De Bunsen Committee
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The De Bunsen Committee was the first committee established by the British government to determine its policy toward the Ottoman Empire during and following World War I. The committee was established on 8 April 1915 by British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, and was headed by Maurice de Bunsen. The committee submitted its report on 30 June 1915.[1]
The committee was established in response to a French initiative, to consider the nature of British objectives in Turkey and Asia in the event of a successful conclusion of the war. The committee's report provided the guidelines for negotiations with France, Italy, and Russia regarding the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.[2]
The members of the committee were as follows:[3]
- Sir Maurice de Bunsen, 1st Baronet, chairman
- Georges R. Clerk, representing the Foreign Office
- Thomas Holderness, representing the India Office
- Henry Jackson, representing the Admiralty
- Charles E. Callwell, representing the War Office
- Hubert Llewellyn Smith, representing the Board of Trade
- Mark Sykes, representing Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War
The impact of Mark Sykes,[4] who later negotiated the Sykes-Picot Agreement, on the committee was said to be "profound".[3] He did not sign the final report having been dispatched on instructions of the War Office at the beginning of June to discuss the committee's findings with the British authorities in the Near and Middle East and at the same time to study the situation on the spot. He went to Athens, Gallipoli, Sofia, Cairo, Aden, Cairo a second time and then to India coming back to Basra in September and a third time to Cairo in November (where he was appraised of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence) before returning home on 8 December and finally delivering his report to the War Committee on 16 December.
