PBA Galleries

Includes:

• Approximately 55 small snapshot photographs of scenes in Africa and the Middle East.
• Approximately 25 real photo postcards of scenes in Africa and the Middle East.
• Approximately six U.S. government internal reports of foreign policy, assessments of U.S. and foreign military strength and policies, etc.
• Approximately 25 manuscript or typescript letters, reports, essays, political evaluations, etc., relating mostly to affairs in Africa and the Middle East.

Plus related items.
 

Fascinating and revealing little archive of source material on the ever-volatile Middle East and northern Africa, including Ethiopia. Charles Wellington Furlong (1874-1967), trained as an artist, headed the art department at Cornell for eight years before heading off to explore the world, venturing to North Africa in 1904, then Tierra del Fuego, Venezuela, and West African islands.  He joined the U.S. Army in 1914, serving to the end of WWI, and was a member of the American Peace delegation in Paris after the war. He remained associated with the military and U.S. intelligence, his knowledge of the Middle East and Africa proving of great value. The many reports indicate he was a close observer of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and also the general turmoil in the Middle East. The photographs concentrate on this latter region, with views of Aden, Fort Rutba in Iraq, Morocco, camels on the desert, the Iraqi Mounted Police in Baghdad, a street scene in Damascus, etc. A number of the photographs are captioned by Furlong on the back. Among the reports are assessments on the strength of the Ethiopian Army in 1935; a U.S. government evaluation of “Some of the Military Features of the Italian-Ethiopian Situation,” a paper querying the direction of the Middle East after becoming free of the yoke of Turkish rule, the situation in Palestine, etc.