ORIENTATIONS (Definitive Edition)

HISTORY

• xix, 532 p. front., illus., paltes, ports., map, facsims. 25 cm. 2nd Edition #021223
• Sir Ronald Henry Amherst Storrs KCMG CBE (19 November 1881 – 1 November 1955) was an official in the British Foreign Office. He served as Oriental Secretary in Cairo, Military Governor of Jerusalem, Governor of Cyprus, and Governor of Northern Rhodesia.
• Storrs is credited with a classic example of British understatement when referring to the behaviour of the British toward the many tribal and regional leaders that the British were trying to influence in “The Great Game“: “we deprecated the imperative, preferring instead the subjunctive or even, wistfully, the optative mood“.

  During the First World War Storrs was a member of the Arab Bureau and a participant in the negotiations between the Sharif Husayn and the British government and in the organisation of the Arab Revolt. His own personal positions were that the Sharif Husayn was asking for more Arab territory than he had any right to, and that Syria and Palestine should be incorporated into a British-sponsored Egyptian Empire as a replacement for the Ottoman Empire, a plan which was never implemented. Storrs is thought to have underestimated Arab Muslim resistance to non-Muslim rule.^[1]

• In 1917 Storrs became Military Governor of Jerusalem, within the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, for which purpose he was given the British Army rank of colonel.^[2] He claimed to be “the first military governor of Jerusalem since Pontius Pilate“.^[3] He was in fact the second British military governor of Jerusalem, succeeding Brigadier General Neville Travers Borton, also known as Borton Pasha, who resigned after two weeks due to ill health.^[4]

  The 1920 Nebi Musa riots occurred during his military governorship, and the following year he became Civil Governor of Jerusalem and Judea. In both positions he attempted to support Zionism while protecting the rights of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, and thus earned the hostility of both sides.^[5] He devoted much of his time to cultural matters, including town planning, and to the Pro-Jerusalem Society.

• Storrs, Ronald, Sir, 1881-1955
• Colonial administrators — Great Britain — Biography
• Colonial administrators — Middle East — Biography
• Middle East — Politics and government — 1914-1945
• Storrs was one of the six pallbearers at the funeral of T. E. Lawrence in 1935.