Colonial Diplomacy Through Art Jerusalem 1918 1926

Addressing Zionists in 1923, the British artist C. R. Ashbee spoke of "that preposterous Balfour Declaration whose Arabic tail you people perpetually ignore, but the lash of which you will some day feel." His warnings received no attention at the time, nor has his radical pro-Arab Palestinian political position been researched since. One hundred years later, this art historical study asks what possibilities individual colonial actors had to influence official colonial policy. In the example of Jerusalem under British rule, Moya Tönnies analyses how three members of the British administration, Ashbee, architect Ernest Tatham Richmond, and governor Ronald Storrs, all three identifying with the International Arts and Crafts Movement, used art as a diplomatic sphere for their British colonial anti-Zionist interventions.