National and International Politics in the Middle East by Edward Ingram

Author:Edward Ingram [Ingram, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780714632780
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2004-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

IX

GUARDING THE BANDWAGON: GREAT BRITAIN, ITALY, AND MIDDLE EASTERN OIL, 1920-1923

Marian Kent

In the years following the First World War, when a Middle Eastern peace settlement was being negotiated, Italy was particularly anxious to secure the gains promised to her by her allies in return for entering the war on the allied side. Increasingly she felt that these gains were being denied to her, while her allies, Great Britain and France, collected their substantial winnings in the Middle East. Continually she tried to climb on the bandwagon, where she had been promised a place, only to have her knuckles rapped by its British driver. By the time she had worn down British resistance to her claims, she was herself losing interest in them, and the reluctant offer to her, when finally made, never led to anything.

By 1920, having failed to make the gains in the Middle East promised under the treaty of London in 1915 and the Saint-Jean de Maurienne Agreement in 1917, Italy’s hopes were based on the Tripartite Agreement.1 Signed on 10 August 1920, the same day as the treaty of Sèvres, the agreement was destined to have a similarly unsuccessful outcome. By this agreement Italy’s territorial ambitions in Southern Anatolia took the form of an Italian sphere of influence, while her newly developing economic ambitions were to be partly realized through a monopoly of coal mining in the Heraclea basin. Arrangements were set out also for joint participation in the Anatolian and Baghdad railways. By a self-denying clause in Article 2 of the agreement the three signatory powers, Great Britain, France, and Italy, undertook not to apply for, nor to support applications by their nationals for, industrial or commercial concessions in any area where the special interests of one of the other signatories had been recognized. Under Article 6 the mandatory powers were given the same rights and privileges within their mandated territories as were powers with recognized spheres of influence. As Italy never took formal possession of her sphere of influence, however, whereas the mandatories did take possession of their mandated territories (with their important oil and other economic potential), Italy was to feel increasingly discriminated against.

This minor agreement was to provide the mounting block for Italy’s efforts to climb aboard the Anglo-French oil bandwagon between 1920 and 1923. Although her attempts to make economic gains were directed at more than oil concessions (for in the series of agreements she had made between 1915 and 1920 oil had not been mentioned), as soon as she became aware of the potential of the Mesopotamian oil concession, promised to the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) by the Turkish government but never granted owing to the outbreak of the First World War,2 and with a potentially fluid share participation, she sensed an excellent opportunity both of obtaining recompense for her lost wartime gains and of ensuring her own economic future.

Italy’s pursuit of economic gains in the Middle East following the signing of the Tripartite Agreement can be divided into three phases. The first, purely oil, phase lasted from August 1920 until early 1922.

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