Middle East Turmoil and the Tragedy of the Forgotten King-Crane Commission Report 

Counterfactuals – what if so and so had happened? – are always dicey. For example; would there have been a full-scale Vietnam War if President John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated? There is no way to prove that hypothesis right or wrong. In the case of today’s Middle East, one could pose the counterfactual question about a forgotten 1919 report about the fate of the Middle East. Would there be turbulence and violence in the region today if President Wilson had not fallen ill and his vision of self-determination and decolonization been acted upon as recommended by certain members of the King-Crane Commission he created?

The governance and history of the region might have been different had alternative decisions been made at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Woodrow Wilson had one vision, the major European powers – Great Britain, France and Italy – had another. At the crucial post-World War I moment decisions were being made about the Middle East, the U.S. president fell ill; his vision for the Middle East was overruled by the European powers. The King-Crane Commission’s travels and Report have been tragically forgotten.

What was Wilson’s vision? It is easily understood in his idea to form a commission to visit the region to ask the people their desires about how they were to be governed. Before decolonization and self-determination became fashionable, Wilson sent a group to the Middle East to ask the people in the defeated Ottoman Empire how they wanted to their lives to be organized. As James Zogby noted, the King-Crane Commission did “the first survey of Arab public opinion.”

Wilson stated in a January 1918 address that the end of the War created the possibility for “an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development” for peoples previously under Turkish rule. That possibility was diametrically opposed to the 1916 Sykes-Picot secret treaty between France and Britain by which European powers would carve up the failing Ottoman Empire to establish their spheres of influence.  

Wilson’s commission was headed by Henry King, the President of Oberlin College and Charles R. Crane, a wealthy Chicago industrialist and Wilson financial supporter. 

The King-Crane Commission’s Report was truly “America’s Forgotten Middle East Initiative,” the title of Andrew Patrick’s thoroughly researched and exhaustive study. (The official title of the final Report was “Report of the American Section of the International Commission on Mandates in Turkey.”)  

The Commission had two mandates: 

1) “to separate from the Turkish Empire certain areas comprising, for example, Palestine, Syria, the Arab Countries to the East of Palestine and Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia and Cilicia…and to put the development of their people under the guidance of Governments which are to act as Mandatories of the League of Nations.”

2) “form a definite opinion…of the divisions of territory and assignment of mandates which will be most likely to promote the order, peace and development of those peoples and countries.” 

In order to do that, the Commission members visited 36 cities and towns over 42 days, read numerous petitions and interviewed 1,800 individuals. From Istanbul, the Commission visited several places in Greater Syria, among them Damascus, Jerusalem, and Beirut. 

The final Report represented different opinions within the Commission. On the one hand, representatives from the major powers wished to continue some form of colonial domination such as in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. On the other side were Wilsonian idealists like Crane who were trying to see how far some form of quasi-independence could be established.

Patrick summarizes the final Report’s recommendations as follows:

1) Greater Syria was to be under the Mandate of one major power, either the United States or Great Britain, with a constitutional monarchy. 

2) Lebanon was to have considerable autonomy within Greater Syria with an eventual French Mandate.

3) Because of regional hostility to the idea, a separate state for Jews was not recommended.

4) The United States would have the Mandate for the new International Constantinopolitan State under the League of Nations.

5) Mesopotamia would be under Great Britain’s Mandate.

While one could question how mandates could be part of decolonization or self-determination, it should be noted that the mandates were to be under the League of Nations, quite different from stark colonialism. As Patrick notes about the commisioners’ Report; “the commissioners emphatically argued that a mandate should not be treated as a colony. The mandatory power’s duty was to ‘educate’ the peoples of these regions in ‘self-government’ and help them create ‘a democratic state’ that protected its minorities. The mandates would help develop an ‘intelligent’ citizenry with a ‘strong national feeling’ whose overarching goal was ‘the progress of the country.’” 

What happened to the Report? The Commission reported to the American Peace Commission in Paris. A copy of the Report was delivered to the White House, but most historians believe that Wilson’s illness prevented him from reading the Report. The Report was buried in the Department of State archives until it was discovered in 1922.  In early December 1922, the New York Times published the entire Report with a short introduction by a journalist. 

The journalist, William Ellis, called the Report “one of the great suppressed documents of the peacemaking period.” Charles Crane wrote in the 1930s; “The interests that were opposed to the report, especially the Jewish and the French, were able to persuade President Wilson that, as Americans were not going to take any future responsibility for Palestine, it was not fair that the report should be published so it was pigeonholed in the archives of the State Department.”

As far as the impact in the region, Patrick notes that “When it appeared that the commission was going to have little impact on decisions made in Paris…more populist nationalism emerged.”

Would the situation be different today if the recommendations had been followed and Wilson’s vision implemented? It is significant to note that the August 5, 2025, New York Times front-paged the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement to show how Britain and France have changed their historical, colonial ambitions in the region to now favor Palestinian statehood. No mention was made of the King-Crane Commission and Wilson’s vision. 

Forgetting the King-Crane Commission Report has had dire consequences. As Richard Drake wrote in 2014: “The tragedy of the King-Crane Report lies not in the failure to implement its recommendations…but in taking no notice of the document at all. It remains the best historical source available for understanding Arab concerns about the Middle East in 1919. We live today with the consequences of having ignored the Arabs at that fateful moment.”

While counterfactuals are dicey, what is not dicey is that today we live with the consequences of the 1919 frustrated voices and desires the King-Crane Commission heard that were quickly forgotten. The tragedy of Andrew Patrick’s “America’s Forgotten Middle East Initiative” has been with us for over 100 years.

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