Henry McMahon

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Henry McMahon

Sir Arthur Henry McMahon GCMG , GCVO , KCIE , CSI (born November 28, 1862 in Shimla , British India , † December 29, 1949 in London ) was a British soldier , diplomat and High Commissioner for Egypt .

Life

Henry McMahon was born the son of a British general and joined the colonial Indian Army in 1885 after attending Imperial College in London before joining the Indian Civil Service in 1890 . He belonged to the rank of colonel of the border commission, which measured and determined the border between Balochistan , Afghanistan and the Persian Kingdom at Kuh-i-Malik Siah between 1896 and 1905 at the request of the Persians. Since he was involved in the survey work along the Afghan Helmand River , he undoubtedly also had a share in the division of the ancient Malik Sīstān between Afghanistan and Persia, which ultimately contributed to the demise of the once prosperous, ancient city of Shahr-e Gholghola . Between 1905 and 1911 he was the British Plenipotentiary in Balochistan, a protectorate dependent on British India in indirect rule .

From 1911 he worked as Foreign Minister of the Vice Kingdom of British India until 1914. In this capacity he was the British chief diplomat who wanted to define the northern border of the colonial Indian Empire with China and Tibet at the Shimla Conference in 1914 in the Shimla Convention . to which a map belonged, which wanted to define the border envisaged by the British for military reasons along the main Himalayan ridge, which did not correspond to the cultural, linguistic and political borders of that time. This line of demarcation was called the McMahon Line , but was never recognized by China, which did not grant sovereignty to British-influenced Tibet . The border named after him was first published in 1937.

1915 McMahon was to Cairo displaced, where he was a follower of Lord Kitchener British High Commissioner in Egypt on behalf of the British government of Prime Minister Edward Gray a secret correspondence of ten letters to the Sherif of the Hejaz , Hussein ibn Ali talked, whose family their lineage to the Prophet Mohammed and who at that time were considered the protectors of the Islamic holy places of Mecca and Medina . McMahon met with Hussein in Mecca and promised him Arab independence from the Ottoman Empire if the tribes led by Hussein should rise up against the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Lawrence of Arabia , with McMahon making the restriction " purely Arab land " that Hussein did not refer to Palestine . From an Arab perspective, the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement , which contributed to the division of the Middle East between France and Great Britain, and the Balfour Declaration , which offered Zionism the prospect of creating a “ Jewish home in Palestine ”, are seen as betrayal of the in the promises made in the Hussein-McMahon correspondence . McMahon's tenure in Egypt does not seem to have been very successful, possibly because of the war conditions, as he was replaced in 1916 by the Arabic-speaking Francis Reginald Wingate (1861-1953).

In 1919 McMahon became British Commissioner for the Middle East International Commission, which was convened as a peace conference.

Web links

Commons : Henry McMahon  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

swell

  • McMahon: Seistan Past and Present , Geogr. Journal, 1906, pp. 209ff

See also

predecessor Office successor
Horatio Herbert Kitchener High Commissioner for Egypt
1915–1917 		Francis Reginald Wingate
personal data
SURNAME McMahon, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McMahon, Arthur Henry (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH November 28, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Shimla , British India
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1949
Place of death London