Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Margaret Lothian Bell (1868-1926) was an English author and adventurer who influenced the formation of Iraq, when, in 1932, that state gained independence from the United Kingdom.

"The best known traveler in the Middle East and Arabia in the years before World War I, the British intelligence bureau in Cairo hired her as an advisor on Arabia."

Bell's life was unusual, and her accomplishments were unique for a British woman living during the reign of Queen Victoria. An accomplished equestrian, she spent years leading her own personal expeditions across the sands of Middle Eastern deserts - on either horse or camel. Reputedly a person of a forthright charm, she managed to befriend British men, including T.E. Lawrence, British women, including Vita Sackville-West, Iraqi and Bedouin men, including Faisal, and women. She was comfortable in the drawing rooms of the British upper class, the government offices of the British civil service, the mountains of the Alps, and the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, which she founded.

Early life

Her mother died when Gertrude was three, after her brother Maurice's birth. This increased her bonds with her father, Hugh. She was a literate child; in the first known letter, written when she was five, she told her grandmother, "My dolls have given me great amusement. You wer very good to get them for me." Her governesses found her a "handful". Her father remarried when she was eight, and she formed an excellent relationship with her stepmother, Florence Oliff.

She led her brother Maurice into endless adventures, with Maurice often falling from walls while Gertrude landed gracefully, a foretaste of her later mountaineering.

Unusually for a girl in the late 19th centure she went to Queen's College in Harley Street, first as a day scholar living with her maternal grandmother, and then as a boarder. She was emphatic about the studies she liked and disliked, and rejected music and Scripture.

Education

The Bell family had been growing in status during her girlhood, opening opportunities.

She enrolled at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 1886. Bright and athletic, she was the first woman to attain a "First" at Oxford.

First exposure to the Middle East=

She initially travelled to the Middle East to visit an uncle, who was then the British Ambassador to Persia, stationed in Tehran. "In 1899 Bell studied Arabic in Jerusalem. During the spring of 1900 she went to visit the Druse in the mountains of southern Lebanon. Bell also visited Palmyra, the ruins of a Roman city in Jordan. She described it as "a white skeleton of a town, standing knee-deep in the blown sand." She then went mountain climbing in the Alps and took two trips around the world with her brother."

Iraq

To a large extent, she was accepted by both the British and Iraqi societies of her time and the perspective she gained from understanding these peoples became invaluable during her career. When the lands that are now Iraq became removed from the political domination of the Ottoman Empire by mandate from the League of Nations in 19XX, the next step in government of the region was an open question. The fact that rich supplies of oil were likely to be present intensified the interest of all concerned.

Gertrude Bell argued that, rather than be allocated to Indian rule, the native people of Iraq should control their own government.