Q: On creating Transjordan

What is the veracity of this alleged quote by Churchill, which has many versions? “In his later years, he liked to boast that in 1921 he created Transjordan (6/7ths of the British Palestine Mandate, today’s Kingdom of Jordan, ‘with the stroke of a pen, one Sunday afternoon in Cairo.’” The source cited by The New York Times is “Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation-State,” edited by Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen, page 189.)

I ask because versions of this quote are repeatedly cited by anti-Churchill wallahs as proof for when they indict him as the culprit for the state of the Middle East today. Their point is that Churchill created artificial states to (pick your poison) steal oil, perpetuate British control, create pro-Western dictatorships, keep the Muslim world in a state of constant unrest etc. They never mention that Jordan is comparatively an oasis of serenity relative to its neighbours.  —A.M., Delhi

A: Unproven, but not out of character

Churchill occasionally rattled off some provocative remark to tease oversensitive colleagues or see how they reacted. Comments such as “Indians breed like rabbits” or the supposed Tory campaign slogan “Keep England White” (both hearsay with only one source) were at best wisecracks. Lacking much provenance, they are nevertheless accepted by the ignorant as formal proclamations of Churchill’s deeply held beliefs.

Churchill might well have let the “stroke of a pen” remark fly to a colleague. But we can find no published source relative to Transjordan, or the Kingdom of Jordan. Of course, Jordan was a creation of the 1921 Cairo Conference, presided over by Churchill. Good accounts are in David Stafford, Oblivion or Glory: 1921 and the Making of Winston Churchill (2019) and Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 4, World in Torment 1917-1922.

The quote as you state it, however, could be a muddled version of what Churchill actually said in Parliament on 24 March 1934. The venue he named was Jerusalem not Cairo:

I have no hostility for the Arabs. I think I made most of the settlements over fourteen years ago governing the Palestine situation. The Emir Abdullah is in Transjordania, where I put him one Sunday afternoon at Jerusalem.

Churchill did not fancy “nation building,” as we call it today. He had no great hope for democracy in the Arab states he set up in 1921. His highest hope was in what became Israel, which he first referred to as a homeland, not a state. Nevertheless, he thought, the West must do what it could, to use its influence for good. After all, that influence is better than some of the other influences that occur from time to time. Suppose the Soviet Union had reorganized the Middle East in 1921?

Another stroke of a pen: India’s military legacy

Sometimes a chase through the Churchill canon yields unrelated but rewarding results. In searching for “stroke of a pen,” I came across this passage by historian Arthur Herman, in his excellent book Gandhi & Churchill, page 497. It refers to the Indian Army Office Corps, where Churchill also played a part. This will be of interest to you and other Indians laboring in the vineyard in search of truth:

For every disgruntled or discouraged subaltern who joined Japan’s puppet Indian National Army, a dozen KCIOs and VCOs served with distinction on every front in the British war effort, from Burma and Eritrea to North Africa and Italy. And the minister of war who created the KCIOs in 1920 had been Winston Churchill. Without realizing it, he had at the stroke of a pen secured India as part of the future Allied cause and created independent India’s military legacy. Churchill never grasped the full magnitude of what he had done, but Gandhi nearly did. Many times over the years he had spoken of brave Indian soldiers who would defend their country and then return home to carry the future burden of freedom.”

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We should be grateful to Professor Yasmin Khan. Why? Because in deploring the absence of Indian troops in the new movie Dunkirk, and the tragic 1943 Bengal famine, she blames “the imperial state,” not the usual culprit, Winston Churchill:

At least three million Bengalis died in a catastrophic famine in 1943, a famine that is almost never discussed. The famine’s causes were a byproduct of the war, but as Madhusree Mukerjee has proved in her book Churchill’s Secret War, the imperial state also failed to deliver relief. Many soldiers signed up as volunteers to fill their belly.

Curiously, the link above is a semi-critique in Harpers, itself a mixture of truth and counterfactuals. For a balanced review of Churchill’s Secret War, see Arthur Herman, “Absent Churchill, India’s 1943 Famine Would Have Been Worse.” (Arthur Herman was nominated for a Pulitzer for his book Gandhi & Churchill—an elegant account of the two leaders. It captures both Churchill’s generosity of spirit and Gandhi’s greatness of soul.)

An endless supply of victims…

Yes, the film leaves out Indian troops at Dunkirk. But why stop there in the quest for victims? The film omits the Canadians. It doesn’t show one Belgian! Except for a couple of nurses, it leaves out women. (A gallant band of female telephonists of the Auxiliary Territorial Service were among the last off the beaches. Heroic women were in some of the rescue craft. Others worked 24/7 in Admiral Ramsay‘s Dover bunker, which directed the operation.)

If we are going to accuse Britons of amnesia over the Indian war effort, we ought at least to grasp the facts. Like Prof. Khan, we begin with the 1943 Bengal Famine. Arthur Herman was right: without Churchill and his cabinet, it would have been worse. See also the Indian historian Zareer Masani: “Last Word on the Bengal Famine,” 2021.

Churchill mined his resources for Indian food supplies—amidst global conflict, strained shipping, hostile U-boats, and shortages everywhere. He even tried to substitute Iraqi barley, which Indians wouldn’t eat. In vain he pleaded for help from Roosevelt. He got much from Australia. Not all of Australia’s grain ships bypassed India, as the author of Churchill’s Secret War has stated.

To tell the truth…

It is quite untrue that “the imperial state failed to deliver relief.” The opposite is the case. Vast supplies of grain reached Indian ports. There are other villains in the story. The Japanese seem always to escape blame—yet their inroads into Burma and India had much to do with the shortages. So did hoarding by Indian grain merchants. Before accusing “the Imperial state” of starving the Bengalis, one ought to consider more than one discredited book.

After the British left the government contained famines (1967, 1973, 1979, and 1987 in Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Gujarat respectively).  That is greatly to India’s credit. Of course there was no global war going on. There were no Japanese submarines torpedoing cargo ships in the Bay of Bengal.

The famine is not “almost never discussed.” The evidence is there for any researcher to consider. See for example “Did Churchill Cause the Bengal Famine?” (Hillsdale College Churchill Project). Review the proof itself  in Hillsdale’s The Churchill Documents, Volume 19 (scroll this link to “Bengal Famine”).  Read Arthur Herman’s Finest Hour article. Consult “Churchill and the Bengal Famine” on this site. The record is clear. Again and again and again.

Churchill on Indian contributions

Since Prof. Khan is concerned about British “amnesia” over Indian contributions in the Second World War, perhaps this will enlighten her. Author Mukerjee often quotes Churchill’s postwar assertion: “India was carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small island.” That quote is badly truncated. Pray consider the full context. (Chapter XII, The Hinge of Fate, 1951):

British Government officials in India were wont to consider it a point of honour to champion the particular interests of India against those of Great Britain whenever a divergence occurred…. Contracts were fixed in India at extravagant rates, and debts incurred in inflated rupees were converted into so-called “sterling balances” at the pre-war rate of exchange…. we were being charged nearly a million pounds a day for defending India from the miseries of invasion which so many other lands endured. We finished the war, from all the worst severities of which they were spared, owing them a debt almost as large as that on which we defaulted to the United States after the previous struggle.

It is worth adding that the Indian Army was professional and volunteer, made up of those who chose it as a career, unlike conscripts from Britain who had no choice.

In Victory, Magnanimity

Churchill’s magnanimity will out. Those who accuse him of racist disregard for the Indian people might look at what he writes next. Think about it:

But all this is only the background upon which the glorious heroism and martial qualities of the Indian troops who fought in the Middle East, who defended Egypt, who liberated Abyssinia, who played a grand part in Italy, and who, side by side with their British comrades, expelled the Japanese from Burma…. The loyalty of the Indian Army to the King-Emperor, the proud fidelity to their treaties of the Indian Princes, the unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers, both Moslem and Hindu, shine for ever in the annals of war….

Nearly three million Indians volunteered to serve in the forces, and by 1942 an Indian Army of one million was in being, and volunteers were coming in at the monthly rate of fifty thousand…. the response of the Indian peoples, no less than the conduct of their soldiers, makes a glorious final page in the story of our Indian Empire.