THE British campaign to conquer Palestine in 1917 is a founding event of the modern world. It brought about the definitive destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of its successor states in the modern Middle East. The campaign therefore merits our attention.

Of recent years it has been studied with regard to the larger strategic and imperial problems, or from the point of view of the ordinary soldier. Here I hope to strike a balance between these two equally legitimate approaches, and to add in some consideration of the Turkish point of view, both the soldiers and the commanders.

Earlier studies have emphasized the role of the two main British commanders, Generals Murray and Allenby, and the contrast between them. I do not dissent from the emphasis and contrast, though I feel Murray deserves some sympathy. The dominant person is, however, Allenby, with no doubt at all. Yet the interpretation placed upon his actions, particularly at the third battle of Gaza and to some extent in the fighting in the Judaean Hills, is something I cannot accept. I feel that a new interpretation of his conduct of the fighting by no means diminishes his stature; rather it enhances it.

It is also necessary to bear in mind the outside pressures on the commanders, Murray's necessary partial preoccupation with events in and around Egypt, Allenby's constant difficulties with the War Office, and his need to pay attention, however intermittent, to the French. For one of the driving forces behind this campaign was an imperial competition between Britain and France. This was articulated in the various partition agreements made during and after the war, a process in which the British enlisted, with considerable diplomatic skill, both Arabs and Jews in furtherance of their own designs. And as a result of this diplomatic sleight of hand, the British Empire in the Middle East lurched from crisis to crisis for thirty years, and ended in chaos and the birth of the modern situation.