‘Allenby, O’ Allenby’: John Huston Finley’s Internationalist Case for a British Mandate in Palestine

Abstract

ABSTRACT As the First World War drew to a close, the head of the American Red Cross’s Commission to Palestine, John Huston Finley, stepped into ongoing debates over the future of the Holy Land when he called for an international trusteeship in Palestine. Supporters and opponents of the Zionist movement – as well as the few scholars that have since engaged with Finley’s views – primarily understood Finley’s proposal as anti-Zionist. While Finley certainly presented his plan as an alternative to a Jewish state in Palestine, this article demonstrates that Finley’s proposal was much more directly a case for a British mandate that was rooted in Finley’s experiences working with the British – as well as his personal fascination with General Edmund Allenby. Finley believed and argued that Allenby’s person, character, and conduct demonstrated that the interests of ‘civilization’ could best be secured in Palestine by a British trusteeship. In his 1919 A Pilgrim in Palestine, published amidst the post-war debates over mandate assignments, Finley presented Allenby as a symbol of trusteeship’s possibilities in making an American case for British rule.