Review

Reviewed Work(s): Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia by Gertrude L.

Bell
Review by: H. B. R.
Source: The Geographical Journal , Jun., 1921, Vol. 57, No. 6 (Jun., 1921), pp. 463-464
Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British
Geographers)

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/1780800

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Wiley and The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal

This content downloaded from

34.192.2.131 on Fri, 04 Sep 2020 05:04:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 REVIEWS 463
ASIA

Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia.? Miss Gertrude L.

Bell, C.B.E. London : H.M. Stationery Office. 1920. Pp. 149. 2s. net.
Perhaps Blue Books and White Papers have acquired their reputation for
dryness unjustly; but it is a commonly accepted belief that the information
they contain, though undeniably valuable, is so unattractively presented as to
preclude any ordinary man or woman from digesting it. In this White Paper
(a substantial volume) by Miss Gertrude Bell, whose name, by virtue of her
travels, is well known to all students of Middle Eastern affairs, we have a
striking departure from the old traditions. Nor is her book less remarkable
for the matter it contains than for the manner in which this is treated. When
news was received last summer of " regrettable incidents " in Mesopotamia and
a general state of chaos throughout the country, the British public became
concerned as to the Government's policy, and correspondence in the Press
revealed a rather remarkable ignorance of British activities apart from military
operations. It is with the civil administration that Miss Bell deals, and
although the period under review includes the years during which Mesopotamia
was an important theatre of war, she keeps military history very properly, and
very skilfully, in the background.
In any opinion on the efficiency of British administration in Mesopotamia
comparisons must inevitably be drawn between the new order and the Turkish
r&gime, especially as it was considered advisable, in the initial stages of our
occupation, not to destroy the old system root and branch, but rather to cut out
the tangle of weeds and ingraft reforms gradually. As we read this Review
and observe these reforms in process of growth, it becomes abundantly clear
that the most formidable difficulty with which our administrators were faced
was the cumbrous inefficiency of the old system of " government by sedentary
officials according to minute regulations framed at Constantinople for Western
Turkey." We learn on the first page: " It is not too much to say that the
Mesopotamian Wilayats of Basrah, Baghdad and Mosul had reached the limits
of disorder consonant with the existence, even in name, of settled adminis?
tration." And again : " Instead of utilizing the power of the shaikhs the Turks
pursued their classic policy of attempting to improve their own position by the
destruction of such native elements of order as were in existence. . . . To
recognize local domination and yoke it to his service lay beyond the conception
of the Turk, and the best that can be said for his uneasy seat upon the whirl-
wind is that he managed to retain it." Such was the status of authority in the
country in which, side by side with the conduct of military operations on a
large scale, we had to organize and set in motion a system of administration:
a task the difficulty of which is only equalled by the extraordinary interest of
this story of its fulfilment.
In the second chapter of the book a clear idea is given of the framework of
British reform, to which the details were added later, and in the three succeed-
ing chapters we watch the gradual application, and the working, of our
adminstrative measures in the ever-increasing area under our occupation. It
is these chapters that Miss Bell, with unobtrusive art, interweaves with brightly
coloured threads of local history and ethnology, of which she speaks with an
authority probably unequalled. By the exercise of a humour, and a gift for
anecdote, as refreshing as they are unexpected in a White Paper, personalities,
situations, and the mentality and mode of life of the tribesmen are portrayed
with a skill which is remarkable. As an instance may be cited the passages
dealing with the Holy Cities of Karbela and Najaf, where the perplexing inter-

This content downloaded from

34.192.2.131 on Fri, 04 Sep 2020 05:04:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 464 REVIEWS

play of politics, religion, and fan

of some of the prominent inhabi
The seventh and two succeedi
account, prolific in facts and fi
Administrations, with their su
prove of supreme interest to m
Nationalist movement in Mesopo
of last year. The summary of p
the explanation of the gradual c
with some revelations as to the m
on a situation which has sufter
the disorders were, Miss BelPs ac
ing conclusions which they su
result worth attaining : but the
putting on record the work acc
Mesopotamia during the last
on her fascinating report. H. B. R.

Through Central Borneo: An Account of Two

of the Head-Hunters between the Years 1913 and 1917.? Carl Lum?
holtz. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1920. Map and
Illustrations. Price 42.F. net.
The author of these volumes is well known as a zoologist and chiefly an
anthropologist, from his travels and investigations in Mexico during several
years and earlier in Queensland. In 1913 he projected an exploring expedition
to New Guinea," the promised land of all who are fond of Nature and ambitious
to discover fresh secrets." It was "a Norwegian undertaking," but it was
assisted by grants from, among other bodies, the Royal Geographical Society.
Intending to employ Dyaks as his carriers and helpers, he proceeded first of
all to Borneo to engage them. The outbreak of the Great War, however,
necessitated the abandonment of his plans, as it frustrated so many another
project. Till the return of better days Mr. Lumholtz decided to turn his atten?
tion to an exploration of Central Borneo, " large tracts of which are unknown
to the outside world." The ethnology rather than the geography of the country
appears from his narrative to have specially claimed his observation.
Borneo, which contests with New Guinea the distinction of being the largest
island ofthe Globe (apart from Australia and Greenland), is heavily forest clad,
and drained by large rivers rising in the central highlands, some of them deep
enough to be navigated by steam launches of considerable size for some 300 or
400 miles. The island possesses a humid climate and a temperature rarely
oppressive. The author's experiences led him to consider Borneo to be " quite
pleasant and probably less unhealthful than most equatorial regions, particularly
in the central part where malaria is rare and prickly heat does not occur." The
country is rich in valuable timbers, and excellent wild fruits; it possesses a
vast and magnificent flora, and its only very partially discovered zoological
treasures are remarkable for number and peculiarity. Mr. Lumholtz believes
that the Chinese were the first to make discovery of the island, but that it
received its earliest colonists from the Hindu kingdom of Madjopahit in Java.
These introduced Hinduism, tinged with Buddhism, and that in turn had to give
way to Islamism, now the widely recognized religion among those who inhabit
at least the sea borders of the country and river-banks in touch with the outer
world. The autochthonous inhabitants of the interior remain pagans.

This content downloaded from

34.192.2.131 on Fri, 04 Sep 2020 05:04:31 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms