What do we love about Hilary Clinton? She is a compassionate woman of tender sensibilities. She is a global minded woman and a tireless servant of her own country. She travels widely and is feels at home abroad or in constant transit. She is unafraid of promoting the just interests of people of other countries. She has a rare intelligence and intuitiveness for the subtitles of international relations and important world leaders and dignitaries everywhere adore her. Her independence and outspoken adherence to her own moral compass earns her enemies, but also wins her the devotion and trust of her allies.
All of those things could also easily be said of Gertrude Bell in her time. Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell is the remarkable biography of this fascinating woman. If you’ve never heard of Gertrude, there is a reason for that. She enjoyed the insulating privilege of wealth. Her family’s wealth not only funded her exploits, her family’s respectability prevented speculation. Gertrude enjoyed freedom and exercised her curiosity freely. She would spend her life minimizing her risks (so as not to worry her beloved father) and avoiding the press (to avoid becoming notorious – an embarrassing thing for a Victorian woman.)
Of course, eventually, her accomplishments became so many and so great that there was no keeping them tucked away only in certain circles. She was an accomplished mountain climber, voracious scholar, map-maker, linguist, explorer, and eventually, diplomat.
It was Gertrude’s passion and curiosity that made her an expert in middle-east culture, poetry, language, and geography. It was Gertrude’s wealth that allowed her to travel the desert in the the appropriately lavish style to be accepted respectfully by Bedouin sheiks. It was her genuine interest and compassion that allowed her to engage in sincere relationships with the many tribes and leaders she met in the dessert. If she had not been these things, she would never have become, as she put it, “a Person.”
When the British began to take a political interest in the region, Gertrude was the logical person to advise them. She was from a prominent family, well educated, and not only studied the language, culture and politics of desert; she spoke it fluently, made archaeological and geographical expeditions regularly, and was on easy social terms with many of the tribal leaders.
It’s hard to imagine what Iraq and Jordan might look like today without her. Her steady moral compass and genuine love for her adopted people kept the pressure on Britain to ultimately fulfill their half-hearted promises of an independent Iraq free of English rule.
This book is not only a fascinating and thorough view of an extraordinary woman, it is a clear and detailed history of the middle east and very relevant to understanding today’s issues. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another 100 year for the next Hillary Clinton or Gertrude Bell.