Squaring The Circle In Syria For Two Centuries

An excerpt from, “Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East” by Jonathan Parry, Princeton University Press, 2022, Pg. 224 – 227:

Until 1839, the salient feature of British religious activity in Syria was its failure to secure a foothold, and the Foreign Office’s lack of concern about that. However, Russia’s burgeoning interest in its Palestinian Jews was one sign that Syria was going to be both a political and a religious battleground. Its history, and its crucial geographical position in any conflict between Christianity and Islam, made this inevitable once the Eastern crisis developed. In 1840, Church of Scotland author J. G. Macvicar described it as “the keystone which unites Europe with Asia, the telegraph station between East and West,” and therefore the means of realising Isaiah’s prophecy to enlighten “Gentiles . . .to the ends of the earth.” The Damascus affair of spring 1840, discussed in chapter 5, could be seen as an indictment of Ottoman/Egyptian rule for inciting tensions between Catholics and Jews, but also as a shocking expose of French Catholic ambitions. The affair mobilised Jews, but also others, to scrutinise both aspects. In July, non-sectarian meetings in London, Manchester, and Portsmouth petitioned the Foreign Office against the persecution of Jews in the Middle East. The archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of Scotland formally asked the government to secure toleration for both Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire. The assumption that France was trying to promote Catholicism in Syria was a major cause of British public interest in the East. The decision by the other powers to remove Mehmet Ali created a debate across Europe about what should replace him in these religious heartlands. One pamphlet sent to the Foreign Office in 1840 insisted that it was “for the redemption of Canaan that God is now contending.”

If the Ottomans, the Egyptians, and the Catholics were all unsuitable rulers of Syria, might there be a benefit in encouraging the return of the Jews, under British or European protection? In late July 1840, nine days after the Treaty of London foreshadowed a power vacuum in Syria, Ashley considered that a scheme for Jewish restoration to Palestine might be practicable. In 1839, the Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore had floated the idea of acquiring land in Palestine and establishing a company to invest in Jewish agricultural settlement. This had led to (unfounded) press rumours that such a project was already under way. By August 17, there was enough momentum behind the idea for The Times to publish documents and an editorial on the idea of restoration, explicitly not on “scriptural grounds” but as “a new element of the Eastern question.” Ashley had in fact just raised the issue with Palmerston, who had written to Ponsonby suggesting that the Porte should provide incentives to wealthy Jews to settle there, since this would boost Syrian revenues and stability.

The idea of strengthening the Jewish presence in Palestine was now canvassed in two very different forms. Palmerston clearly envisaged some modest settlement under reformed Ottoman rule, initiated and funded by benevolent Western capitalists like Montefiore to help with Syrian economic development. However, many religious-minded people had the much more radical idea of a Jewish buffer state, in order to separate the sultan and Mehmet Ali. Several wrote to urge this on the Foreign Office. Two of them told Palmerston that, by re-establishing the state of Judea, he would “call . . .a nation into existence” and throw “a halo of glory” around his foreign policy. One correspondent pointed out that, assuming the Bible was true, Jewish restoration must happen one day. Another observed that Providence would frustrate any diplomatic solution to the Eastern question that ignored Scripture. Interest in the idea of a Judean buffer state is not too surprising, since most British children were more familiar with the geography of Old Testament Palestine and the twelve tribes than with that of modern England. In 1847, the government inspector noted that in some schoolrooms it was the only map available. In 1856, when the British civil service initiated competitive examinations for entry, candidates for junior clerkships in the education division were required to draw a map of Palestine’s territorial divisions at the time of Christ’s birth. While Palmerston and Montefiore saw Jewish colonies through the prism of capital investment and liberal modernity, Ashley and Lindsay imagined the recreation of an Old Testament idyll. “Vestiges of the ancient cultivation” already abounded, so if the Jews became “once more the husbandmen of Judaea and Galilee,” the land would “burst . . . into universal luxuriance—all that she ever was in the days of Solomon.”

In fact, hopes for Jewish settlement did not monopolise public discussions about how to keep the Ottomans, Mehmet Ali, and the French out of Syria. Sir William Hillary campaigned for southern Syria to be a sovereign state under a new chivalric body that he was actively publicising, the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The order, he claimed, was the heir to the Crusader tradition of the Knights Hospitaller. Frederick Bevan proposed an independent Palestine with the Church of England as its established Church. Nicholas Crommelin urged “a free state, similar to Hamburgh,” open to commercially minded inhabitants of all nations.

The Foreign Office batted away all these ideas. Palestine’s population was 85 percent Muslim; it contained a Muslim Holy City. There was no Jewish political movement capable of governing a state. Even Montefiore’s investment plans remained undeveloped. The only justification for the intervention of 1840 was the restoration of Ottoman sovereignty. Any buffer state would require European policing. The European powers would squabble for dominance in it. The new French prime minister Guizot was rumoured to be preparing for a plan for the internationalisation of Jerusalem, together with European guarantees for the Christians of Syria. This might restore French predominance in Syria and please French Catholic voters. Palmerston and Metternich were intensely suspicious: “religious protections pave the way for political dismemberments.” However, Metternich himself, like the other European leaders, was being bombarded with suggestions from the public for a Christian or Jewish kingdom in Palestine. He pressed the Porte to increase the autonomy of the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem; as a result, the governor was given special responsibility for the protection of his Christians.

Prussia was particularly keen to stop any plans for Jerusalem that gave the Catholic and Orthodox Churches special rights in Syria. It wanted to work with Britain in demanding recognition for Protestantism as well. Its initial proposal was that Syrian Christians should be protected by three European residents, acting on behalf of Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants respectively. Protestants would have joint Anglo-Prussian protection and a place of worship within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This plan was almost as unrealistic as the idea of a buffer state, but it indicated the Protestant seriousness of the new Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. He saw his calling as the promotion of Christian unity and regeneration, facilitated by Ottoman decline. He loathed the papacy, as did his leading advisor Christian Bunsen, who had been removed from his role as Prussian envoy to the Vatican in 1838 by papal pressure. Both men wanted a collaboration with Britain to promote the Protestant religion in the Middle East as the only viable basis for the eventual global reunification of the Church.