The 1921 Cairo Conference and its legacy

5:30pm-7:30pm, Knox-Shaw Room, Sidney Sussex College , Friday 18th October, 2024

Called by Winston Churchill in 1921, the Cairo Conference set out to redraw the map of the Middle East in the wake of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The summit established the states of Iraq and Jordan as part of the Sherifian Solution and confirmed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—the future state of Israel. No other conference had such an enduring impact on the region.

C. Brad Faught, in his new book, demonstrates how the conference, although dominated by the British with limited local participation, was an ambitious, if ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to move the Middle East into the world of modern nationalism. Faught reveals that many officials, including T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell, were driven by the determination for state building in the area to succeed. Their prejudices, combined with their abilities, would profoundly alter the Middle East for decades to come.

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception.

C. Brad Faught is Professor of History and Global Studies at Tyndale University (Canada). He has studied at multiple institutions, including the University of Oxford, and is the author of the first comprehensive history of the 1921 Cairo Conference, published by Yale University Press.

Sir John Jenkins was British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from June 2012 to January 2015. He joined the Foreign Office in 1980.

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Host or Publisher Centre for Geopolitics