Arnold Wilson
Born | United Kingdom | 18 July 1884
---|---|
Died | 31 May 1940 Near Eringhem, France | (aged 55)
Allegiance | United Kingdom |
Service/ | British Army British Indian Army Royal Air Force |
Years of service | 1903–1921 (Army) 1939–1940 (Air Force) |
Rank | Lieutenant colonel (Army) Pilot officer (Air Force) |
Unit | 32nd Sikh Pioneers No. 37 Squadron RAF |
Battles/wars | First World War
Iraqi revolt of 1920 Second World War
|
Awards | DSO |
Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson
In the 1930s, Wilson drew controversy for expressing support for Francisco Franco and sympathy for Nazi Germany, albeit he privately expressed disgust after visiting a concentration camp in 1936. During the war, he volunteered to fight, saying "I have no desire to shelter myself and live in safety behind the ramparts of the bodies of millions of our young men."[3][4][5]
Early life and career
Wilson was born in 1884 and educated in England at Clifton College, where his father James Wilson was a headmaster. His elder half-sister was the leading civil servant Mona Wilson and his younger brother was the tenor Sir Steuart Wilson.[6]
Wilson (aka "A.T.") was tall and strong. He began his military career as an army officer 19 August 1903, having been awarded the King's Medal and sword of honour at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, being commissioned on the Unattached List for the British Indian Army. After he spent a year attached to the 1st battalion the Wiltshire Regiment in India, he was appointed to the Bengal Lancers and posted to the 32nd Sikh Pioneers, on 18 December 1904.[7]
Wilson famously saved money travelling back to Britain on leave by working as a stoker to
In 1904 he went to
In 1907 Wilson was transferred to the
First World War
In January 1915, as the British were moving troops from India into Mesopotamia through the Persian Gulf and Basra, Wilson was designated as the assistant, and then deputy, to Sir Percy Cox, the British political officer for the region.[11] Based in Baghdad, he then became the acting civil commissioner for Mesopotamia. The problem remained that there was no official "Arab Policy"; it had not been defined in law nor by the Civil Service. India wanted Mesopotamia as a province; but Arabists from Cox downwards wished for a semi-autonomous policy separate from the Arab Bureau in Cairo. Policy was made ad hoc; but Wilson disagreed.
During his tenure in Mesopotamia Wilson worked to improve the country's administration according to the principles he learned in India. In Wilson's view the priority was to reconstruct and stabilise the country, by establishing an efficient government and administration as well as a fair treatment and political representation of the various ethnic and religious communities (i.e. in the case of Iraq:
Capt Wilson told me the staggering news that he had been appointed to Tehran ... Capt Wilson and I are excellent colleagues and the best of friends and I know I can do a good deal by seeing people ... I am going to compile an intelligence book on Persia.[12]
However, after the First World War he found himself progressively opposed to other British officials who believed that Arab countries should be granted independence under British supervision.
Post World War One
In 1918, Wilson became acting civil commissioner over the territory that would become known as Iraq.
In April 1920, at the
Having achieved the rank of brevet lieutenant-colonel in August 1918, he retired from the Indian Army in August 1921.[19]
In the summer of 1920 Wilson proposed a compromise, suggesting that
Interwar decades
Across the 1930s Wilson undertook a great number of extracurricular activities, such as chairman of the
Wilson was responsible for the large exhibition of Persian art at Burlington House in London in 1931.[21]
Wilson published his travelling and political diaries as Thoughts and Talks, More Thoughts and Talks and Walks and Talks Abroad with the Right Book Club.[22][23] In addition to his writing, Wilson served as editor of The Nineteenth Century and After between 1934 and 1938.[24]
Politics
In 1933 Wilson was elected in a by-election as the Conservative MP for Hitchin. He described himself as a "left-wing radical Tory".[25]
Like his half-sister Mona Wilson, Wilson published extensively on what he termed "left wing" issues such as workmen's compensation, the costs of funerals, industrial assurance, and old age pensions. These researches arguably influenced related postwar policies.[26]
Before the
George Orwell called Wilson a Fascist, although he also praised his courage and patriotism.[28]
Second World War
However, in October 1939 after the outbreak of the war, he joined the
Legacy
Wilson was immortalised as Sir George Corbett in the 1942
His book The Persian Gulf was published in 1928. S.W. Persia: Letters and Diary of a Young Political Officer 1907–1914 was published posthumously in 1941.[citation needed]
Arnold Wilson is commemorated in the scientific names of two species of reptiles:
Sir Arnold's personal papers are held at the London Library, London, UK.[citation needed]
See also
- Iraqi revolt of 1920
References
- ^ Robert Pearce, 'Wilson, Sir Arnold Talbot', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) (Oxford University Press, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008. Accessed 13 June 2021.
- ^ "UK Parliament - British War Medal".
- ^ a b Margaret George, The Hollow Men: An Examination of British Foreign Policy Between the Years 1933 and 1939. London, Frewin, 1967. (p. 149)
- ^ a b "How far did the UK aristocracy's love of the Nazis really go?". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
- ^ a b Longreads (10 October 2018). "To Heil, or Not To Heil, When Traveling in the Third Reich". Longreads. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
- ODNB. Retrieved 9 March 2017.
- ^ April 1905 Indian Army List
- ^ "Rory for London". Rory for London.
- ^ Townshend, When God Made Hell, p. 281
- ^ Townshend, pp. 281–2
- ^ Wilson, A.T. 1930. Loyalties; Mesopotamia, 1914-1917: A Personal and Historical Record; from the outbreak of war to the death of General Maude. London, UK: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Gertrude to Florence Bell, Baghdad, 30 August 1918, Letters## (ed.), I, p.461
- ^ Wilson, A.T. 1931. Mesopotamia, 1917-1920: A Clash of Loyalties. A Personal and Historical Record. London, UK: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Timothy J. Paris, "British Middle East Policy-Making after the First World War: The Lawrentian and Wilsonian Schools". Historical Journal 41.3 (1998): 773-793 online.
- ^ Timothy J. Paris, Britain, the Hashemites and Arab Rule: The Sherifian Solution (Routledge, 2004).
- ^ Robert McNamara, The Hashemites: The Dream of Arabia (2010).
- ISBN 978-1-107-04254-4.
- ^ Eli Amarilyo, "History, Memory and Commemoration: The Iraqi Revolution of 1920 and the Process of Nation Building in Iraq". Middle Eastern Studies 51.1 (2015): 72-92.
- ^ Supplement to the Indian Army List January 1939
- ^ Michael Weatherburn, "Arnold T. Wilson, the New Victorians and the Forgotten Technocrats of Interwar Britain". (Imperial College MSc thesis, 2009).
- ^ Wilson, Arnold Talbot, Persian Art: An Illustrated Souvenir of the Exhibition of Persian Art at Burlington House, London (1931)
- ^ Rodgers, Terence. "The Right Book Club: text wars, modernity and cultural politics in the late thirties". Literature & History 12.2 (2003): 1–15.
- ^ "Right Book Club". Publishing History. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
- ^ Pearce, ODNB
- ^ Marlowe, John (1967). Late Victorian: The Life of Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson.
- ^ Farmer, Ann (2008). By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign.
- OCLC1042099346.
- ^ George Orwell, The Complete Works of George Orwell, Volume 16 (1986)
- ^ "Blue Blood in Flanders". Time. 17 June 1940. Archived from the original on 14 December 2010. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
- ^ "Record for L7791 on lostaircraft.com".
- ^ "Casualty". www.cwgc.org.
- ISBN 0-7509-1819-5.
- ^ David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation (1991)
- ^ "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)". IMDb. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
- ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Wilson, A.T.", p. 287).
Bibliography
- Fromkin, David (1989). Henry Holt & Co, New York.
- Griffiths, Richard (1989). Fellow travellers of the Right: British enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9.
- Keay, John (2003). Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East. W.W. Norton & Co, New York.
- MacMillan, Margaret (2003). Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World. Random House, New York.
- Marlowe, John (1967). Late Victorian: the life of Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson.
- Meyer, Karl E.; Brysac, Shareen Blair (2008). Kingmakers: the Invention of the Modern Middle East. New York, London: W.W. Norton. pp127–56.
- Paris, Timothy J. "British Middle East Policy-Making after the First World War: The Lawrentian and Wilsonian Schools". Historical Journal 41.3 (1998): 773-793 online
- Wilson, Arnold Talbot. A Periplus of the Persian Gulf.
- Wilson, Arnold Talbot (1941). S. W Persia: Letters and Diary of a Young Political Officer 1907–1914.
External links
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Arnold Wilson
- Winning his spurs as a stoker—this includes a photograph of Wilson, taken around 1916
- [1]
- Newspaper clippings about Arnold Wilson in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW