‘if I, a quite unimportant and unofficial person, were to …’: Gertrude Bell’s Agency in the Middle East in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

Gertrude Bell had been conducting journeys in the Middle East for much of the fifteen-year period before her recruitment to British Military Intelligence in November 1915. While her interest in archaeology had given her a personal motivation for exploring some of the less well visited areas of the Ottoman Empire, this knowledge made her uniquely qualified to advise the British about certain key regions during the First World War. This article considers how Bell made the most of her unofficial status, using both her background and the networks she had built over the course of her life to promote herself and to develop her spheres of influence. Her work, conducted independently and unofficially before the First World War, enabled Bell to operate with increasing agency in official contexts. Informed particularly by material from the Gertrude Bell Archive, this article focuses on Bell’s private letters and diaries and her publications to clarify questions about the motivations and significance of her travels not addressed in more formal records.