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Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson KCIE CSI CMG DSO (18 July 1884 –31 May 1940) was the British civil commissioner in Baghdad in 1918–1920. Wilson served under Percy Cox, the colonial administrator of Mesopotamia (Iraq) during and after World War I, including the Iraqi revolt against the British in 1920. Wilson was the third Member of Parliament (MP) to be killed in World War II when serving as aircrew at the advanced age of 55. ==Early life and career== Wilson was born in 1884 and educated in England at Clifton College, where his father James Maurice Wilson was a headmaster. His younger brother was the tenor Sir Steuart Wilson. Wilson was tall and strong. He began his military career as an army officer in 1903, having been awarded the King's Medal and sword of honour at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He then served as an officer of the British army in India serving for six years with the Sikh Pioneer Regiment. In 1904, he went to Iran as a Lieutenant to lead a group of Bengal Lancers to guard the British consulate in Ahvaz and to protect the work of the D’Arcy Oil Company, which had obtained a sixty-year oil concession in Iran and was pursuing oil exploration in partnership with the Burma Oil Company. Wilson was an officer in the 32nd Sikh Pioneers, a regiment of the Indian Army and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. In 1907, Wilson was transferred to the Indian Political Department and sent to the Persian Gulf, where he served as a political officer, Wilson oversaw the discovery of the first oil site in the Middle East, Masjid-i-Suleiman in 1908. Soldier and senior administrator as Consul-General of Muhammerah (1909–11): he was put in charge of the Turko-Persian Frontier Commission.〔Townshend, When God Made Hell, p.281〕 He looked like the traditional figure of the 1857 Indian Mutiny in a top buttoned bright red tunic, the Indian Army uniform. "His flashing eyes, his beetling eyebrows, his close-cropped hair, his biblical quotations", recalled Gertrude Bell.〔Townshend, p.281-2〕 Wilson was a hard worker, a workaholic, who was tirelessly energetic, shifting mountains of paperwork. He inspired a younger colleague Harry Philby, while Hubert Young, a favoured subordinate found him domineering. In January 1915 as the British were moving troops from India into Mesopotamia through the Persian Gulf and Basra, Wilson was designated as the assistant, and then deputy, to Sir Percy Cox, the British Political Officer for the region. Based in Baghdad, he then became the acting Civil Commissioner for Mesopotamia. The problem remained that there was no official "Arab Policy" it had not been defined in law nor by the Civil Service. India wanted Mesopotamia as a Province; but Arabists from Cox downwards wished for a semi-autonomous policy separate from the Arab Bureau in Cairo. Policy was made ad hoc; but Wilson disagreed. During his tenure in Mesopotamia, Wilson worked to improve the country's administration according to the principles he learned in India. In Wilson’s views, the priority was to reconstruct and stabilize the country, by establishing an efficient government and administration as well as a fair treatment and political representation of the various ethnic and religious communities (i.e. in the case of Iraq: Arabs, Kurds, Persians, of religions such as Islam Shiite and Sunni, Christianity and Judaism). In doing so, he was nicknamed "The Despot of Mess-Pot". Capt Wilson told me the staggering news that he had been appointed to Tehran ...Capt Wilson and I are excellent colleagues and the best of friends and I know I can do a good deal by seeing people...I am going to compile an intelligence book on Persia.〔Gertrude to Florence Bell, Baghdad, August 30th, 1918, Letters (ed.), I, p.461〕 However, after the end of World War I, he found himself progressively opposed to other British officials, who believed that Arab countries should be granted independence under British supervision. In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, which followed World War I, he was among the few who successfully recommended adopting the Arab name Iraq, as it had been known for more than 1400 years by the whole Muslim and Arab world ever since the Arabs went to it, instead of the Greek name Mesopotamia which was only still being used by Westerners. This name change was intended to cover the planned northern expansion of the newly created country under British Mandate to include the oil rich Mosul region of Kurdistan, in addition to the Mesopotamian provinces of Baghdad and Basra. In 1920 he joined the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as resident director in the Persian Gulf. He worked for the company until 1932. In April 1920, at the San Remo Treaty, the League of Nations agreed to the British mandate over Iraq. In the spring and summer of 1920, various riots erupted across central and southern Iraq. These riots were often violently repressed by Wilson's administration. The total number of Iraqi casualties of these riots was estimated at 10,000 people. In the summer of 1920, Wilson proposed a compromise, suggesting that Feisal, the former King of Syria, be offered the Iraqi throne. This proposal was intended to obtain support from the Iraqi population as well as by the British officials who favored a controlled Arab independence. It was eventually accepted by the British Government and by Feisal, but Wilson would not be there to participate in its implementation. The British government decided not to follow Wilson's views, and instead grant independence to Iraq. The British government removed Wilson from his position in Iraq, and knighted him. Deeply disappointed by the turn of events, he left the public service and joined APOC as manager of their Middle Eastern operations. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Arnold Wilson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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