Henry McMahon (diplomat)

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 kicked at the Imperial College London visit in 1885 in the colonial Indian Army, before moving to the British administration in India Indian Civil Service joined in 1890. He belonged to the rank of colonel of the Boundary Commission that surveyed the boundary between Baluchistan, Afghanistan and the Persian Kingdom in cow -i -Malik Siah on Persian desire 1896-1905 and commit. Since he was involved in the survey work along the Afghan Helmand River, he had no doubt on the division of the ancient Malik Sistan between Afghanistan and Persia share, which ultimately contributed to the demise of the once thriving, ancient city Shar -e- Gholgola. Between 1905 and 1911 he was a British Agent in Baluchistan, a dependent protectorate of British India in indirect rule.

Since 1911 he worked as Secretary of the Vice - Kingdom of British India until 1914. In this capacity he was a British chief diplomat, who wanted to set the northern boundary of the colonial Indian Empires of China and Tibet at the conference at Shimla in 1914 in the Shimla Convention, which included a map that the envisaged by the British frontier was set on military grounds along the Himalayan main ridge, which did not meet the cultural, linguistic and political boundaries of the time. This demarcation was called McMahon Line, never recognized by China that the Tibet under British influence zubilligte no sovereignty. Named after his limit was first published in 1937.

1915 McMahon was transferred to Cairo, where he, on behalf of the British government of Prime Minister Edward Grey a secret correspondence of ten letters with the Sherif of the Hejaz, Hussein ibn Ali entertained as successor to Lord Kitchener British High Commissioner in Egypt, whose family their lineage to the Prophet Mohammed returns and were considered at that time as the protector of Islam holy sites of Mecca and Medina. McMahon met with Hussein in Mecca and asked him the Arab independence against the Ottoman Empire in view, if the run of Hussein strains should raise with Lawrence of Arabia against the Ottoman Empire, where the restriction McMahon " purely Arab country " made that Hussein was not referring to Palestine. From the Arab point of view is the secret Sykes- Picot Agreement, which contributed to the division of the Middle East between France and Great Britain and the Balfour Declaration, which established Zionism to create a " Jewish homeland in Palestine " in view, as a betrayal of the in the promises Hussein -McMahon correspondence made ​​construed. McMahon's tenure in Egypt seems, perhaps, not to have been very successful because of the circumstances of war, for he was in 1916 replaced by the Arabic-speaking Francis Reginald Wingate ( 1861-1953 ).

In 1919, McMahon British Commissioner at the peace conference convened in Middle East International Commission.