Bunsen Committee

The Bunsen Committee was a British commission empowered to study and recommend policy on the division of the Orient. In Edward Said’s account, it belongs to a wider machinery of imperial planning: Britain and France prepared to partition Asiatic Turkey even as their rivalry over influence in the region continued.

Purpose and Imperial Context

Britain and France held overlapping interests in the territory of the weakening Ottoman Empire. Britain controlled Egypt and Mesopotamia and, through agreements with local rulers, exerted influence over the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Suez Canal, and much of the land between the Mediterranean and India. France pursued its own projects in the region and presented itself as protector of Christian minorities. Despite this competition, the two powers agreed in principle that Asiatic Turkey should be partitioned when the opportunity came.

Planning and Recommendations

Before and during the First World War, secret diplomacy aimed first to organize the Near East into spheres of influence and then into mandated or occupied territories. In Britain, committees were authorized to examine policy and recommend how the region should be divided. The Bunsen Committee was one of these commissions; the account identifies its role in the planning process but does not specify its individual recommendations.

Relation to Anglo-French Partition Plans

The committee’s work belonged to a broader effort to manage Anglo-French rivalry through the allocation of geographical space. The most famous joint Anglo-French team to emerge from these commissions was headed by Mark Sykes and Georges Picot. The plans sought an orderly division that could also ease tensions between the two imperial powers. They were shaped by the expectation that an Arab rising would eventually occur: Sykes argued that Britain and France needed better relations if such a rising was not to become a curse rather than a blessing. The Bunsen Committee is thus presented as part of the institutional preparation for imperial partition, not as an isolated inquiry.