A memorial in Allenby Square in west Jerusalem marks the spot where British General John Shea accepted the surrender of the Holy City on the morning of 9 December 1917.
On 12 December 2019, British voters elected a Conservative government which at the end of January this year delivered the UK’s departure from the European Union.
Both moments are turning points in British history.
But how are they connected?
At the start of 1914, the British Empire was the largest in history. It comprised what are now dozens of independent states and almost one quarter of the world’s population.
On 4 August, the British Empire and the dominions of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada declared war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
More than four bloody years later, Britain emerged from the conflict in possession of more territory and people than ever.
But history shows that this was when the British Empire reached its peak. It almost immediately started to decline.
Just over two months after the armistice that ended the war on the Western Front, a rebellion against British rule began in Ireland. In 1922, most of it became effectively independent as the Irish Free State.
The same year, Egypt — a British protectorate since the end of 1914 — was granted independence. Iraq followed the same route in 1932.
After the Second World War, the disintegration accelerated. Jordan became independent in 1946 and Burma, India, Pakistan (including what is now Bangladesh) and Sri Lanka in 1947-48. Sudan followed suit in 1956, Malaya in 1957, Cyprus in 1960 and Malta in 1964
By 1970, nearly all British territories in Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean had become self-governing. In 1982, the UK almost lost the Falklands Islands. Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997.
The process continued in a different form with the Good Friday Agreement which formally ceded influence over the six counties of Northern Ireland to the Irish Republic. Scotland voted against independence in 2014 but a further referendum on the issue is expected in due course.
What at the end of 1918 encompassed the globe may soon not even span Great Britain.
The evaporation of British power is reflected in other ways. Huge swathes of London are owned by foreign investors. They have stakes in most large UK companies. The Times, the Telegraph, The Independent and The Sun are owned by non-residents or foreigners. All five of Britain’s top soccer clubs are too. The government elected with a large parliamentary majority last year plans to change how the BBC is financed. Should that happen, the corporation will contract and at least part of its lost market share will be taken by media firms owned or controlled by people from outside the UK.
It’s a story that’s been told before. An empire got too big. It was weakened by internal division and external rivals. Its leaders lost faith in the imperial vision.
But at what point did the decline start?
Most historians say it was the First World War.
Britain’s decision in August 1914 wasn’t the only option London had at the time. It was a co-guarantor of the independence of Belgium which Germany invaded in August. Nevertheless, it could have initially stayed out of a war which was essentially between Berlin on the one hand and, on the other, Paris and St Petersburgh. But its involvement was probably unavoidable.
The victory, when it finally came, was at least partly due to the role of the men, resources and money of the USA, which joined the war on the Britain’s side in April 1917. It was in reality an illusion of victory. At the end of 1918, Britain no longer had the will or the capability to rule the empire it had acquired.
The spring of 1917 is therefore seen as the tipping point; the moment when America inexorably began to displace Britain as the world’s leading power and the decline started.
But there’s another date that I suggest mattered more.
…The Liberal “crusade” of 1917
In December 1916, Lloyd George became British prime minister. He was determined to win the war and believed this could be done more easily by first defeating the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the conflict in October 1914.
He was opposed by the military establishment who argued, rightly in my view, that the Western Front and defeating Germany should continue to be the sole priorities.
They were overruled.
In July 1917, General Edmund Allenby was appointed head of British, dominion and imperial forces in Egypt which until the start of that year mainly concentrated on defending the Suez Canal. Lloyd George asked him to take Jerusalem in Ottoman Palestine “as a Christmas present for the British people.”
The ensuing campaign, which began on 31 October, was a sideshow compared to the fighting in Belgium and France. Around 250,000 troops were involved and roughly the same number of Ottoman forces. In contrast, millions were deployed on the Western Front.
Lloyd George hoped to deny Britain’s ally France the opportunity to extend its influence after the war in both what was then known as Greater Syria and in Mesopotamia, which had huge oil reserves. But he and senior cabinet colleagues were also influenced by factors free from strategic considerations. They were Christian Zionists who believed in the return of the Jewish people to the location of their ancient kingdoms in Palestine. They openly declared they were following the footsteps of Jesus and Crusaders who fought to build a Christian empire around Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
A declaration issued in November 1917 by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed Britain’s support for the creation in Palestine of a national homeland for the Jews. It was an open-ended commitment to a project that contradicted British promises made the previous year both to leaders of the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule and about the post-war division of Greater Syria to France. It was bound to create problems.
Nevertheless, the capture of Jerusalem was a triumph for General Allenby’s army which at that time almost exclusively comprised white, Christian men who had volunteered in Britain, Australia and New Zealand in 1914 and 1915. In many ways, it expressed their highest motives. In their eyes, the campaign for Jerusalem was part of a selfless war in defence of civilisation; ended oppressive Ottoman rule and created the possibility of the return of God’s chosen people.
The symbolism of the moment echoes across the decades. General Shea commanded the 60th (London) Division which mainly comprised volunteers from the imperial capital itself. And never before, and never since, had the British Army — essentially unaided — captured a place of such historical and psychological significance.
The euphoria quickly passed. Opposition to British plans finally erupted in 1936 in a rebellion involving tens of thousands of Arab fighters. By the end of the decade, the British government and military commanders on the ground, including General Bernard Montgomery, recognised the situation was unsustainable and Britain in due course would have to withdraw.
That eventually happened in 1948, triggering the first of four major Arab-Israel wars. The legacy of the capture of Jerusalem includes continuing competition about the status of Holy City and other territories conquered by Allenby’s army.
In other parts of the empire, the UK often recognised facts and got out before an explosion occurred.
But in Palestine, the promises made in the autumn of 1917 were seen to be unbreakable. British rule continued long past the point where it worked and finally ended in violence and division.
The strain of ruling Palestine was just one of many challenges Britain faced after 1918. But it may have been the decisive one since it resulted from a commitment to a vision largely shaped by intangible principles. Britain’s failure in Palestine constituted the destruction of an idea that inspired its army in Palestine in 1917 and the psychological foundations underpinning the British Empire as a whole.
The British Empire would have disappeared even if the Jerusalem campaign hadn’t happened. But the decline might have been slower, better managed and less damaging to the sense the British people had of itself in the summer of 1914.
The capture of the Holy City cost Allenby’s Army more than 20,000 lives. That was less than British losses on the first day of the Battle of The Somme on 1 July 1916. But the price it extracted in the subsequent three decades was to be enormous. I believe it decisively shaped the course of the history of the British Empire and what’s left of it in 2020.
…Britain’s incomprehensible hope
Britain’s decision to leave the EU was the result of many factors.
But the rhetoric of those favouring Brexit echoed the idealism that motivated the men of Allenby’s army 103 years ago this year.
There was the idea of the unique nature of British civilisation and pride in its achievements.
And, perhaps most important of all, there was hope, incomprehensible to those who didn’t share it, that there was a place where it would all make complete sense.
Edmund O’Sullivan is the producer and director of Fighting for the Holy City: the Londoners who captured Jerusalem in 1917, a documentary film which is to be released in 2022.