Mandate days : British lives in Palestine, 1918-1948 /

Sherman's book is both a history and a pastiche of personal recollections collected and blended by the author to encompass the period 1918 to 1948. Sherman's efforts to establish a mirror of shifting British attitudes toward Arabs and Jews in light of their mission in Palestine are generally successful, although better synthesis and organization of material would have lessened repetition of certain items. What emerges clearly is British resentment toward Zionists, who were determined to keep their distance socially and politically, set against British condescension toward Palestinian Arabs, who opposed British policy but were open to closer contacts with British officials. The final chapter on the demise of the mandate amid Zionist attacks on the British and the eventual Arab-Jewish clashes is particularly good, as is the sense of the stark futility of satisfying conflicting obligations imposed by the mandate while simultaneously achieving imperial goals. Though more focused on detail than analysis, this is a useful account with which to compare standard histories of the period. Upper-division undergraduates and above. C. D. Smith University of Arizona

Sherman (Island Refuge: Britain and Refugees from the Third Reich, not reviewed) is uniquely positioned to write on the British experience of Palestine: Born in Jerusalem under the mandate, he is a lawyer and historian. Rarely has the story of the mandate period in Palestine been told from the point of view of its caretakers, the British. Sherman uses diaries, letters, and interviews to recount the reactions of British subjects who found themselves working and living in what was then Palestine during the 30 years of British role. From the outset, Whitehall naively tried to appease irreconcilable forces. The picture of the occupiers that emerges from the first half of this book makes it clear why: The British men and women quoted by Sherman project an air of earnest good intentions, leavened by a condescension to both Jew and Arab that often borders on (and sometimes lapses into) racism. The lasting impression of English life in 1920s Palestine is of a backwater in which the colonialists struggle to maintain a semblance of old-country habits from fox hunting (jackals, actually) to Gilbert and Sullivan. But with the '30s and the beginning of mass immigration of Jews into Palestine, tensions burst into violence repeatedly. And the aftermath of WW II brings the bloody, messy end of the mandate. The first half of this book suffers from the repetitive nature of daily life in an insular community, but the final two chapters, which take the story from 1939 to the end in 1948, make grimly compelling reading. Sherman writes elegantly himself, and many of his sources are insightful, particularly Sir Henry Gurney, the last high commissioner, in selections from his diaries. The casual distaste that many of the British display for the Jews (and, to a lesser extent, the Arabs) will discomfit many, but this is a readable version of the battle for Israeli independence from a perspective that will be unfamiliar to most Americans. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.