Ronald Wingate
Sir Ronald Evelyn Leslie Wingate, 2nd Baronet, was a British colonial administrator, soldier and author. Wingate was born in 1889 in Kensington, London, and educated at Bradfield College and Balliol College, Oxford before entering the Indian Civil Service. In the Civil Service, he served as an Assistant Commissioner in Punjab and the city magistrate of Delhi.
During the First World War, Wingate was given a special assignment with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force as an assistant political officer. After the war, he served as British Consul in Muscat, Oman, and helped to negotiate the Treaty of Seeb. He then briefly served in Kashmir before returning to Oman. After his second tour in Oman, Wingate held a variety of positions in British India, including service as the Acting Secretary of the Foreign and Political Department of the Indian Government and Commissioner of Baluchistan.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Wingate served with the Ministry of Economic Warfare in Africa and Southeast Asia. Then, in 1942, he joined the London Controlling Section, an organization within the War Cabinet devoted to military deception. Wingate became the Deputy Controller of the LCS in 1943 and helped to form numerous deception plans including Plan Jael, later called Operation Bodyguard. At the conclusion of the war, he was chosen to write the official history of Allied deception operations during it.
After the war, Wingate served as the British delegate on the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold and as a director on the board of the Imperial Continental Gas Association. He also wrote three books: Wingate of the Sudan, a biography of his father, Reginald Wingate; Not in the Limelight, his own memoirs; and Lord Ismay, a biography of General Hastings Ismay. Wingate died on 31 August 1978 at the age of 88.
Early life
Wingate was the son of Reginald Wingate, a British general who held important positions in Egypt and Sudan, and his wife Catherine Wingate. Wingate was also a cousin of Lawrence of Arabia and a second cousin of Orde Wingate. Wingate spent his early childhood in Cairo with his family, but in 1889 he was sent to live in England and enter school. From a very young age, he hoped to follow his father into military service, and he began his education at Bradfield College planning to join the Royal Navy. While at Bradfield; however, Wingate discovered that he could not pass the Navy's medical exam because he was severely near-sighted and decided to instead pursue a civil service career.Wingate left Bradfield and entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he went to receive an MA. While at Oxford, Wingate hoped for a career in the Foreign Office, but his father convinced him that a posting abroad would be more favorable financially. Thus, in 1912, Wingate passed the civil service examinations and entered the Indian Civil Service. He was immediately sent back to Oxford, where he spent a year studying Urdu and Persian. During the Christmas holiday of his year at Oxford, Wingate visited his father in Khartoum and met Mary Harpoth Vinogradoff, the step-daughter of Paul Vinogradoff, a prominent scholar at the University of Oxford. In his memoirs, Wingate described their encounter as "love at first sight", and the two were engaged six months later before Wingate left for his first posting in India.
In 1913, Wingate began his ICS career as an Assistant Commissioner in Punjab, posted in Sialkot. Wingate "worked ceaselessly" at the various tasks of administration during the period, but enjoyed his duties. In 1916, Mary Harpoth visited Wingate in India and the two were married in Lahore on November 11. After a honeymoon in the Kangra Valley, Wingate returned to work, becoming an aide de camp and assistant private secretary for the Governor of Punjab, and then the city magistrate of Delhi.
First World War
At the beginning of the First World War, Wingate immediately volunteered to serve in Europe, but like most other members of the ICS, he was turned down. After the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war, Wingate hoped that his Arabic language skills would result in a posting with the army, but he remained in India until 1917. In June 1917, after only a year in Delhi, Wingate joined the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force as an assistant political officer. As a political officer, Wingate initially took part in administrative tasks, helping to rebuild a political system in areas conquered by the British. Wingate first worked to re-establish a customs system in liberated territories. He then led the team of political officers in Najaf, where he worked to establish a police force and establish a basic system of taxation. Wingate also was responsible for entertaining notable Western guests who passed through Najaf, including Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia. During the war, Wingate also helped to negotiate British protectorates for the Gulf States.In addition to his work in traditional political matters, Wingate worked with Percy Cox, Gertrude Bell and other British agents on several special operations. Most notably, he helped to bribe a Turkish army officer who had cut off a British force near Kut and helped keep the Ottomans out of Najaf. Wingate also helped to foil a plot by the Committee of Union and Progress to promote an uprising in Najaf by ordering one of his aides to get the CUP agent drunk, leading him to reveal the details of the plot.
First term as Consul to Oman
After the war, in 1919, Wingate was appointed British Consul in Muscat, the capital of Oman. When Wingate arrived in Oman, the country was in a state of turmoil due to a long-standing power struggle between the Imamate of Oman and the Sultan of Oman. The tribesmen in the interior of Oman, who supported the Imam, sought the overthrow of the Sultan, who was kept in power in the coastal regions through British intervention. Upon assuming his position, Wingate was charged with negotiating a peace between the two groups that would ensure the power of the Sultan and prevent the outbreak of open warfare.Wingate initially found the Sultan, Taimur bin Feisal, uncooperative in efforts to reach a settlement. After years trapped in Muscat with no power over the majority of his country, Feisal saw no reason to continue the struggle and told Wingate that "he wished to abdicate and be guaranteed some small pension which would enable him at least to live in peace somewhere outside Muscat and Arabia." Knowing that the Sultan's support would be key to any plan, Wingate arranged for the Sultan to make a long state visit to the Viceroy of India, staying in a villa in the Himalayas. Before Feisal departed, Wingate established a Council of Ministers, nominally to advise the Sultan, but actually designed to hold the effective power during his absence. The sultan also gave Wingate the power to negotiate with the Imam on his behalf.
Having acquired the power to negotiate with the Imam and the tribesmen, Wingate needed to reassert the power of the Sultanate and find some leverage to force the Imam into negotiations. He began by collecting unpaid customs duties in order to raise more revenue for the Sultan, and sent emissaries to Isa Bin Salih, the Imam's chief deputy. Wingate's initial overtures proved unsuccessful, so he threatened to impose a "punitive tax" on dates, the chief export crop of Oman. Because the Sultan controlled the ports and coastal areas, he had the power to collect such a tax, which would have ruined the Omani farmers. After the imposition of the tax, riots erupted in the interior, and the Imam was murdered by angry farmers. A new Imam, who was more willing to negotiate, was selected and requested a meeting with Wingate.
Wingate agreed to the negotiations, and scheduled a meeting at the coastal town of As Sib in late September. The first two days of the meeting went well, and both sides reached a general agreement that the Imam and tribal leaders would not interfere with the Sultan's rule in the coastal areas if the Sultan would not interfere in the interior. Wingate also promised that upon the conclusion of an agreement, the tax on dates would be reduced to five percent. On the third day, however, trouble arose when the tribal leaders insisted that the Imam be formally acknowledged as a ruler equal to the Sultan and as a religious leader in the text of the agreement. Wingate, however, convinced the tribal leaders that the Imam should sign the agreement only in his capacity as a representative of the Omani tribes. Although the agreement became known as the Treaty of Sib, it was not in fact a treaty at all, but rather "an agreement between the Sultan and his subjects" as the sovereignty of the Sultan in all external affairs was recognized. Though the Treaty of Sib was a "bitter blow" to the Sultan, it led to an unprecedented thirty years of peace in the interior of Oman. The agreement was also well received in Britain and India, and Wingate received congratulatory telegrams from the Viceroy of India and the Secretary of State for India.
Kashmir and second term in Oman
In July 1921, Wingate contracted malaria and was given six weeks of medical leave, which he decided to spend in Kashmir. While in Kashmir, Wingate visited Joe Windham, the British Resident, who offered to find him a job in India. Wingate went back to Oman, but returned to Kashmir in November as a special assistant to the Resident.In Kashmir, Wingate first served in Poonch, but the post of Assistant Resident in Poonch was abolished in December. Wingate then was moved to an assignment in Srinagar. Srinagar was the site of a large club for British military officers and civil servants, and Wingate, finding that he had "a minimum of work", spent much of his time socializing and playing golf. In January 1923, Wingate was ordered back to Oman to serve as Consul a second time.
Wingate's second term as consul was relatively uneventful and lasted only until October when he again contracted malaria. The only major event came when the citizens of the town of Sur refused to pay their customs duties. In order to coerce the town into payment, Wingate sent a detachment of 50 soldiers with machine guns to the town. Under the cover of darkness, the soldiers landed on the narrow spit of land connecting Sur to the mainland, cutting the town off from its water supply. The people of the town made no attempt to resist militarily and after two days without water, they paid the customs dues.