The Balfour Declaration of 1917 is but one 67-word sentence, yet it has proven to be a defining document of our time.
Announced by in the midst of World War I, the declaration committed Britain to supporting the establishment in Palestine of “a national home for the Jewish people.” That declaration laid the foundation stone of modern Israel and, as Professor Jonathan Schneer describes it, “sowed the dragon’s teeth” of Arab dispossession that became the engine of the modern Arab-Israeli conflict and made the Middle East an axis of post-World War II global conflict.
Schneer is Professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society and an eminent American scholar of British history. His recent book on the subject, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict ( Random House) has been widely reviewed. Schneer explains that the declaration was Great Britain's attempt to win World War I by shaping useful alliances. The Middle East at that time was part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by Britain's wartime adversary Turkey. A victorious Britain would put control of the region up for grabs.
Schneer explains how the Balfour Declaration was an effort to mobilize support among Jews for the British side. While the Balfour Resolution has been the subject of scholarly investigation in the past, Schneer’s original contribution to its understanding is in demonstrating that, although most British leaders were sympathetic to Zionist aspirations, they were also extraordinarily duplicitous in their dealings with the Zionists -- and with the Arabs and Turks as well.
At the same time the British government were promising Palestine to the Jews, they told their ally France that portions of the region encompassing modern-day Lebanon and Syria would be ceded to French control. They led indigenous Arabs to believe that if they rebelled against the occupying Turks (which they eventually did), their reward would be British support for establishing an independent Arab kingdom in the same area.
Schneer uncovered the revelation that Britain's double-dealing extended to Turkey. In a series of secret back-channel negotiations with the Ottoman hierarchy, Schneer discovered that Britain pledged that if Turkey signed a separate peace with the West, it would be allowed to maintain some form of control over parts of its Middle Eastern empire, including Palestine.
"The British were riding about four or five horses at once and all the while they expected to take Palestine for themselves, which is by and large what they did,” Schneer observed. “Basically, Prime Minister David Lloyd George was willing to promise anything to anybody in order to win the war, and we are living with the consequences.”
Schneer says that he doesn't advocate for one side or another, but strives to be non-partisan, objectively illuminating the facts and differing perspectives surrounding the origin of the Middle East conflict.
"Zionists and many Jews and Israelis think of the Balfour Declaration as the great foundation stone of modern Israel, but a lot of Arabs think of it as the foundation stone of their misery and dispossession."
Reaction to "The Balfour Declaration" has been "overwhelming and largely positive," Schneer said, with reviews in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post among others, in addition to many media interviews and guest lectures across the country, as well as in Atlanta and on campus.
It may surprise some outside of the Tech community who read or hear of Schneer's work that he comes from a university noted more for engineering than modern British history.
"While Georgia Tech is justly famous as an engineering school," he said, "we also have a strong social sciences component. The Ivan Allen College provides an important dimension to a Georgia Tech education, and it's growing in size and stature every year.”
“Georgia Tech students are affected by what happens in the Middle East, “so they should know where some of the mistrust and resentment and hatred comes from," he said. "I don't want to say that all of it stems from what the British did in 1917, but what they did then sure didn't help."
"You can't be an informed citizen unless you've studied history," he added. "It doesn't necessarily resolve questions of right and wrong by itself, but it provides a full perspective so you can arrive at better conclusions and solutions."
"The Balfour Declaration" is Schneer's sixth book. Previous works include three books about British labor history, and more recently "London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis" (Yale University Press, 1999, 2001) and "The Thames: England's River" (Yale University Press, 2005). His next project is an in-depth examination of Winston Churchill's war cabinet during World War II.
Jonathan Schneer
Professor, School of History, Technology, and Society
Dr. Jonathan Schneer, who received his BA from McGill University in 1971 and his PhD from Columbia University in 1978, is the modern British historian at Georgia Tech in the School of History, Technology, and Society. He is a co-editor of two books, and the author of six more, including London 1900; The Imperial Metropolis, The Thames: England's River and most recently The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. He has published articles in leading scholarly journals and collections of essays. He was a founding member of the Radical History Review and served as its book review editor for seven years. He is also on the editorial board of Twentieth Century British History and the advisory board of the London Journal. He has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and from numerous Oxford and Cambridge colleges. In 2003 he was the Visiting Senior Research Fellow at St. John's College, Oxford. At Georgia Tech he teaches modern British and modern European history to undergraduate and graduate students.
