Balfour Declaration of 1917
The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 was a classified formal statement of policy by the British government on the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I.Τα Αγγλο-Αμερικανικά, (χρυσός και διαμάντια, χωράφια και τροφές Αφρικής) η Βικτωρία, ο Ντισραέλι, ο Rhodes, ο Alfred Beit, o Gordon, ο Jameson, οι Γέροντες τής Σιών εν Ελβετία, ο Βενιζέλος, ο Μελέτιος Μεταξάκης και ο Ν. Πλαστήρας. Ο Πόλεμος στη Κριμαία, η Φλώρενς, ο Jowett, η Οξφόρδη, οι φιλέλληνες, οι τουρκόφιλοι, οι Ιουδαίοι, τα συμφέροντα τού Εωσφόρου, οι ανθέλληνες, οι μισέλληνες, τα Βαλκάνια και η Μακεδονία τού Αλεξάνδρου.
Η Ελληνιστική Περίοδος και η Βιβλιοθήκη τής Αλεξάνδρειας.
Η Αλεξανδρίνα Βικτωρία όμως τί κατάλαβε;
Μήπως ο Κρις Woodhouse, τού Γοργοποτάμου και τών πεπραγμένων τού Rhodes στην Αφρική, κάτι ήξερε;
Christopher Montague WoodhouseΠώς τα διαμάντια τής Αφρικής βρέθηκαν στα χέρια τής Anglo-American Corporation και όχι στα χέρια τών Ιθαγενών; Γιατί τόσο μεγάλο ενδιαφέρον (τών Δυτικών) για το Κοσσυφοπέδιο, τη Μακεδονία, τη Κένυα και την Ζιμπάμπουε; Ποιους θα θρέψουν τα χωράφια τής Αφρικής, τους πεινασμένους Αφρικανούς ή τους πολύ χορτασμένους Αγγλο-Ᾱμερικάνους και λοιπούς Δυτικούς; Ποιοι θέλουν και προσδοκούν να φιλοξενηθούν ξανά στα εδάφη τής Μακεδονίας και Θράκης; Γιατί ο Ραββίνος τής Νέας Υόρκης ενδιαφέρεται να συμφιλιώσει τον Ιουδαϊσμό στα Βαλκάνια και Καύκασο με Έλληνες και Τούρκους;
Member of Parliament for Oxford, 1959–66, 1970–74. Author of The Story of Modern Greece and others; coauthor of Rhodes.
Η Γεωκεντρική θεωρία απεδείχθη εσφαλμένη όταν όλοι δεχθήκαμε τον ήλιο ως Κέντρο. Όταν δεχθούμε και το σφάλμα τού Ανθρωποκεντρισμού και πάψουμε να δημιουργούμε θεούς στα μέτρα μας, τότε ίσως ανακαλύψουμε και πολλές άλλες εσφαλμένες αντιλήψεις.
Βικτοριανές Αντιλήψεις
One of the bonds shared by Victoria and Disraeli was a romantic attachment to the East and the idea of empire. Although she supported Disraeli's reform of the franchise in 1867, Victoria had little interest in or sympathy with his program of social reform; she was, however, entranced by his imperialism and by his assertive foreign policy. She applauded his brilliant maneuvering, which led to the British purchase of slightly less than half of the shares in the Suez Canal in 1875 (a move that prevented the canal from falling entirely under French control), especially since he presentedthe canal as a personal gift to her: “It is just settled; you have it, Ma'am.” The addition of “Empress of India” in 1876 to the royal title thrilled the queen even more. Victoria and Disraeli also agreed on their answer to the vexing “Eastern question”—what was to be done with the declining Turkish empire? Even the revelation of Turkish atrocities against rebelling Bulgarians failed to sway the sovereign and her prime minister from their position that Britain's best interests lay in supporting Turkey, the “Sick Man” of Europe. The fact that Gladstone took the opposing view, of course, strengthened their pro-Turkish sympathies. With the outbreak of a Russo-Turkish war in 1877, however, Disraeli found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to restrain his bellicose sovereign, who demanded that Britain enter the war against Russia. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878 Disraeli emerged triumphant: Russian influence in the Balkans was reduced, and Britain gained control of the strategically located island of Cyprus. The queen was ecstatic.
Sir Edgar Trevor Williams
Secretary, Rhodes Trust, 1959–80. Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Oxford, 1968–80; Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, 1945–80. Editor, Dictionary of National Biography, 1949–80.
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Beit bridge
also spelled Beitbridge town, southern Zimbabwe. It lies near the bridge named for Alfred Beit, British South African financier, across the Limpopo River. The bridge is situated on the border with Northern province, South Africa, opposite Messina and is a port of entry and a customs and immigration post. The town, founded in 1929, was for many years the terminus of the railway from Pretoria, until a rail connection to Rutenga was built in 1974. It is a trading centre for cattle and irrigated crops (potatoes, melons, and tomatoes). Pop. (1992) 11,596.
Speculation on the true nature of the behind-the-scenes story of the Jameson Raid has therefore continued for more than a hundred years after the events, and carries on to this day.
Alfred Beit
Born in Hamburg, Germany the eldest son and second of six children, into the Jewish family[2] of an affluent Hamburg trader. He was an unpromising scholar and was apprenticed to Jules Porgès & Cie, the Amsterdam diamond firm. He was sent to the Cape Colony in 1875 by his firm to buy diamonds - following the diamond strike at Kimberley. Having become a business friend of Cecil Rhodes, they proceeded to buy out digging ventures and to eliminate opposition such as Barney Barnato. He rapidly became one of a group of financiers who gained control of the diamond-mining claims in the Central, Dutoitspan, and De Beers mines. Rhodes was the active politician and Beit provided a lot of the planning and financial backing.
In 1886 Beit extended his interests to the newly-discovered goldfields of the Witwatersrand and met with great success. In his business ventures there he made use of financiers Hermann Eckstein and JB Robinson. He founded the Robertson Syndicate and the firm of Wernher, Beit & Co. He imported mining engineers from the USA and was among the first to adopt deep-level mining. Rhodes concluded a treaty with Lobengula as a result of which Beit founded the British South Africa Company in 1888. Beit became life-governor of De Beers and also a director of numerous other companies such as Rand Mines, Rhodesia Railways and the Beira Railway Company.
In 1888 Beit moved to London whence he felt he was better able to manage his financial empire and support Rhodes in his Southern African ambitions. Beit moved into Tewin Water, near Welwyn, a large Regency house with Victorian additions and 7,000 acres (28 km²), and a few miles away Julius Wernher at last bought Luton Hoo, with 5,218 acres (21.1 km²).
Inspired by Rhodes' imperialist vision, he took part in the planning and financing of the unsuccessful Jameson Raid of late 1895 which was intended to trigger a coup in the South African Republic in the Transvaal. As a result of this debacle, Rhodes resigned as Prime Minister, and both he and Beit were found guilty by the House of Commons inquiry. Beit was obliged to resign as director of the Charter Company, but was elected vice-president of the British South Africa Company a few years later. With the death of Rhodes in 1902, Beit, as one of the trustees, helped control the enormous estate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lane_Beit
Gordon, Charles George
born Jan. 28, 1833, Woolwich, near London, Eng.
died Jan. 26, 1885, Khartoum, Sudan
byname Chinese Gordon British general who became a national hero for his exploits in China and his ill-fated defense of Khartoum against Sudanese rebels.
The son of an artillery officer, Gordon was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1852. During the Crimean War (1853–56) he distinguished himself by his reckless bravery in the siege trenches outside Sevastopol. Promoted to captain in 1859, he volunteered the following year to join the British forces that were fighting the Chinese in the “Arrow” War. He was present at the occupation of Peking (October 1860) and personally directed the burning of the Chinese emperor's summer palace. In May 1862 Gordon's corps of engineers was assigned to strengthen the bulwarks of the European trading centre of Shanghai, which was threatened by the insurgents of the Taiping Rebellion. A year later he became commander of the 3,500-man peasant force, known as the “Ever-Victorious Army,” raised to defend the city. During the next 18 months Gordon's troops played an important, though not a crucial, role in suppressing the Taiping uprising.He returned in January 1865 to England, where an enthusiastic public had already dubbed him “Chinese Gordon.” For the next five years he was commander of the Royal Engineers at Gravesend, Kent; he spent his spare time developing his own unorthodox, mystical brand of Christianity and engaging in philanthropic activity among poor youths.
In 1873 the khedive Ismāʿīl Pasha of Egypt, who regularly employed Europeans, appointed Gordon governor of the province of Equatoria in the Sudan. In Equatoria from April 1874 to December 1876, he mapped the upper Nile River and established a line of stations along the river as far south as present Uganda. After a brief stay in England, he resumed service under the Khedive as governor-general of the Sudan.Gordon established his ascendancy over this vast area, crushing rebellions and suppressing the slave trade. Ill health forced him to resign and return to England in 1880; over the next two years he served in India, China, Mauritius, and Cape Colony, South Africa.
In 1884 Gordon was again sent to the Sudan by the British government to evacuate Egyptian forces from Khartoum, which was threatened by Sudanese rebels led by a Muslim mystic, Muḥammad Aḥmad al-Mahdī. Reappointed governor-general, Gordon arrived in Khartoum in February. Khartoum came under siege a month later, and on Jan. 26, 1885, the rebels broke into the city and killed Gordon and the other defenders. The British public reacted to his death by acclaiming “Gordon of Khartoum” a martyred warrior-saint and by blaming the government for failure to relieve the siege. Some biographers, as early as Lytton Strachey in Eminent Victorians (1918), have suggested that Gordon, in defiance of his government's orders, had deliberately refused to evacuate Khartoum, even though evacuation was still possible until late in the siege. Anthony Nutting develops this view in his Gordon of Khartoum: Martyr and Misfit (1966).
Cecil (John) Rhodes
born July 5, 1853, Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, Eng.
died March 26, 1902, Muizenberg, Cape Colony
financier, statesman, and empire builder of British South Africa. He was prime minister of Cape Colony (1890–96) and organizer of thegiant diamond-mining company De Beers Consolidated Mines,Ltd. (1888). By his will he established the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford (1902).
Early struggles and financial successes.
Rhodes was the son of the vicar of Bishop's Stortford, and the family's roots were in the countryside, where Cecil Rhodes always felt at home: tree planting and agricultural improvement were among his lifelong passions, though his earliest ambition was to be a barrister or a clergyman. His father was prosperous enough to send one son to Eton College, another to Winchester College, and three into the army. Cecil, however, was kept at home because of a weakness of the lungs and was educated at the local grammar school. Poor health also debarred him from the professional career he planned. Instead of going to the university, he was sent to South Africa in 1870 to work on a cotton farm, where his brother Herbert was already established.
The farm in Natal was not a success. On his arrival Rhodes found that his brother had already left for the diamond fields of Griqualand West. Although Herbert returned to the farm, and the two brothers continued stubbornly trying to grow cotton for a year, the “diamond fever” eventually overcame them. In 1871 they moved to Kimberley, the centre of mining,where life was even harder than in Natal. Herbert was restless and stayed only until 1873, but Cecil's characteristic determination kept him at Kimberley off and on for years.
For eight years, until he took a belated degree in 1881, he divided his life between Kimberley and Oxford. Both societies found him odd, though he did his best to conform outwardly to the conventions. At Oxford his eccentric habits, falsetto giggle, rambling monologues, and his unusual background intrigued the younger students around him. So did his philosophy of an almost mystical imperialism.
He gradually advanced from being a speculative digger to the status of a man of substance with ambitious ideas on thefuture of the diamond industry. His first partnerships were with young men as impoverished as himself, such as C.D. Rudd, with whom he formed De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd.—so called after the De Beers mining claims, many of which he had acquired. Eventually, success brought new friends and also rivals. Alfred Beit, a German who knew the diamond market intimately, was his most valued friend. With Beit's help, Rhodes expanded his claims until all the De Beers mines were under his control. In 1887 he set about acquiring the Kimberley mine, which was mainly controlled by Barney Barnato. A furious competition to buy up shares ended in Rhodes's favour in 1888. He finally paid more than £5,000,000 ($25,000,000)—a generous settlement—for Barnato's holding and celebrated by making his rival a member of the Kimberley Club, into which Barnato had neverbefore even been admitted.
Other lesser mines also fell under Rhodes's control, until by 1891 De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., owned 90 percent ofthe world's production of diamonds. He also acquired a large stake in the Transvaal gold mines, which had been discovered in 1885, and formed the Gold Fields of South Africa Company in 1887. Both Rhodes's major companies had terms in their articles of association allowing them to finance schemes of northward expansion.
Political involvement in Africa.
Rhodes never regarded moneymaking as an end in itself. “Painting the map red,” building a railway from the Cape to Cairo, reconciling the Boers and the British under the British flag, even recovering the American colonies for the British Empire, were all part of his dream. With these ideas in view, he first went into politics in 1881, offering himself for election to the parliament of the Cape Colony in a constituency in which he had to depend on Boer support. He held it for the rest of his life. Though unimpressive as a speaker and contemptuous of parliamentary procedure, he earned respect by his original views. He made friends with many Boer politicians, he espoused the cause of the natives in what were then Basutoland and Bechuanaland (now Lesotho and Botswana), and always he had his eyes fixed on the north.
His first intervention in native policy came in 1882, when he was appointed to a commission to pacify Basutoland after a minor rebellion. The rebellion had been put down by the former British governor of the Egyptian Sudan, General Charles Gordon, acting for the Cape government. Gordon hadsucceeded not by force but by organizing discussion meetings with the tribal chiefs. Rhodes was impressed by the man and his methods, though less favourably by the contempt that Gordon showed for financial reward.
His determination to keep open a road to the north involved him in many disputes. Other imperial powers—the Germans, Belgians, and Portuguese—were in competition for the uncharted interior of Africa, as were the Transvaal Boers. The missionaries were, in Rhodes's view, overly solicitous of native interests; the Cape government was weak; and the British government, which he called the “imperial factor,” was too distant to understand his ideas. But he assiduously cultivated the government's representatives in Cape Town—particularly the high commissioner Sir Hercules Robinson—with profitable results.
The crucial area was Bechuanaland, through which ran the route used by the missionaries. Rhodes intended to use it toopen up the northern territories of Mashonaland and Matabeleland (both now in Zimbabwe [Rhodesia]). Mineral wealth, communications, and, eventually, white settlement were his objectives. All the boundaries were unsettled, however, and many intrusions had to be frustrated first. Boers from the Transvaal, trying to annex slices of Bechuanaland, proclaimed two small independent republics in Stellaland and Goshen. In 1882 a boundary commission, towhich Rhodes again secured appointment, was sent to settle the boundaries of Griqualand West. Rhodes persuaded the commission to extend its mandate to the two small republics. In 1884, when the Germans in South West Africa (now Namibia) declared a protectorate over two territories (which, along with Stellaland and Goshen, would have sealed off the Cape Colony from the north), he persuaded the high commissioner that the British government must intervene. By the London Convention of 1884, the two republics were excluded from the Transvaal, and the Cape government agreed to help finance a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
His settlement of the Bechuanaland question was also soon threatened, for the deputy commissioner in the new area antagonized the Boers. Rhodes insisted on his removal and was appointed in his place. He succeeded in conciliating the Boers of Stellaland but could not prevent Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal, from declaring a protectorate over Goshen, from which he withdrew only after an expeditionary force was sent up from the Cape. A conferenceto settle the matter was held in February 1885 on the Vaal River, where Rhodes and Kruger met for the first time. Thesetwo stubborn men, each determined to dominate Africa, eachever ready to quote Scripture for his purpose, naturally failedto achieve any meeting of minds.
Although Kruger was forced to give up Goshen, Rhodes did not get everything his own way. It was decided that southernBechuanaland should become a crown colony and northern Bechuanaland a protectorate. Rhodes, who wanted both annexed by the Cape Colony, resigned in protest in March 1885 and thereafter devoted strenuous efforts, both in Cape Town and London, to securing the transfer of the colony to the Cape.
Two men still stood in the way of Rhodes's plans for developing the north. One was Kruger, with his policy of “Africa for the Afrikaners”—the Boers. By the Franchise Law of 1890, he denied political rights to the Britons and other foreigners (Uitlanders) who had come to work the gold minesin the Transvaal. He also tried to extend Boer control to Mashonaland and Matabeleland. The ruler of the Matabele was King Lobengula, Rhodes's second obstacle. Kruger had approached him for a treaty and mining concessions in 1887, and so had many others. Lobengula, however, though uneducated, knew that once he let the white men in, he would never see their backs. The only white men he trusted were missionaries; and Rhodes duly found in John Moffat, the son of a famous missionary, a man to serve his purpose.
Once Moffat, as assistant commissioner for the crown colonyof Bechuanaland, had, in February 1888, persuaded Lobengula to sign an exclusive treaty of friendship, Rhodes sent three of his trusted agents to obtain a mining concession based on the treaty. The concession was extracted from the reluctant Lobengula in October 1888: to the last, he hoped he had only allowed the white man to dig “a big hole.” In fact, however, he had virtually signed away his kingdom, and Rhodes hastened to press the British government, through the high commissioner, to grant a charter to a new company, the British South Africa Company, to develop the new territory. In October 1889 the charter wasgranted, and Lobengula allowed the digging to begin.
Queen Victoria found Rhodes's imperialism attractive, no less than his courtly rebuttal of the accusation of being a woman hater: “How could I dislike a sex to which your Majesty belongs?” The upshot of his successful propaganda was that the charter granted by the British government went far beyond what Lobengula had conceded. There was no northern limit on it; and Rhodes intended to extend the chartered company's control to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malaŵi), as well as to the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now in Botswana).
In 1890 Rhodes's Pioneers began their hazardous march into Matabeleland and thence to Mashonaland, where they established a fort in September, to be called Salisbury, after the British prime minister. In the following year Harry Johnston took over the administration of Nyasaland in a dual capacity, as commissioner of the British government and an employee of the chartered company. Although eventually the protectorate reverted fully to the British government, Rhodes's influence was felt both north and south of the Zambezi River, and soon the new territories were called by his name.
Policies as prime minister of Cape Colony.
In the meantime, he had returned to office in 1890 in the onlypost big enough for him, as prime minister of Cape Colony. For five years he proved a successful and imaginative prime minister. He acquired a property called Groote Schuur, which he rebuilt in the Dutch colonial style and bequeathed as an official residence for future prime ministers of the Union of South Africa. There he lavishly entertained Dutch and Britishinhabitants of the Cape Colony and eminent visitors of all nationalities. Everything he undertook was on a massive scale.
In parliament he cultivated the support of the Afrikaner Bondwithout losing the goodwill of British liberals. His agriculturalpolicies were sensible and effective. In native policy he had to move cautiously. His Franchise and Ballot Act (1892) was passed, limiting the native vote by financial and educationalqualifications. The Glen Grey Act (1894), assigning an area for exclusively African development, was introduced from the highest motives: “a Bill for Africa,” as Rhodes proudly called it. His main aim was to prevent the Dutch and British quarreling over such policies. To him that involved the risk of“mixing up the native question with the race question.”
He also sought to unite the Boers and the British on his northern policy. The prospects were good because Kruger's obstinacy alienated the Cape Dutch. To ensure that commercial traffic did not have to reach the Transvaal through the Cape Colony, Kruger had built a railway to Delagoa Bay. Then in 1894 he closed the “drifts,” or fords, of the Vaal River to prevent the transport of goods by wagon, besides imposing heavy duties on Cape produce. Rhodes went to the Transvaal capital to protest, but in vain. Kruger was compelled to yield only after a declaration by Rhodes's attorney general that he was in breach of the London Convention, coupled with a threat by Joseph Chamberlain, who had become British colonial secretary in 1895, to support a military expedition.
Rhodes's patience had begun to wear thin even earlier, partly because he knew his health was precarious, partly because he learned that the gold deposits of the Transvaal were enormous, whereas those of Mashonaland were provingpoor. His northern policy was encountering unexpected frustrations. The chartered company was in financial difficulties, its resources being overstretched. Although Rhodes's agents secured some new territories for the company, elsewhere he was forestalled. An Anglo-German agreement of 1889 gave a strip of land to Germany, cutting off Bechuanaland from the north. The Belgian king Leopold anticipated Rhodes by laying claim to Katanga (1890). The Anglo-Portuguese Convention of 1891 ended his hopes of eliminating Portugal from Africa. Harry Johnston proved uncooperative in administering Nyasaland. When Rhodes paid his first visit to Rhodesia in 1891, he found the pioneers in an angry mood; to pacify them, he helped them generously out of his own pocket.
Serious trouble broke out in 1893, when Lobengula tried to reassert his control over Mashonaland. A short, sharp war ended in the total defeat and death of Lobengula. Rhodes was then at the pinnacle of his achievement, but still the wider union of southern Africa eluded him. He was growing petulant and impatient and was visibly aging. By 1895 he was determined to settle accounts with the last obstacle, President Kruger.
There was already talk of using force to remedy the grievances of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal. The Uitlandersformed a National Union to support their cause, with Rhodes's brother Frank among its leaders. Kruger sought thesupport of Germany, and in 1895 he again closed the “drifts” across the Vaal. Once more he was forced to withdraw, and by this time a conspiracy against him was under way. Rhodes knew about it and worked actively to foster it.
Effects of the Jameson raid on Rhodes's career.
Chamberlain was privy to the plan, but no one foresaw what actually resulted. The National Union in Johannesburg lost heart and decided not to act. Rhodes, the high commissioner Sir Herbert Robinson, and Chamberlain all assumed that the plan had been called off; but Leander Starr Jameson, Rhodes's personally appointed administrator of Matabele, recklessly decided to force the hand of the Uitlanders by invading the Transvaal on his own. He launched the famous raid on Dec. 29, 1895. It was a fiasco, his whole force being captured apart from a few killed. Rhodes was compelled to resign all his offices, not only in the Cape government but also in the chartered company, but he refused to denounce Jameson.
The raid was an almost complete disaster for Rhodes. Jameson and his colleagues were sent to prison; Kruger's power was consolidated; the Dutch and British colonials were more deeply split than ever; Rhodesia and Bechuanaland were taken over by the imperial government. Only the charter was preserved, and Rhodes spent the rest of his life promoting developments in the north. He even wonpublic sympathy. His last years were full of disappointments, both personal and political.
Early in 1896, while Rhodes was in England, there was a serious revolt in Matabeleland. Rhodes returned by way of Egypt and took an active part in suppressing the revolt. He finally brought it to an end by holding a peace conference. On this occasion Rhodes found the site in the Matopo Hills that he called the “View of the World” and chose it for his burial place.
His last years were soured by an unfortunate relationship with an aristocratic adventuress, Princess Radziwiłł, who sought to manipulate Rhodes and Milner and even Lord Salisbury, the English prime minister, to promote her ideas of the British Empire. Rhodes was unused to scheming women, nor could the young bachelors surrounding him protect him from her. She forged letters and bills of exchange in his name and was finally sent to prison, but not before she had caused him much annoyance and scandal. In 1901, while he was in Europe, he was recalled to Cape Town to give evidence at her trial. His last political act on his return was to support Milner in suspending the constitution of the colony until the South African War, which broke out in October 1899, was over. He was, however, already dying of an incurable heart disease. Before either the war or even Princess Radziwiłł's trial was over, he died. His last journey through Africa in the funeral train to the Matopo Hills was a triumphal procession.
When his will was read in April 1902, his reputation immediately rose to new heights. He had devised an imaginative scheme of awarding scholarships at Oxford to young men from the colonies and from the United States and Germany. This appealed to the public instinct for a more disinterested kind of imperialism. Most of his fortune was devoted to the scholarships. As the will forbade disqualification on grounds of race, many nonwhite students have benefited from the scholarships, though it is doubtful that that was Rhodes's intention. He once defined his policy as “equal rights for every white man south of the Zambezi” and later, under liberal pressure, amended “white” to “civilized.” But he probably regarded the possibility of native Africans becoming “civilized” as so remote that the two expressions, in his mind, came to the same thing.
Arthur James Balfour
1st earl of, Viscount Traprain
born July 25, 1848, Whittinghame, East Lothian, Scot.
died March 19, 1930, Woking, Surrey, Eng.
British statesman who maintained a position of power in the British Conservative Party for 50 years; he wasprime minister from 1902 to 1905, and as foreign secretaryfrom 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 his 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 hisuncle'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 Dec. 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 Defense (created 1904) made possible a realistic worldwide British strategy. None of these measures was especially popular with the 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 ofWorld War I or with the peace negotiations.
His most important action occurred on Nov. 2, 1917, when, prompted by the Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, he wrote a letter to Baron Rothschild, head of the English branch of the Jewish banking family, that contained the so-called Balfour Declaration. This 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.
Declaration
(Nov. 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, a leader of British Jewry.
The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of ChaimWeizmann 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.” Nevertheless, it 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 Allies and that the settlement in Palestine of a pro-British Jewish population might help to protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in neighbouring Egypt.
The Balfour Declaration was endorsed by the principal Allied powers and was included in the British mandate over Palestine, approved by the 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. Zionists condemned the new policy, accusing Britain of favouring the resident Palestinian Arabs of the region.
Alfred Milner
born March 23, 1854, Giessen, Hesse-Darmstadt [Germany]
died May 13, 1925, Sturry Court,near Canterbury, Kent, Eng.
also called (1901–02) Baron Milner, or (1895–1901) Sir Alfred Milner able but inflexible British administrator, whose attitude while he was high commissioner and governor in southern Africa helped to bring about the South African War (1899–1902).
Of German and English ancestry, Milner was a brilliant student; he won numerous scholarships at Oxford and became a fellow of New College (1872). In 1881 he began to practice law but turned to journalism, working on the Pall Mall Gazette. Defeated as a Liberal candidate for Parliament (1885), he became the private secretary of the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Goschen. As an administrator, he served with distinction in Egypt (1889–92) and as chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue (1892–97), for which he was knighted in 1895. In 1892 he wrote England and Egypt.
An ardent imperialist, Milner in 1897 became high commissioner in southern Africa and governor of the Cape Colony. With Britain and the Transvaal close to conflict, his was the most critical post in the empire. The Transvaal's president, Paul Kruger, had become deeply mistrustful after the abortive Jameson Raid (Dec. 29, 1895) into Boer territory.Thus, when Kruger was reelected in February 1898, Milner concluded that “there is no way out of the political troubles of South Africa except for reform in the Transvaal, or war.” Milner's idea of reform was to secure justice for the Uitlanders (British residents in the Transvaal) by demanding full citizenship rights for them after five years' residence. During the futile negotiations at the Bloemfontein Conference (May–June 1899), Kruger was prepared to bargain, but Milner was not. The Transvaal government made further concessions, but by this time Milner had determined that British supremacy in southern Africa should be asserted by force, hence he remained intransigent. After delivering an ultimatum, the two Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, declared war on Britain on Oct. 11, 1899.
When Britain annexed the Orange Free State and the Transvaal in 1901 during the war, Milner left his post as governor of the Cape and took over as administrator of thosetwo Boer territories. Retaining the office of high commissioner, he and the military commander, Lord Kitchener, negotiated the Peace of Vereeniging (May 31, 1902) that ended both the war and the independence of the two Boer republics. For his services in South Africa, Milner was made a baron (1901) and a viscount (1902).
Milner was largely in charge of the postwar settlement, and his administration undertook the task of resettling the Boers on their farms. Meanwhile, by encouraging economic growth,particularly in the gold-mining industry, Milner hoped to attract British immigrants to create a permanent majority, and he introduced a vigorous education program with all the instruction in English.
Milner's schemes proved a failure. Though the Boers were successfully resettled, they reacted strongly against his insistence upon the use of English in the schools. During the long postwar depression, many British residents left the land, and few immigrants came. Milner persuaded the colonial secretary to permit the importation of Chinese labour for the short-handed gold-mining industry; public opinion in Britain was outraged, and the Conservatives were defeated in the British election of January 1906. The new Liberal government, moreover, rejected his plans for a constitution that would give the Transvaal a representative government rather than responsible self-rule.
Milner had already resigned his South African posts and returned to England (1905), where he intended to retire from public life, and he began work on The Nation and the Empire (1913). He became an active member of the House of Lords, however, and was a member of David Lloyd George's World War I Cabinet from 1916 to 1921. In March 1918 he played a decisive part in setting up a unified Allied command under Marshal Foch of France. Appointed colonial secretary at the end of the war, Milner attended the peace conference. Whenthe Cabinet rejected his proposal that Egypt be given a modified form of independence, Milner resigned in 1921. In 1923 he published Questions of the Hour. Milner's viscountcy became extinct upon his death without an heir. The Milner Papers (1931–33) were edited by C. Headlam.
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