ABSTRACT
The British concept of guided development in the Middle East emerged during the drafting of Foreign Secretary Anthony Edens Mansion House speech of 29th May 1941. The latter current remains historically neglected, either by Cold Warera historians who generally proceed from 1945 or by postcolonial perspectives that generally dismiss the Second World War as an exogenous affair that merely froze political life for its duration. But such interpretations overlook the formative awakening of US official sensibilities to the Middle East during the Second World War, coming largely via pejorative interactions with British schemes for guided development. The United States war aims, describable as New Deal internationalism, sought to replace such old world spheres with a new order based on market-brokered trade and development for lesser nations. Subsequent forecasts were of returns from guided development, including petroleum operations, restoring Britain to macroeconomic solvency within ten years of peace. Yet guided development depended on Lend-Lease for almost everything.
