Mediterranean coastline and Holy Land.
In the spring of 1916, Lawrence was dispatched to Mesopotamia to assist in relieving the Siege of Kut by some combination of starting an Arab uprising and bribing Ottoman officials. This mission produced no useful result. Meanwhile, the Sykes–Picot Agreement was being negotiated in London, without the knowledge of British officials in Cairo, which awarded a large proportion of Syria to France. It implied that the Arabs would have to conquer Syria's four great cities if they were to have any sort of state there: Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo. It is unclear at what point Lawrence became aware of the treaty's contents.