By Lea Chehabeddine [Edited by Mark Potter & Tertia Bloor]
The Balfour Declaration was a statement issued by Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary to Lloyd George, which announced the British support for the creation of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.[1] The motivations behind the issue of the Declaration are debated amongst historians. However, they can be summarised into four main factors: Britain wanted to appease influential Jewish people in foreign countries to gain Allied support and win World War I; Britain wanted to guard its territory that ‘bordered on the Suez Canal’ to protect its imperial interests in India; Protestant England felt a religious duty to help return the Jewish people to their holy land; and, finally, Britain was motivated by the promise of a self-governed settler society that would owe and protect Britain’s interests in the Middle East.[2] While each argument holds a degree of merit, the strongest historical argument is that the British government was driven by settler colonialism.
The argument that Britain wanted to win the war is rooted in the belief that anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jewish people overrode rational thought. It does not explain Britain’s continued push for the establishment of Israel after the war. The argument that Britain was protecting its colonial interests does not explain why Britain gave Palestine to the Jewish people, rather than simply taking the country for itself. The argument that the Declaration was driven by religious sentiment is irrational and overlooks Balfour’s political agenda. The idea of settler colonialism - a model of colonialism that involved the removal of the indigenous population, who were then replaced with another community - meant Europeans did not have to mix with the native people. This created a loyal, self-sustaining, strategic outpost of military and financial support for Britain, which is ultimately why the Balfour Declaration was issued.
The first argument for Britain issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917 was to appease the supposed Zionists in power, who would then help the Allies in war. Historians, such as Segev and Renton, argue that the Allies attempted to encourage Jewish people around the world, particularly in the United States, to pressure their respective governments into helping defeat the Central Powers, with the promise of the return to their homeland in Palestine.[3] This theory is supported by Arthur Balfour himself, who, in the War Cabinet meeting, concluded the decision to issue the Balfour Declaration on the 31st of October, emphasising the propaganda benefits to Allies as it would attract American, Russian, and even German Jewish people to the Allied cause.[4]
Balfour went on to state that the cabinet’s approval of the Declaration was ‘because of the influence it would be likely to have on the Jewish population throughout the world and the desirability of winning their sympathy, and not only that but their active support during the war’.[5] This shows that the desire for support during the war was a motivating factor for Britain to issue the Declaration. Segev even goes as far as to write that the Declaration was ‘the product of neither military not diplomatic interests but of prejudice, faith, and sleight of hand. The men who sired it were Christian and Zionist and, in many cases, anti-Semitic. They believed the Jews controlled the world’.[6] This argument contextualises and explains the mindset of the cabinet members in 1917, thus validating this argument. However, a common flaw within this argument is the fact that Britain continued to push for the creation of the state of Israel until 1948, over 30 years later, when the war had been won. This calls to question the other reasons for the issue of the Balfour Declaration that extended past 1918.
A second argument for Britain’s issue of the Balfour Declaration was imperial interests and the benefits Palestine offered the British Empire. The biggest imperial concern for Britain in Palestine was the issue of the Suez Canal and the sea-route to India. This was described as the ‘wasp waist of our Empire’ by Balfour, thus proving the importance of the possession of Palestine.[7] The canal brought the distance from London to Bombay down by around 4400 miles and London to Calcutta by 3800 miles.[8] Since the Declaration was issued, the overwhelming majority of historians who studied it - including George Antonius (1939), Balfour’s niece Blanche Dugdale (1940), Jonathan Schneer (2010), and Abigail Jacobsen (2011) - recognise the large part imperial concerns played in the issue of the Declaration.
The importance of imperial concerns is shown in Lloyd George’s five-man War Cabinet of December 1916, in which Lord Curzon (former viceroy of India) and Andrew Bonar Law (chancellor of the exchequer and deputy in the cabinet) were explicit about the imperialist motives behind the issue of the Declaration. Curzon stated that ‘Palestine is really part of Egypt […] strategically, Palestine is [a] buffer to Suez Canal’.[9] This direct reference to the importance of Palestine and the principal sea-route to India, the crown jewel of the British Empire, demonstrates the significance of the imperial concerns which drove the issue of the Balfour Declaration. Given the fact that Britain’s occupation of India, and therefore need for the Suez Canal and Palestine, lasted until 1947, Britain’s persistence in the creation of a Jewish homeland is explained, unlike the previous argument as the war had ended in 1918.
On the other hand, historians, such as Sahar Huneidi, similar to Segev and Renton, argue against the possibility of there having been any other imperialist factors driving the issue of the Declaration. Huneidi wrote that British military leaders ‘declared that Palestine was of no strategic value in defending the Suez Canal,’ and that the Cabinet Committee of Imperial Defence concluded that ‘Palestine was not as important strategically as once thought’.[10] Further critiques of this motivating factor include the question of why the Suez Canal itself was not colonised and, given the canal’s importance to the British, why had it been given to the Jewish people. This is explained by the settler colonialist theory: by placing a self-providing people in Palestine, they would conserve the canal, further allowing the British access to it and discounting the theory presented.
The third argument was that the issue of the Balfour Declaration was rooted in religious sentiment and British Protestant sympathy for the restoration of the Hebrews to their Holy Land. This reasoning is inherently irrational, as any sympathy for Zionism was overlooked by ‘a concern for the prestige and security of the Empire. Lloyd George would in fact seek Britain's advantage and God's purpose, in that order’.[11] Similarly, Jon Kimche argues that ‘for the moment […] it was the British Empire that needed help more urgently than the Jews’.[12] Predictably, the return to the Jewish homeland was not at the forefront of the British mind, as it was trumped by the desire to expand and protect Britain’s empire. Friedman argued that giving Palestine to the Jewish people was a tool to further safeguard the Suez Canal and easy access to India, stating that the ‘Jewish state under the protection of the British Crown […] would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire’.[13] British leaders believed Jewish people would be more trustworthy than Arab people when it came to protecting British interests. This proves that while the motivation to issue the Declaration was likely rooted in a desire for Jewish people, rather than Arab people, to be controlling British assets, this does not mean that the motivation behind the Declaration was a religious sentiment or desire to give the Jewish people a homeland.
The final explanation for the issue of the Balfour Declaration was settler colonialism and the British desire for a settler society within Palestine. By definition, a settler society is the removal and replacement of an indigenous population and the gradual development of a distinct identity and sovereignty. The settler colonialism argument is legitimised by Leo Amery, a member of the Cabinet Secretariat, who stated, during the issue of the Declaration, that Zionism was seen as a means of ‘establishing in Palestine a prosperous community bound to Britain by ties of gratitude and interest’.[14] This perfectly encapsulates the essence of settler colonialism. It portrays how Zionism would create a modern self-rolled British dominion which would, ideally, volunteer help to the Empire in its trials. This is further seen when former British chargé d'affaires in Petrograd and Sofia, Hugh O’Beirne, stated that Britain did not ‘propose to give the Jews a privileged position in Palestine for nothing but […] we should expect wholehearted support from them in return’ and they should be allowed to grow ‘strong enough to cope with the Arab population’, thereby enabling Britain ‘to strike a bargain for Jewish support’.[15]
To conclude, although several imperial, militaristic, and religious reasons contributed to Britain’s issue of the Balfour Declaration, the primary motivating force for the creation and continued support of the Declaration was the promise of the creation of a Zionist self-controlled British dominion. It would act as an imperial metropolis, while simultaneously transferring the growing marginalised Jewish community out of England. This model of colonialism had been attempted in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Here, it aimed to create a utopian project, in which a loyal state could work as an outpost in the midst of Ottoman-enemy territory with little cost or need for regulation, thus proving that the main motivating factor behind the issue of the Balfour Declaration was settler colonialism.
Notes
[1] Balfour Declaration, 1917.
[2] Viscount Samuel, Memoirs (London: Cresset Press, 1945), p. 139.
[3] James Renton, The Zionist Masquerade. The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914–1918 (Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 3.
[4] War Cabinet Minutes, CAB 23, 31 October 1917.
[5] Imperial Conference, 1923. Stenographic Notes on the Meeting of 3 October 1923.
[6] Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete. Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (New York: Owl Books, 1999), p. 33.
[7] Mayir Vereté, ‘Balfour Declaration’, Curzon Papers, pp. 36–37.
[8] Jason Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy. The International Thought of a Conservative Statesman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 51.
[9] Vereté, ‘Balfour Declaration’, Curzon Papers, pp. 36–37.
[10] Sahar Huneidi, ‘Was Balfour Policy Reversible?’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 27/2 (1998), pp. 34–35.
[11] Michael G. Fry, Lloyd George and Foreign Policy. Vol. I. The Education of a Statesman: 1890–1916 (Montreal & London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1977), pp. 1–2.
[12] Jon Kimche, The Unromantics: The Great Powers and the Balfour Declaration (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), p. 43.
[13] Isaiah Friedman, Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations, 1914-1918 (Transaction Publishers, 1992), p. 7.
[15] William Roger Louis, In the Name of God, Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire in the Age of Churchill (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992), p. 72.
[16] Frank Hardie and Irwin M. Herrman, Britain and Zion: The Fateful Entanglement (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1980), pp. 47, 49.
Bibliography:
Primary:
Balfour Declaration, 1917
‘Imperial Conference, 1923. Stenographic Notes on the Meeting of 3 October 1923’
War Cabinet Minutes, CAB 23, 31 October 1917
Secondary:
Friedman, Isaiah. Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations: 1914-1918. Transaction Publishers, 1992
Fry, Michael G. Lloyd George and Foreign Policy. Vol. I. The Education of a Statesman: 1890–1916. Montreal & London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1977
Hardie, Frank and Herrman, Irwin M. Britain and Zion: The Fateful Entanglement. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1980
Huneidi, Sahar. ‘Was Balfour Policy Reversible?’, Journal of Palestine Studies. 27/2, 1998
Kimche, Jon. The Unromantics: The Great Powers and the Balfour Declaration. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968
Louis, William Roger. In the Name of God, Go! Leo Amery and the British Empire in the Age of Churchill. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992
Renton, James. The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914–1918. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007
Samuel, Viscount. Memoirs. London: Cresset Press, 1945
Segev, Tom. One Palestine Complete Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate New York: Owl Books, 1999
Tomes, Jason. Balfour and Foreign Policy: The International Thought of a Conservative Statesman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997
Veracini, Lorenzo. "Introduction: Comparing Colonial Conditions." In Israel and Settler Society. London: Pluto Press, 2006
Vereté, Mayir. ‘Balfour Declaration’, Curzon Papers
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