Captain Mahan, General Gordon, and the Origins of the Term 'Middle East'

Author(s): Clayton R. Koppes

Source: Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), pp. 95-98
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4282584
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 Captain Mahan, General Gordon, and the
Origins of the Term 'Middle East'
Clayton R. Koppes

One of the paradoxes of the Middle East is the origin of its very name. Although
the Middle East has its own long and distinct history, the term by which it is
known today originated barely seventy years ago, and not in the region itself, but
in Europe. The designation 'Middle East' arose from the imperatives of late-
nineteenth-century strategy and diplomacy, which needed a name for the region
between the 'Near East', based on Turkey, and the 'Far East', based on China.
Both 'Middle East' and 'Near East' reflected a Europe-centred view of the world,
in which the strongest powers politically, economically, militarily, and (perhaps
to a lesser extent) culturally were European or European-oriented. Nevertheless,
as Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt have remarked, 'in spite of their recent origin,
their rather parochial outlook, and their obsolete global projection, these terms,
Middle East in particular, have won world-wide acceptance and are now used to
designate these countries even in regions for which in fact they lie to the North,
the West, or the South; even, most remarkable of all, in the Middle East itself.'1
It has been assumed that the neologism 'Middle East' originated, somewhat
surprisingly, with an American, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, in 1902. A
newly-discovered source reveals, however, an earlier use of the term by a British
officer, General Sir Thomas Edward Gordon, in 1900. Moreover, there is
evidence to infer that the 'Middle East' may have already gained broader
currency by that year.
Writing in the September 1902 issue of National Review, Mahan announced
his coining of the term: 'The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not
seen, will some day have its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar . .' 2 Mahan was
probably correct in saying he had not seen the term. As he struggled with the
article, eventually titled 'The Persian Gulf and International Relations', he
confessed to L. Maxse, editor of the National Review, that 'all these subjects are
new to me' and 'unusually troublesome'.3 He implored Maxse three times to
point out helpful magazine articles on the region. Indeed, Mahan finally overcame
his reluctance to write the essay only when Maxse increased his honorarium and
assured him that his earlier articles for National Review had been 'pretty generally
acceptable in England .. . '4 None of the Mahan correspondence preserved in the
Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C., contains a
reference to his use of the term.
Most of the article was devoted to a discussion of international relations in
general, especially in the Far East; the Middle East received but cursory atten-
tion. The title served as a convenient springboard for his topic and was calculated
to appeal to British readers, who were growing increasingly alarmed over Russian
ascendancy in Tehran. In view of the captain's objectives in the essay, and the
difficulty geographers, politicians, and historians had in identifying exactly which
countries compose the Middle East, it was understandable that Mahan did not
attempt a precise delimitation of the area. He implied that the Middle East
embraced the territory between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. His
concept of the region was essentially naval; as befitted the author of The Influence
of Sea Power Upon History, Mahan emphasized the military and commercial
importance of the area's sea lanes. 5

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 96 MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

Both the neologism 'Middle East' and Mahan's presumed role in its origin
were popularized by Valentine Chirol, chief of the foreign department of The
Times. Chirol had lived and travelled in India and several Middle Eastern
countries from 1876 to 1892 and had written two books on Eastern affairs; his
colleagues testified that 'the East was always nearest his heart'.6 Returning to
Persia and neighbouring lands while en route to India in 1902-1903, he filed a
series of twenty articles under the heading 'The Middle Eastern Question'. 7 A
few months later his book The Middle Eastern Question Or Some Political
Problems of Indian Defence appeared, in which he credited Mahan with having
'aptly christened "The Middle East" . . .8 The series and the subsequent book
marked the first sustained public use of the new term. To Chirol the Middle East
included 'those regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command
the approaches to India, and which are consequently bound up with the problems
of Indian political as well as military defence'. 9
Present-day historians have continued to accept Chirol's and Mahan's version
of the origin of the term. In the most thorough study of the subject, Roderic
Davison summarized his discussion of Mahan's National Review article: 'And
so the term "Middle East" first saw the light of day just over a half-century
ago'. 10 Independently of Davison, Lewis and Holt reached a similar conclusion
in 1962.11 The findings of Davison and Lewis and Holt are repeated in recent
literature on the Middle East. 12
Mahan evidently was unaware of the publication, two-and-a-half years earlier,
of an article by General T. E. Gordon, entitled 'The Problem of the Middle
East'. 13 Gordon began his article in The Nineteenth Century with his customary
directness: 'It may be assumed that the most sensitive part of our external policy
in the Middle East is the preservation of the independence and integrity of Persia
and Afghanistan'. 14 The title and first sentence of the general's article, the only
times he designated the area as the 'Middle East' in the essay, contain the earliest
uses of the term to come to light. Gordon neither claimed to be coining a new
term nor felt it necessary to define the area for his readers. This suggests that
Gordon himself mhay not have invented the term and that it may have been
gaining currency, at least among persons conversant with the region. From the
article and from Gordon's service in India and Persia one may infer that his
Middle East would include basically the approaches to India and would be less
inclusive than the term has become.
Gordon's essay was essentially a synoptic review of great-power relations with
Persia throughout the nineteenth century, with emphasis on the increasingly tense
British-Russian rivalry there at the century's end. He wrote from the perspective
of a man whose adult life had been spent in the defence of India and the problems
of Russian penetration through Central Asia.15 Born in 1832 Gordon entered
the army at seventeen. Assigned to India for almost four decades, he saw
active duty in the northwest-frontier campaign against the Mohmands (1851), in
the Indian Mutiny (1857-1859), and in the Afghan War (1879-1880). From 1889
to 1893 he served as military attache with the British delegation in Tehran,
headed by Sir Henry Drummond Wolff. Gordon travelled extensively throughout
Persia and took a liking to the people, whom he described as 'a great improve-
ment on the other Orientals of the further East . . .'. The Persians, he found,
possessed 'a happy disposition and bright imagination . . . All classes . . .
showed that their manners and ways had been favourably touched and turned by
a softening civilization of ancient date.'16 After his retirement from government
service in 1893, Gordon was elected a director of the London board of the

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 ORIGINS OF THE TERM 'MIDDLE EAST' 97

Imperial Bank of Persia and returned to Tehran in 1895 and 1898 to conduct
negotiations for the bank. 17 In Persia Revisited, based on his sojourn there in
1895, Gordon did not use the term 'Middle East'. He cited his Nineteenth Century
article in his autobiography, A VariedLife, published in 1906, but did not discuss
the use of the term. 18
It is therefore clear that Captain Mahan was not the first to record the term
'Middle East'. That distinction belongs to General Gordon who, if less famous
than Mahan, was better informed on the problems of the Middle East and their
relation to international affairs. Chirol's popularization of Mahan's role is
somewhat puzzling, for it is unlikely that such a well-informed correspondent
would have been unaware of Gordon's essay. Since Mahan's article appeared
only a few weeks before Chirol's first dispatch was printed, the memory of
Mahan's article, coupled with the captain's greater renown, may have over-
shadowed Gordon's contribution.19 Finally, Gordon's casual reference to the
'Middle East' implies an earlier, more general, use of the term than has previously
been assumed.20 It is likely that the origins of the term 'Middle East' have yet to
be traced completely and that further research will prove fruitful.

NOTES

1. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt, ed., Historians of the Middle East (London: Oxford
University Press, 1962, reprinted 1964), p. 1. See also Tareq Y. Ismael, Governments and
Politics of the Contemporary Middle East (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1970), p. 3.
2. Alfred Thayer Mahan, 'The Persian Gulf and International Relations', National
Review, XL (September 1902), p. 39, reprinted in idem, Retrospect and Prospect (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1902), p. 237. Cf. idem, The Problem of Asia and Its Effect Upon Inter-
national Relations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1900), p. 27, where Mahan does not differen-
tiate the area of the Middle East from the mass of Asia. Although some of Mahan's
biographers cite his article 'The Persian Gulf and International Relations', none
discusses his supposed coining of the term. See Charles Carlisle Taylor, The Life of
Admiral Mahan, Naval Philosopher (New York: George Doran, 1920), pp. 119-122;
W. D. Puleston, Mahan: The Life and Work of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan (New
Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1939), pp. 236-237; William E. Livezey,
Mahan on Sea Power (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947),
pp. 20, 60.
3. Mahan to Maxse, April 10, 1902, Box 3, Alfred Thayer Mahan Mss., Library of
Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.
4. Mahan to Maxse, June 20, 1902, ibid.; see also Mahan to Maxse, January 24, 30,
March 7, 1902, ibid.
5. Mahan was at the peak of his influence in Britain at the turn of the century; see,
for example, William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890-1902 (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, second edition, 1965), pp. 419-423. The respect accorded Mahan was
not universal, however. Lord Curzon, for example, complained: 'I may say that I have
the poorest opinion of Captain Mahan as a political philosopher: and if a poorer were
possible, it would be that which he arouses as a political prophet. I think he is positively
the worst writer of any mark who ever argued international questions: and I am never
free from the suspicion that my inability to understand what he is driving at arises in the
main from the fact that he has not the slightest idea himself.' Minute, June 1901, Foreign
External Secret Files, India, National Archives of India (New Delhi), June 1901, 118-
238, quoted in Briton Cooper Busch, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1894-1914 (Berkeley
and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1967), p. 247m.
6. The Times, October 23, 1929. The basic source on Chirol's life is his autobiography,
Fifty Years in a Changing World (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927). A sketch of Chirol
appears in Dictionary of National Biography, 1922-1930, pp. 182-183. See also The
History of the Times, volume III, The Twentieth Century Test, 1884-1912 (London: The
Times, 1947), p. 763.

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 98 MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

7. The Times, October 14, 17, 20, 25, 27; November 10, 12, 20, 24; December 15, 23,
25, 26, 30, 1902; January 14, 17; March 4, 30; April 21, 24, 1903.
8. Valentine Chirol, The Middle Eastern Question Or Some Political Problems of
Indian Defence (London: John Murray, 1903), p. 5.
9. Ibid.
10. Roderic Davison, 'Where Is the Middle East?', Foreign Affairs XXXVIII (July
1960), p. 667, reprinted in Richard Nolte, ed., The Modern Middle East (New York:
Atherton Press, 1963), p. 17.
11. Lewis and Holt, Historians of the Middle East, p. 1. Lewis and Holt acknowledge
their debt to J. C. Hurewitz.
12. Bernard Lewis, The Middle East and the West (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 1964; reprinted New York; Harper & Row, 1966), p. 9; Ann Williams,
Britain and France in the Middle East and North Africa (London: Macmillan, 1968), p.
In; Ralph Magnus, 'Political-Strategic Interests', in George Lenczowski (ed.) United
States Interests in the Middle East (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for
Policy Research, 1968, reprinted 1971), p. 5. For a geographer's viewpoint, see G. Etzel
Pearcy, 'The Middle East - An Idefinable Region', Department of State Bulletin, XL
(March 23, 1959), pp. 407-416.
13. T. E. Gordon, 'The Problems of the Middle East', The Nineteenth Century,
XXXVII (March 1900), p. 413.
14. Ibid.
15. On Gordon see his autobiography, A Varied Life (London: John Murray, 1906),
and his Persia Revisited (London: E. Arnold, 1896), and Roof of the World (Edinburgh:
Edmonton and Douglas, 1876). A sketch of Gordon appears in Dictionary of National
Biography, 1912-1921, pp. 217-218, and an obituary in The Times, March 24, 1914.
16. Gordon, A Varied Life, p. 244, also pp. 269, 310-314. See also idem, The Reform
Movement in Persia (London: Central Asian Society, 1907), and idem, Persia Revisited,
passim.
17. Gordon, A Varied Life, p. 250, discusses his mission to Calcutta on behalf of the
Seistan railway project in place of Wolff, who was ill. See also Rose Louise Greaves,
Persia and the Defence of India, 1884-1892 (London: The Athlone Press, 1959), pp.
211-212. On some of Gordon's other activities in Persia, especially those in connection
with the Imperial Bank, see Firuz Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864-1914:
A Study in Imperialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 247, 322, 588,
and Foreign Office documents, Public Record Office, London F.O. 60/630.
18. Gordon, A Varied Life, p. 338.
19. None of the sources cited in n. 4 supra discuss Chirol's role in furthering the use
of the term.
20. Prof. E. A. Bayne has suggested that the term may have arisen in the India Office
in the mid-nineteenth century. Bayne to the author, October 21, 1971.

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