Balfour Declaration

Date

2 November 1917

Category

Politics & governance

Region

Middle East (Palestine) / Britain

Era

Modern

Significance

On 2 November 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, for transmission to the Zionist Federation, stating that the British government viewed 'with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people' while pledging that nothing should prejudice 'the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities' or the rights of Jews elsewhere.

Issued during World War I as British forces advanced against the Ottomans in Palestine, the declaration reflected wartime strategic calculations and sympathy for Zionism among parts of the British establishment. It was incorporated into the League of Nations mandate for Palestine approved in 1922. The brief statement had profound and lasting consequences: it lent international backing to the Zionist project, while the tension between its commitment to a Jewish national home and its safeguards for the existing Arab majority became central to the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Empires active in 2 November 1917

• Empire of Japan
  1868 CE to 1947 CE
• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE to 1962 CE
• German Empire
  1871 CE to 1918 CE
• Russian Empire
  1721 CE to 1917 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE to 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE to 1976 CE

Related politics & governance events

• Russian Revolutions of 1917
  March & November 1917 (February & October Revolutions, O.S.)
• Sykes-Picot Agreement partitions the Ottoman Middle East
  16 May 1916
• Treaty of Versailles and the founding of the League of Nations
  28 June 1919 (in force 10 January 1920)
• The Xinhai Revolution and the fall of the Qing
  1911 to 1912 (Wuchang Uprising 10 October 1911; abdication 12 February 1912)
• Hitler's appointment and Nazi consolidation of power
  30 January 1933 to August 1934
• Stalin's Great Purge (Great Terror)
  1936 to 1938

Also relevant

• Collapse and partition of the Ottoman Empire
  1918 to 1920 (San Remo April 1920; Sèvres 10 August 1920)

Essential reading

• Haber-Bosch Process Industrialises Synthetic Nitrogen Fertiliser
  September 1913
• 1931 Central China Floods
  June to August 1931
• The Dust Bowl
  1930 to 1940 (peak 1934 to 1936)
• Cárdenas Nationalises Mexico's Oil
  1938

Further reading

Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire

The wider story

Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire

Caroline Finkel

The standard readable single-volume Ottoman history.

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