Sykes picot original map, colors meaning?

by YachiruTheKittyKat

The sykes picot, i assume this is the original?

has 3 colors, i can guess blue is France and red is Brittan(i play eu4 after all)

the wiki mentions zionist involvement, but does not seem to spell things out, it also mentions the idea of a dutch mandate?

the map seems to be legit so what did the yellow part originally mean,

CptBuck

You are correct this map is the original diagram of the post-war mandates as drawn up by Sykes-Picot. It is, as you say, legit.

If you zoom in you can actually see Mark Sykes and F. Georges-Picot's signatures on the bottom right.

To answer your question, the basic idea was that the solid red territories would be directly ruled by the British and the solid Blue territories would be directly ruled by the French.

Area A would be nominally independent Arab territories under the French sphere of influence while area B would nominally independent Arab territories under the British sphere of influence. Note that huge portions of A and B are largely unpopulated desert, or, in the case of Transjordan, just weren't all that populous in the early 20th century.

The yellow on Palestine denotes the original intention that that territory was to be governed as a joint international zone of French, British and Russian (and possibly unspecified other) control.

The Sykes-Picot negotiations were a mess so it's not the easiest thing in the world to decide why they thought that territory was special but prior to the Balfour declaration I would argue it had less to do with Zionism than perhaps with romantic European notions about controlling the Holy Land.

In the end, this map doesn't actually represent the borders as they were drawn up in a number of important ways. France never took southern Turkey. Mosul province in modern north east Iraq went to the British. Palestine in the end was a direct British mandate and not made into an international zone.

This map also leaves out the other negotiations that were made to carve up the Ottoman empire as part of the agreement, most notably with Russia. Russia was to gain the territories north of Mosul as well as significant portions of the core Turkish lands, including Constantinople. That was until the Russian Revolution in 1917 and Russia's agreement to a separate peace.

edit: typo, source wise I always point to Western Imperialism in the Middle East: 1914-1958 for being quite good on this. As is Eugene Rogan's The Arabs: A History.

double edit: I'd love to see where you've found this reference to Dutch territory in the Middle East. I've never heard of this and would love to look into it.