A Greater Syria is Created After the End of World War I?

CaliGuy

Banned
What if a Greater Syria which includes Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan is created after the end of World War I?

Any thoughts on this?
 
In the 1930s, the existence of a Greater Syria would have had an effect upon the handling of oil pumped in the area around Kirkuk. In our time line, this oil was transported to refineries in Haifa (in British Mandated Palestine) and Tripoli (in French Mandated Syria) by means of a pipeline. However, in a situation in which a Greater Syria controlled the entire coastline from Gaza (on the border with Egypt) to Jebel Aqra (on the border with Turkey), the Iraq Petroleum Company might have preferred to run the pipeline from Kirkuk down to Basra. This, in turn, meant that the oil refineries which, in our time line, had been built in Haifa and Tripoli, would have been built in Basra.

Making Basra the chief terminal for Iraqi oil would have meant that refined petroleum products destined for European customers would have had to go through the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal before reaching the Mediterranean. This, in turn, would have made oil from other sources, whether Russia, Romania, or the US, marginally more attractive to European customers than they were in our time line. It also might have made the Iraq Petroleum Company more likely to pursue opportunities in the Persian Gulf and thus less likely to acquiesce in the sale of concessions in Bahrain to Standard Oil of California. As it was the latter concessions that set the stage for the creation, by Standard Oil, of the oil industry in Saudi Arabia, the shifting of the pipeline might well have resulted in a situation in which the discovery and exploitation of Saudi oil fields was carried out by the Iraq Oil Company. Thus, we would end up with a situation in which the connection between the United States and the Persian Gulf was far weaker, while the connection between the Persian Gulf and the United Kingdom was much stronger, than it was in our own time line.
 
I'm confused. You've just said that the Iraqi oil company--which, Iraq being a British controlled mandate and the timeframe discussed being the 1930s, long before independence, would be essentially a British oil company however disguised--chose OTL to route oil overland to both French-controlled Syria and British-controlled Jordan/Palestine, both routes going to the eastern Med and thus presumably mainly to the Western European market.

We haven't addressed the question of who, Britain or France, would control the Greater Syria mandate that holds the entire Levantine coast. The French had previous interests in Lebanon and so would be slightly better positioned to claim the whole thing, but the British surely would not be much pleased with that. This is presumably why the region was split between them OTL, though it is not so clear why each was then subdivided further, into Syria and Lebanon both separately controlled by France, and Jordan and Palestine separately controlled by Britain.

In any case, OTL the "Iraqi" company chose to do pipeline business with both, so even if Greater Syria were all French controlled, I don't see why the Iraqi company would not still decide that sending the oil to Western markets, particularly to British ones, via a port, even a French port, on the Med would be preferable to developing a Persian Gulf port that then has a long sea route to reach any profitable (that is to say, Western European or possibly Japanese) market. How does consolidating all of "Greater Syria" change the economic rationality of sending the oil in the direction it is wanted, as perceived anyway by European company controllers? You suggest that it "might" have been decided to develop Basra and the Gulf--but offer no particular reason why the existence of a unified Greater Syria would discourage a pipeline to the Med.

It seems then that this "might have been," Britain consolidating her grip on all of the Persian Gulf oil instead of only some of it, via developing Basra and thus being drawn south into Arabia early, has nothing to do with the question of what political configuration might have been hashed out between Britain and France from the former Ottoman lands to the west.

Now to use some imagination and thought try and make such a connection I have these:

1) Greater Syria is French, and the British-controlled "Iraq" oil company prefers not to rely on a French controlled channel.

The trouble with this is, OTL Iraq ran a pipeline to Syria, as well as another line to Jordan. It may be that the connection to French controlled ports was a secondary decision, dependent on the primary decision to ship oil west via British controlled territory, and the Syria line was added on by French diplomacy as a branch.

So, perhaps having France control the whole sweep of GS might indeed divert the British-run company to the sea routes, which Britons assume are under RN protection. Certainly Suez would be so the sea voyage is a matter of circumnavigating Arabia.

But why would Britain allow France such a vast prize? What compensation does Britain get?

2) Greater Syria is neither British nor French--somehow or other the postwar situation puts power in the hands of a domestic, presumably Arab, dynasty. OTL the most likely houses to be able to seize such power would have been those in alliance with Britain against the Ottoman regime anyway so I would expect that a truly independent Syria would still be amenable to a British deal whereby oil is sold to GS and then resold in their Levantine ports at a fair profit to all parties and this is more attractive than shipping the oil around Arabia.

i'd have to leave it to experts in the field to judge whether it is not rather absurd to have a truly independent Arab power controlling the described western territories but not Iraq. Also to weigh in on the question of how much of a diplomatic strain it would be for Britain to continue to control Iraq, its fertile land as well as its oil, next to a free Arab megakingdom. Would there not be strong sentiments in Greater Syria that Iraq also belongs under its crown? These tensions might block a pipeline deal and strongly force the southward expansion desired--but also raise the tension on the issue of British dominance over Arab territory.

It is interesting how the previous post is written as though "Iraq" was an independent country, along with the other League Mandates to the west. When of course in fact, although the League of Nations mandate on the patron powers of Britain and France was a solemn charge to "prepare the territories for independence," in fact both European powers largely treated the mandates as part of their colonial holdings in the interwar years. That Britain thus had a "red" pathway over land from Iraqi oil fields to the Eastern Med shore line may have been crucial in the decision to develop pipelines west instead of developing the Gulf; that French control of all westward land routes might have discouraged it, are relevant factors but obscured by not highlighting the fact of colonial dominance turning the territories into puppets. In the context of the Great War Entente and convergence of interests in the interwar period, rivalry between Britain and France was at an all time low, common interests were often plain, and I am not at all sure French control of all routes west would discourage pipeline building at all.

Independence for the Arab regions on the other hand would probably make any deal between the kingdoms of Greater Syria and Iraq a bit dicey looking to both sides. Both might anticipate hostility and war, with the possibility each house attempting to conquer the territory of the other looming. Note that Iraq gets all the oil, Syria has none of it.

In the context of Great Power politics in the late Great War and post-war context, such independence looks unlikely; the European powers are too overbearing to allow it, and they will make their policies for the region to suit themselves--which seem likely to me to favor pipelines west, even if France controls all of that route. Both European nations want to buy and use the oil at lowest cost.

It looks to me like the question of whether to run the oil west via pipelines versus developing Basra was primarily a question of economic rationality in the context of where the primary market for oil consumption was. Separating either Iraq or Syria from Turkish rule was a function of an Entente victory in the Great War, and this implies a cordial relationship between France and Britain.

We might go farther back, and with a POD in the later 19th century prevent the union of Britain and France and have Greater Syria evolve from French aggression in the Levant, while Iraq is carved off the Ottoman Empire by British schemes in the Gulf, so the border between them is hostile, which would indeed tend to force the British to develop Gulf ports and ship the oil by sea through the Suez canal, which the British can be expected to hold on to tenaciously in view of their interest in the larger Indian Raj. This would of course also motivate the British to try to deny some of the stipulated Syrian holdings by taking Sinai and as much of Palestine and southern Jordan as they could; conceivably they fail in this. Success for France in taking all of Syria would seem, in view of their poor relations with native Muslim peoples, to hinge on a massive military effort, one that would be problematic for them to project so far east in the face of strong British opposition. Both European powers would be facing considerable native unrest I would think. It is not clear to me why the French would fight so hard for the middle tier between the Turkish Ottoman core in Anatolia and strategic and populous Egypt and oil-rich Iraq.

Nor is it clear, in the context of a victorious Entente, why France would be granted such a grandiose mandate--admittedly one lacking any extremely valuable resources--coming so close to the vital canal--and Britain settle for less than OTL. Perhaps it is the outcome of a quicker Entente victory, with the Ottomans stubbornly fighting on and the Entente powers being forced to extend the war in the east to break it, with heavy French forces sent to Lebanon and then fighting their way south while the British for some reason are held by stiff resistance to just holding the Egyptian borders, and conniving their way from the Gulf ports north to take Iraq presumably with lots of Indian troops?

However we slice it, to prevent preoccupation with westward pipelines to Mediterranean ports, I think we need some sort of wall of hostility on the Syrian/Iraqi border. Otherwise economic rationality would prevail.
 
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