Epistemic status: Un-fact-checked musings

The film Lawrence of Arabia is the definition classic film. It’s probably so classic in fact that you have almost certainly heard about it, even if you’ve never seen it. This was the case for me until last night, when I finally decided that I needed that particular hole in my cultural knowledge filled.

It was an excellent film; mostly due to Alec Guiness but sometimes also due to other reasons. However, as a work of history, it struck me as immediately incorrect. Of course, most people with that same cultural hole of as me probably assumed that the film, released in 1962, was hopelessly mistaken (I’ve never met anyone my age that trusts historical movies from the 60s). But it was the way in which Lawrence of Arabia was wrong that surprised me.

The film begs to be interpreted through the lens of the Great man theory of history. Lawrence (or as our auto-generated subtitles referred to him, “orange”), is clearly a great man. His decisions repercuss throughout history, and no one can come to an understanding of a history of the Middle Easy or of the Arab people’s modern predicament but through him. In particular, the film charges Lawrence with uniting the nomadic Arab population, introducing them to the idea that they, as a people, might have some shared interest on this Earth. In one particularly revealing scene, primitive Sheikh Auda Abu Tayi complains to Lawrence;

The Arabs? The Howeitat, Ageyil, Ruala, Beni Sahkr, these I know. I have even heard of the Harith. But the Arabs? What tribe is that?

Of course, we the audience are supposed to immediately realize that what Auda lacks is nationalism. He fails to recognize the shared destiny of his tribe and others like it. We are supposed to appreciate that while our understanding of nationalism is so ingrained, it was at one time unnatural, as it is to these anachronistic nomads today. And it is due to Lawrence that the Arabs achieve the innovation of nationalism.

This is ridiculous.

It is ridiculous for many reasons, but to appreciate them, we must first deconfuse the film’s treatment of Arabs.

Arabs are not Bedouins. Bedouins are certainly Arab, but Arabs are a much larger and more diverse group than Arabs, and Arab nationalism was a much broader project in the 19th and 20th century.

The main reason that the film’s core contention, that Lawrence molded the Arabs into a people, is wrong, is that Arab nationalism was well under way before the First World War even began. The al-Fatat movement had begun in response to Turkish nationalism, and had it’s headquarters in Damascus in 1914, before the Lawrence of the film had ever liberated it. Furthermore, the founders of al-Fatat were decidedly not Bedouin; two were born in modern day Palestine and one in modern day Lebanon, far from the beautiful expanses of desert that punctuate the 3 and a half hour film.

Rustum Haidar

Rustum Haidar, Founder of al-Fatat and noticeably not a Bedouin

What then, of that Great Man of History, T. E Lawrence? Well, straightforwarldly, perhaps his role in history is not so great. He did not form Arab nationalism out of whole cloth. Perhaps his most impactful decision was to promise the Arabs an Arab state, something that was certainly part of Allied policy at the time. At best, his personal charisma lent this promise more weight amongst the Arabs than was otherwise it’s due. At worst, his main political and historical contribution was of British wartime propaganda, in order to facilitate popular support for the war. At either extreme, he is certainly not a Great Man of history, and his personal decisions were not essential to understanding our world.