author of the Balfour Declaration
BALFOUR, ARTHUR JAMES. Vandyk. Bust portrait signed and dated 1917 by Balfour
[London], 1917
Gelatin silver pint on mount with deckle at bottom, on a large original mount. 6 x 8 in. Signed in pencil on the mount by the photographer.
British statesman Arthur Balfour, who had served as Prime Minister from 1902-1905, was Foreign Secretary in 1916-1919. In 1917, the year this portrait was taken, Balfour wrote the Balfour Declaration supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Balfour wrote, in part, in a letter to Baron Rothschild, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland:
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that noting shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The diplomatic foundation stone of the state of Israel, the Balfour Declaration was accepted by the League of Nations in 1922 and was embodied in the mandate that gave Great Britain temporary administrative control of Palestine. In 1939 Britain reversed its policy with a White Paper stating that the creation of a Jewish state was no longer national policy. By then, however, Britain had allowed hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to enter Palestine, planing the seeds of the Jewish state.
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