Gilbert Clayton

Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton , KCMG , KBE , CB ( April 6, 1875 in Ryde , Isle of Wight ; † September 11, 1929 in Baghdad ) was a British intelligence officer and colonial official who played a significant role in shaping the Middle East in the Time played during and after the First World War .

Life

Clayton was born to Lieutenant Colonel William Clayton and, like many of his ancestors, pursued a military career. He was trained at Isle of Wight College and the Royal Military Academy Woolwich and received his officer license in the Royal Artillery in 1895. Transferred to Egypt, he learned the Arabic language and took part in Kitchener's Nile expedition as head of a Maxim battery in 1898 , for which he was Mentioned in Despatches .

After the campaign ended, he entered the Egyptian army on a ten-year contract and was quickly promoted. In 1902 he went to Sudan as a civil administrator , where he was stationed in Wau . In 1903 he returned to Cairo and became a staff officer at the headquarters of the Egyptian army. In 1908 he became the private secretary of the Sirdar and Governor General of the Sudan Reginald Wingate , who resided in Khartoum . In 1912 he married.

In 1913, Clayton returned to Egypt, where he became an agent for Sudan and chief of intelligence in the Egyptian army. After the beginning of the First World War, Clayton, now a colonel , became head of all British intelligence services in Cairo. Together with Ronald Storrs , he played a central role in establishing the Arab Bureau and in sparking the Arab Revolt . In 1917 he became Edmund Allenby's political advisor and was raised to the rank of Brigadier-General.

After the war, he followed Allenby as an advisor to the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior when he became High Commissioner for Egypt in 1919. From 1922 to 1925 he served as Chief Secretary in the British League of Nations Mandate for Palestine , where he advocated a narrow interpretation of the Balfour Declaration . From 1925 to 1927 he was special envoy to King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud of Najd and Hejaz , with whom he concluded several agreements on the border between Transjordan, Iraq and what would later become Saudi Arabia . In early 1929 he was appointed High Commissioner for the Mandate Iraq and was involved in the negotiations on the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930. However, in September 1929, at the age of 54, he had already succumbed to the consequences of a heart attack.

Fonts

• An Arabian Diary (edited by Robert O. Collins, University of California Press, Berkeley 1969)

Web links

• Photos in the National Portrait Gallery

predecessor	Office	successor
Henry Dobbs	High Commissioner for Iraq 1929	Francis Humphrys