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The Divisiveness of Palestine: Foreign Office Versus Colonial Office on the issue of Partition, 1937

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Aaron S. Klieman
Aaron S. Klieman
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
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Extract

Divide et impera. So much of Western imperial behaviour reflected a wilful policy of ‘divide and rule’ in order first to establish and then to perpetuate control over subject peoples in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Accordingly the administration of foreign rule often amounted to artfully manipulating, emphasizing and exploiting local divergencies, whether tribal, sectional, ethnic or economic, and playing off one group or state against another. As a shorthand summary and epigram for imperialism divide et impera may be satisfactory. But it suggests merely one stage of the process: for in asserting its mastery over others the imperial power often opened itself to internal cleavages on the more technical question of exactly how to rule, or, during the decline of empire, whether or not to yield control. This was certainly the British experience. And one of the more dramatic manifestations of ‘divide and rule’ in reverse (‘rule and be divided’) came in 1937 in the instance of partition for Palestine.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 423 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 As one of the three principal mistakes of British Middle Eastern policy, Professor Albert Hourani lists the fact that there existed ‘no adequate machinery for forming a policy, no proper co-ordination between the two different departments concerned with the Arab countries, no central responsibility for decision’. Hourani, A. H., Great Britain and the Arab world (London, 1945), p. 19Google Scholar. Leopold Amery, at one time himself a colonial secretary, cites Palestine as illustrating the policymaker's lament. ‘It should be possible’, he writes, ‘to secure a real co-ordination of the works of departments in the light of coherent policies thought out beforehand in place of the weak compromises, postponements, and fluctuations which have so often resulted from the attempt to reconcile conflicting departmental policies.’ Amery, L. S., Thoughts on the constitution (London, 1953), p. 94Google Scholar.

2 Ormsby-Gore to Weizmann, 1 July 1937, Weizmann Archives.

3 Bullard to Eden, 7 Apr. 1937, CAB 31/9.

4 Clark-Kerr to Eden, 18 Nov. 1937, CAB 24/273, C.P. 281(37), annex IV.

5 Lampson to Halifax, Eden's successor, 6 Dec. 1938. CAB 24/281.

6 F.O. 371/20819, file E 6483.

7 CAB 24/273, C.P. 281(37). The memorandum is dated 19 November 1937.

8 Ibid.

9 CAB 24/273, C.P. 289(37), 1 Dec. 1937.

10 CAB 24/273, C.P. 281(37), 19 Nov. 1937.

11 Memorandum, 19 Nov. 1938. F.O. 371/28139, file E 7128/6389/65.

12 The letter was written by J. B. Mackie from Haifa where he represented Imperial Chemical Industries (Levant) Limited. Dated 24 June 1936, it is in C.O. 732/75, file 79139.

13 Minute of 19 Nov. 1937, C.O. 733/354, file 75730 (Part I).

14 F.O. 371/20809, file E 4098.

15 F.O. 371/20818, file E 6410, contains Rendel's minutes of the meeting.

16 C.O. 733/354, file 75730 (part II).

17 Ibid.

18 The chargé was received at the Foreign Office on 18 Aug.: F.O. 371/20812, file 4881. The report from Palestine was sent to the Colonial Office on 17 Nov. C.O. 733/354, file 75730 (part I).

19 ‘Uncertainty in Palestine’, Great Britain and the East, 9 Sept. 1937.

20 CAB 24/272, C.P. 269(37).

21 CAB 24/273, C.P. 281(37).

22 CAB 24/273, C.P. 389(37).

23 Summary of the meeting in F.O. 371/20822, file E 7272.

24 CAB 24/273, C.P. 295(37).

25 F.O. 371/20822, file E 7272.

26 CAB 24/273, C.P. 289(37).

27 F.O. 371/20822, file E 7272.