Aside from the policy of the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, there were two other factors that led to the loss of the Caucasus to the Bolsheviks. The first of these was that special and discordant element in the region, the Armenians – who immensely complicated matters. The second was Britain’s continuing and purposeless hostile […]
Lloyd George gave the coup de grace to the Russian Whites in his infamous Guildhall speech of 8 November 1919. He made the speech without consulting his Cabinet colleagues and it had the effect of a bombshell. As Harold Nicolson wrote the diplomacy of Lloyd George was most of all characterised by its privacy – […]
As early as the end of January 1919 Lloyd George indicated to the Allied Supreme Council that, despite the influx of troops over the previous mouths, he saw the British occupation of the Caucasus as a temporary phenomenon. On 6 March the Inter-Departmental Conference on Middle Eastern Affairs under Lord Curzon, to which the Cabinet […]
British policy with regard to Russia and the Caucasus was formed in the Imperial War Cabinet. This was founded in 1916 after Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister. Its function was to concentrate power in the hands of the few (rather than the 22 of the normal Cabinet) so that the War could be […]
In January 1919 General George Milne, who led the British military in the Caucasus, wrote the following letter to his superior, Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, telling him just what the British military thought of the various peoples of the Caucasus: “I am fully aware that the withdrawal of the British […]
The Year of 1918 was a very significant one for the Azeribaijani people, one that is being marked in a series of centenary commemorations presently being held in Azerbaijan, the state that came out the events of that year. In March of 1918 the Azerbaijanis in Baku were the victims of a substantial massacre by […]
