The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence

The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, which is described by a Middle Eastern Website here, was a conversation between the Sharif of Mecca Husayn bin Ali and Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt. The conversation was about the political future of the Arab nations, who at the time were under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The Arab nations were already moving in the direction of the large-scale revolt against the Ottomans, and the British took that sentiment as an opportunity to defeat the Ottomans by strongly encouraging the Arab nations to revolt. The Arab nations had previously offered up the idea of an Ottoman Arab revolt in 1914 in the Damascus Protocol, which basically declared that were the Arabs to revolt, the British would guarantee independence for Arabia. Because the Ottomans had not entered World War I on the side of the Germans yet, the British refused this deal because the British wanted to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. But once the Ottomans entered World War I against the British, the British sought revolt from the Arabs. The Arabs saw their conversation with the British as an agreement, and mobilized a military force that then attacked the Ottomans in 1916.