Remembering Balfour: empire, race and propaganda

Abstract

To mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration (November 1917), which paved the way towards the dispossession of the Palestinians, this article reflects on how imperial strategy, ideas about race, and institutionalised propaganda converged to shape Britain’s contribution to the ‘Palestine problem’. The author illustrates the imperial tradition that shaped British support for Zionism by tracing the trajectory of John Buchan’s career. Buchan was an influential novelist, best known as the author of adventure stories including The Thirty-Nine Steps. He wrote in the service of Empire. During the first world war, Buchan spearheaded propaganda for the Empire’s eastward expansion and directed the propaganda service as Palestine fell to British troops. He began his career in South Africa, mentored by Lord Milner, and worked as a literary spokesperson for the policy of white rule. He ended it in Canada, serving as the country’s Governor General. This article foregrounds Canada as a settler polity with a privileged place in Buchan’s philosophy, and where Buchan’s approach to supporting Zionism thrived. And it explores Buchan’s hostile construction both of a menacing Islam and of ‘the Jew’. Buchan was not the only Briton to disparage Jews ‘at home’ only to find a place for them on the frontier.