Eastern Committee

The Eastern Committee (1918–1919) was an interdepartmental committee of the War Cabinet of the British Government created towards the end of World War I. It's creation was approved by the War Cabinet on 13 March 1918 and it held the first of 49 meetings on 28 march 1918, and having prepared British desiderata for the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 dissolved itself on 7 January 1919. It was in turn replaced by the ad-hoc Interdepartmental Committee for Middle Eastern Affairs, Lord Curzon of Kedleston(Lord President of the Council) still in the chair while deputizing for Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Arthur Balfour in his absence at the Peace Conference.

The full members were the Chairman Curzon , Balfour, Edwin Samuel Montagu Secretary of State for India, a War Cabinet Secretary and Lancelot Oliphant (Persia) and Mark Sykes (Middle East) from the Foreign Office were to act as liaison officials with the Secretary and attend when their area was under discussion. (Russia would be handled on an ad-hoc basis).

Earlier in March 1917, the War Cabinet had set up the Mesopotamian Administration Committee (Besides Curzon as chairman and Sykes as secretary, members included Lord Alfred Milner, Charles Hardinge, Sir Arthur Hirtzel, Sir Thomas Holderness, Sir Ronald Graham and Sir George Clerk. Sir Henry McMahon also became a member.) Later, its powers having been expanded to cover Middle Eastern matters, its name was changed to the Middle East Committee and this, together with the Foreign Office Russian Committee and the interdepartmental Persia Committee, became the Eastern Committee.