Lawrence and the Arabs

An interesting early biography of T.E. Lawrence and his part in the Arab Revolt during WWI, written with the permission of Lawrence himself. Author Robert Graves takes a mostly defensive tone throughout the book; contemporary criticisms of Lawrence are often dissolved against contradictory criticisms by others or the author's own accounts of events from first-hand sources. We're also led to believe that Lawrence was ultimately humble and wanted little to do with his own myth, which seems questionable given the his involvement in the making of the book.

Graves spends most of the book detailing where Lawrence was at a particular time and the details of which tribes were involved in which raids as you might expect from a much drier history. Luckily, it's saved by often-humorous anecdotes of Lawrence's interactions with members of the different tribes (almost any incident involving Auda Aby Tayi is a personal favorite.) However, there's much less emphasis on Lawrence's psychology than you might expect from a more modern biography by somebody like Ron Chernow. To it's credit, this still does make the book interesting for anybody who wants to learn about the history of modern Arab states, irregular warfare on the Arabian peninsula, or managing a team of enemies.

Some major portions of Lawrence's personal experience are conspicuously missing, such his long solo journey undercover to Damascus to plan with secret members of the Arab independence movement. Also missing are details of his repeated capture and torture by Turkish troops. Maybe it's for the best that we don't know the gruesome details of his torture, but its absence makes it difficult to piece together an understanding of what made him tick, what made him abandon his principles, what made him ambivalent to his own death and willing or unwilling to inflict it on others.

Notably included in the book are his early explorations in Arabia as a student, the stunning surprise capture of Akaba, the capture of Damascus, dozens of instances of him shaming his followers by ostentatious feats of self-deprivation, and his post-war careers as an assistant to Churchill and later as a member of the R.A.F.. The pre- and post-war periods do well in adding more to the story than you would learn just by watching Peter O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia." Interestingly, though the film is supposedly based on Lawrence's own "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," there were moments that I though ere surely taken directly from this book. Maybe that's always the case with a well-written history. I also feel that Frank Herbert - author of the Dune series - must have read this book, for all its references to desert prophets (prince Feisal), tribal names (Bani Sakhr), empire politics, and central narrative of an outsider being half-adopted into the desert lifestyle. There's even a bit of Howard's Conan the Barbarian (I don't think one influenced the other but instead share their root in a medieval romanticism) in the way that Lawrence rejects the "civilized warfare" that churns mechanistically through millions of bodies on the Western Front.

As for addressing fundamental questions about Lawrence, the book seems to sidestep taking a stance. For the main question of Lawrence's complicity in pumping up Arab hopes for a post-war independent state while knowing that the Brits and French won't have it, Graves seems to want to explain it away by telling us that Lawrence felt bad (but did it anyway). When Lawrence ordered take-no-prisoners war crimes, Graves is again defensive by setting up that the Turks were worse in their slaughter of civilians. I get the sense that some of this failure of imagination comes from widely-held racial and political prejudices of the book's intended audience who by default viewed the Arabs as barbarians and Turks as pure evil.

Ultimately, the book is an interesting play-by-play of the Arab revolt and serves as well-disguised propaganda for Lawrence as the "officers never duck" hero who made it all happen.