A Sacred Trust? British Administration of the Mandate for Palestine, 1920-1936
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A Sacred Trust? British Administration of the Mandate for Palestine, 1920-1936 Matthew John Longland Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2013 IMAGING SERVICES NORTH Boston Spa, Wetherby West Yorkshire, lS23 7BQ www.bl.uk BLANK PAGE IN ORIGINAL Abstract This thesis examines how ideals of trusteeship influenced British administration of the Palestine mandate. The Covenant of the League of Nations described the mandate system as a 'sacred trust of civilisation'; because of this, the powers who held mandates were obligated to govern the territories they occupied during the First World War with the long-term aim of establishing them as independent members of the international community. British fulfilment of that trust drew on wider influences that had informed its rule elsewhere in the colonial empire; notions of liberalism, utilitarianism, and rationalism, core elements in a British philosophy of colonial rule, profoundly shaped British governance in Palestine. In utilising a model of trusteeship to explore the Palestine mandate, this study also explores how colonial policy-making was shaped by Orientalist representations. Cultural preconceptions enabled the basic premise of trusteeship by providing a binary image of 'backward', inferior subject populations in need of assistance and of progressive, superior Western powers capable of delivering the required 'tutelage'. The influence of trusteeship and Orientalism in Palestine is examined in five key administrative areas: self-government, immigration, land, education, and law and order. Under trusteeship, various forms of local and communal self-government were advanced to provide administrative experience and create a foundation for eventual participation in national self-government; reform ofland tenure and the facilitation of Jewish immigration were intended to promote economic growth and increase prosperity amongst all sections of the population; the government school system was expanded to encourage basic levels of mass literacy and develop vocational knowledge of modern agricultural techniques; and the mandatory administration sought to create local, self-sufficient civilian forces to uphold public security. Such policies allowed British officials to justify their presence in Palestine through discourses of 'progress' and 'improvement', which were required irrespective of any British commitments made to support Zionism. iii Acknowledgments First of all, my thanks go to Dr. Spencer Mawby. The days when I first contacted him, out of the blue, during my final days as an undergraduate at the University of Southampton to ask for his advice on the possibility of studying for an MA now seem long ago, but his constant support and guidance since then have brought this project to fruition. His counsel has been both insightful and enlightening, and the meticulous checking of my work has been invaluable. I would also like to thank Dr. Karen Adler for her comments on my work during my annual reviews. The research for this thesis was conducted primarily at the National Archives in London, the Middle East Centre Archive at St Antony's College, Oxford, and the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem. I am grateful to all the archivists and staff at these organisations that have provided me with assistance. For funding this research, I give my appreciation to the Faculty of Arts for providing me with a studentship, and also to the Graduate School whose Travel Prize made possible my trip to the Israel State Archives. Most importantly, I would like to thank my family. My parents have provided me with both practical and financial support during my time in higher education but, more than that, they have always believed in me. I would also like to thank my grandad. The stories of his experiences in Palestine, during the final years of the mandate, fired my imagination and reinforced my interest in the subject. Finally, my thanks go to Claire. She has lived through this project with me; without her support and encouragement, this thesis would not have been possible. iv List of Contents Abstract 111 Acknowledgments IV 1. Introduction 1 2. Self-Government 28 3. Immigration 74 4.Land 113 5. Education 156 6. Law and Order 193 7. Conclusion 227 Bibliography 236 v 1 Introduction Under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the mandates that were established to govern territories conquered during the First World War were described as 'a sacred trust of civilisation', given to 'advanced nations' who could 'best undertake' the responsibility of promoting the welfare and development of 'peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modem world'. The underlying premise of the mandate system was that a general obligation existed to promote policies that would put these occupied territories on the path to independence. I William Rappard, an influential Swiss diplomat and academic who sat on the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission between 1925 and 1939, explained in 1946 that 'the primary task of the administering authority is one of disinterested guardianship and of progressive development towards self-government of backward peoples'r' The three different categories of mandate - 'A', 'B', and 'C' - were each designed to reflect the stage of 'development' reached by the local population. The 'C' mandates, deemed the most 'backward', were located in the South Pacific and were to be governed as integral parts of the mandatory power; the 'B' mandates, made up from the German colonies in West and Central Africa, were intended to guarantee 'freedom of conscience and religion' and prevent abuses of power, such as the slave trade; and the 'A' Mandates, which encompassed the former territories of the Ottoman empire, were 'subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone'. 3 In British ideologies of empire, doctrines of 'trusteeship' had a long history that pre- dated the existence of the mandate system." In 1783, when discussing the East India Bill in the House of Commons, Edmund Burke had explained that All political power which is set over men, being wholly artificial, and for so much a derogation from the natural equality of mankind at large, ought to be some way or 1 Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. 2 William E. Rappard, 'Mandates and Trusteeships with Particular Reference to Palestine', The Journal of Politics, Vol. 8, No.4, (November 1946), p.522. 3 Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. 4 Bernard Porter, The Lion's Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-1995, (Harlow, Pearson Education, 1996), pp.l8-27. 1 other exercised ultimately for their benefit ... such rights ... are all in the strictest sense a trust; and it is in the very essence of every trust to be rendered accountable. S These sentiments were echoed by another liberal thinker, John Stuart Mill, when he suggested that self-government should be the long-term outcome of such a responsibility and that, unless some effort was made to achieve this objective, imperial powers were 'guilty of a dereliction of the highest moral trust which can devolve upon a nation'i'' These statements reflected an important preoccupation with the morality of British imperialism and the vast power that colonial administrators often wielded. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, trusteeship was primarily defensive, aimed at preventing British subjects from abusing the power they exercised in the colonies in order to check any despotic influences from spreading back to metropolitan institutions. Yet such ideas soon coalesced into a liberal model of imperialism that linked 'a theory of imperial legitimacy with the project of improvement' and produced a 'set of justifications and governing strategies centred on the duty of liberal reform as the primary purpose of imperial rule' .7 In the colonies of white settlement - Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand -liberal moves towards self-government were relatively straightforward, but in other colonies, where native societies were predominant, trusteeship was an uneven and more complicated process. Of course, these difficulties, based on derogatory views of local subject populations, served the imperial order by ensuring the longevity of its rule, which usually allowed Britain to reap various material benefits on the path to self-government. However, that is not to say that the moral obligations imposed by trusteeship were redundant. The ambivalence about extending representative institutions in non-white colonies was usually grounded in an authentic concern over subject peoples' 'readiness' for such bodies. In fact, many of the central aspects of trusteeship were developed in response to the problems that ruling non-white India posed. From the mid-1830s, a sustained attempt was made at reforming Indian land and tax systems, civil laws, administrative practices, and higher education along British lines." Through the contributions of various intellectuals like Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Babington Macaulay, and 5 Edmund Burke, quoted in Ronald Hyam, 'Bureaucracy and 'Trusteeship' in the Colonial Empire', in Judith Brown and Wm. Roger Louis (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume IV: The Twentieth Century, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), p.265. 6 John Stuart Mill, quoted in Ibid. 7 Karuna Mantena,