Balfour Declaration

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours,

Arthur James Balfour

• https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/text-of-the-balfour-declaration

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Balfour Declaration, (November 2, 1917), statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (of Tring), a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community. Though the precise meaning of the correspondence has been disputed, its statements were generally contradictory to both the Sykes-Picot Agreement (a secret convention between Britain and France) and the Ḥusayn-McMahon correspondence (an exchange of letters between the British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, then emir of Mecca), which in turn contradicted one another.

The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, Zionist leaders in London, fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home. The declaration specifically stipulated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The document, however, said nothing of the political or national rights of these communities and did not refer to them by name. Nevertheless, the declaration aroused enthusiastic hopes among Zionists and seemed the fulfillment of the aims of the World Zionist Organization.

The British government hoped that the declaration would rally Jewish opinion, especially in the United States, to the side of the Allied powers against the Central Powers during World War I (1914–18). They hoped also that the settlement in Palestine of a pro-British Jewish population might help to protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in neighbouring Egypt and thus ensure a vital communication route to British colonial possessions in India.

The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by the principal Allied powers and was included in the British mandate over Palestine, formally approved by the newly created League of Nations on July 24, 1922. In May 1939 the British government altered its policy in a White Paper recommending a limit of 75,000 further immigrants and an end to immigration by 1944, unless the resident Palestinian Arabs of the region consented to further immigration. Zionists condemned the new policy, accusing Britain of favouring the Arabs. This point was made moot by the outbreak of World War II (1939–45) and the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

• https://www.britannica.com/event/Balfour-Declaration

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Arthur James Balfour, 1st earl of Balfour, in full Arthur James Balfour, 1st earl of Balfour of Whittingehame, Viscount Traprain, (born July 25, 1848, Whittingehame, East Lothian, Scotland—died March 19, 1930, Woking, Surrey, England), British statesman who maintained a position of power in the British Conservative Party for 50 years. He was prime minister from 1902 to 1905, and, as foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919, he is perhaps best remembered for his World War I statement (the Balfour Declaration) expressing official British approval of Zionism.

The son of James Maitland Balfour and a nephew of Robert Cecil, 3rd marquess of Salisbury, Balfour was a member of a highly intellectual, wealthy, and aristocratic circle. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and, upon leaving Cambridge, he entered Parliament as a Conservative member for Hertford. In 1879 he published A Defence of Philosophic Doubt, in which he endeavoured to show that scientific knowledge depends just as much as theology upon an act of faith. In the great Victorian struggle between science and religion, Balfour was on the side of religion. He continued to take a keen interest in scientific and philosophical problems throughout his life.

Balfour was president of the Local Government Board in his uncle’s first government (1885–86). In the second Salisbury ministry (1886–92), he was secretary for Scotland and then chief secretary for Ireland, with a seat in the cabinet. An implacable opponent of Irish Home Rule, he earned the name “Bloody Balfour” because of his severity in suppressing insurrection. At the same time he opposed the evils of English absentee landlordism in Ireland and made various concessions for the purpose of “killing home rule by kindness.”

Known as a formidable parliamentary debater, Balfour became (1891) leader of the House of Commons and first lord of the treasury, thus being second in command to Lord Salisbury. During W.E. Gladstone’s last Liberal ministry (1892–94), he led the opposition in the House of Commons. In the last of Salisbury’s three governments (1895–1902), Balfour became more powerful as his uncle’s health declined. Although he disapproved of the policies that resulted in the South African (Boer) War (1899–1902), he insisted that the British win the war decisively.

After Salisbury’s retirement, Balfour served as prime minister from July 12, 1902, to December 4, 1905. He sponsored and secured passage of the Education Act (Balfour Act; 1902), which reorganized the local administration of elementary and secondary schools. The Wyndham Land Purchase Act (1903) encouraged the sale of land to tenant farmers in Ireland. The Committee of Imperial Defence (created 1904) made possible a realistic worldwide British strategy. None of these measures was especially popular with voters. Balfour also decided to meet a shortage of miners in South Africa by importing large numbers of indentured Chinese, a decision that was condemned by humanitarians and by British organized labour. After a cabinet crisis in 1903, Balfour regained prestige in the completion of negotiations for the Anglo-French agreement (Entente Cordiale; 1904), a major change in British foreign policy, by which the supremacy of Great Britain in Egypt and of France in Morocco was recognized. Increasing Conservative disunity over the question of abandoning free trade finally caused him to resign, although he remained the official party leader until November 1911.

On May 25, 1915, when H.H. Asquith formed a wartime coalition ministry, Balfour succeeded Winston Churchill as first lord of the Admiralty. In the political crisis of December 1916, he ceased to support Asquith and turned to David Lloyd George, in whose new coalition he became foreign secretary. In that office he had little to do with the conduct of World War I or with the peace negotiations.

His most-important action occurred on November 2, 1917, when, prompted by the Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, he wrote a public letter to Baron Rothschild, head of the English branch of the Jewish banking family, a letter that contained the so-called Balfour Declaration. Balfour had met and been impressed by Weizmann in 1906 and by at least April 1917 had privately identified himself as a supporter of Zionism. With the Balfour Declaration the British government also hoped to rally Jewish opinion, especially in the United States, to the Allied side during World War I. The declaration, pledging British aid for Zionist efforts to establish a home for world Jewry in Palestine, gave great impetus to the establishment of the State of Israel.

After the war, Balfour served twice (1919–22, 1925–29) in the cabinet post of lord president of the council. He was largely responsible for the negotiations that led to the definition of relations between Great Britain and the dominions—the Balfour Report (1926)—which was to be expressed in the Statute of Westminster in 1931. In 1922 he was created an earl. His Chapters of Autobiography (1930) was edited by his niece, Blanche E.C. Dugdale.

• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arthur-James-Balfour-1st-earl-of-Balfour