Guizot's Absence of a Plan for Jerusalem

Abstract

Historians have speculated over the existence of an 1841 plan by the French foreign minister François Guizot to internationalize Jerusalem as a Christian city, a plan holding major implications for the eventual emergence of a Jewish state and for European–Ottoman relations. This article aims, based on fresh archival and other sources, to provide a definitive evaluation of Guizot's plan, its scope, and its motivations. It broadens the field to encompass other great power plans mooted in 1841, including plans of a Protestant yet Zionist flavour, and it reassesses the political weight of early nineteenth-century European religious impulses with regard to Palestine.

Notes

I would like to thank Professor Brendan Simms, Peterhouse, Cambridge University, for providing me with the original impulse to write this article.

1. M. Vereté, ‘A Plan for the Internationalisation of Jerusalem 1840–41’, Asian and African Studies, Annual of the Israel Oriental Society, Vol.12 (1978), pp.13–31.

2. If one excludes the propagandistic but inconsequential Napoleonic campaign in Syria of 1799.

3. Vereté, ‘A Plan for the Internationalisation of Jerusalem’, p.21.

4. Respectively abbreviated here as: AMAE (Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères), AN (Archives Nationales, Collection Guizot), GSPK (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz), and HHStA (Haus, Hof- und Staatsarchiv).

5. S. Tatishchev, Vnieshniaia politika Imperatora Nikolaia (St Petersburg: I.N. Skorokhodova, 1887); Vereté, ‘A Plan for the Internationalisation of Jerusalem’, p.21.

6. As Vereté notes, the terms ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Palestine’, and ‘Holy Land’ tended at the time to be likewise interchangeable: Vereté, ‘A Plan for the Internationalisation of Jerusalem’, p.23.

7. L. Wolf, Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question (London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1919).

8. Ibid., p.105.

9. L. Kamarowsky, ‘La question d’Orient’, Revue Générale de Droit International Public, Vol.3 (1896), pp.397–428.

10. Ibid., p.423.

11. Tatishchev, Vnieshniaia politika Imperatora Nikolaia, pp.566–77.

12. Vereté, ‘A Plan for the Internationalisation of Jerusalem’, p.21.

13. Tatishchev, Vnieshniaia politika Imperatora Nikolaia, p.571; HHStA/Staatenabteilungen/Russland III/123, ff.171–4. The fault probably lies with the London copyist, as Bunsen's memoirs have the correct date: C.K. von Bunsen, Aus seinen Briefen und nach eigener Erinnerung geschildert von seiner Witwe, Vol.2 (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1868), pp.201–2.

14. ‘Memorandum delivered by the Russian Government to the Prussian Government in October 1840 communicated by the Chevalier Bunsen, August 1841’ and ‘Memorandum delivered by the Austrian Government to the Prussian Government in October 1840 communicated by the Chevalier Bunsen, August 1841’, respectively at FO 64/235, ff.158–74 and ff.175–83.

15. ‘Memorandum delivered by the Austrian Government to the Prussian Government in October 1840’, FO 64/235, f.175.

16. Memorandum, 3 Feb. 1841, FO 7/301/80.

17. Metternich to Werther, 9 Feb. 1841, HHStA/Staatskanzlei/Diplomatische Korrespondenz/Preußen/178, ff.106–15 and GSPK/III. HA MdA/I, 7362.

18. Guizot to Barante, 31 Dec. 1840, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Russie/196, ff.323–4, and AN/42 AP/9/3; the letter is also reproduced in the Barante memoirs, where Vereté found it: A.B. de Barante, Souvenirs du Baron de Barante, Vol.6 (Paris: Calman Lévy, 1890–1901), pp.559–60.

19. For example Guizot to Bourqueney, 18 Dec. 1840, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Angleterre/656, ff.222–7, and Guizot to Bourqueney, 13 Feb. 1841, AN/42 AP/9, ff.237–42.

20. Guizot to Pontois, 6 Feb. 1841, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Turquie/282, ff.53–4.

21. Guizot to Bresson, 5 Feb. 1841, AN/42 AP/8/3.

22. Guizot to Sainte-Aulaire, 13 Jan. 1841, found both at AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Autriche/429, ff.24–6 and at AN/42 AP/8/2.

23. Ibid.

24. Apponyi to Metternich, 5 Jan. 1841, HHStA/Staatenabteilungen/Frankreich/Diplomatische Korrespondenz/320, ff.1–8. It is ambiguous whether a parallel with contemporary Cracow, then the last independent part of Poland and a thorn in the side of the Austrian court, was made by Guizot himself or by Apponyi; the term was noted by Vereté, but it is only found in Austrian letters.

25. Apponyi to Metternich, 7 Jan. 1841, ibid., ff.13–14.

26. In which case it would have been recorded at GSPK/III. HA MdA/I, 4930 or I, 4931, or possibly I, 7361.

27. The author has consulted in particular AMAE/Mémoires et documents/Turquie/41 & 127; AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Egypte/13; and AN/42 AP/286.

28. Vereté, ‘A Plan for the Internationalisation of Jerusalem’, pp.24–5.

29. Guizot to Barante , 31 Dec. 1840, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Russie/196, f.323.

30. Guizot to Sainte-Aulaire, 13 Jan. 1841, AN/42 AP/8/2.

31. Guizot to Bresson, 5 Feb. 1841, AN/42 AP/8/3. This was picked up by the Prussian foreign minister, Heinrich von Werther, who accordingly dismissed them as ‘ideas that presented themselves to his [Guizot's] mind in moments of idleness’: Werther to Arnim, 14 Feb. 1841, GSPK/III. HA MdA/I, 7362/170.

32. Pontois to Guizot, 27 Jan. 1841, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Turquie/282, ff.37–45 and Guizot to Pontois, 6 Feb. 1841, ibid., ff.53–4.

33. Guizot to Bourqueney, 18 Dec. 1840, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Angleterre/656, ff.225–6.

34. Guizot to Bourqueney, 13 Feb. 1841 and 9 Feb. 1841, AN/42 AP/9, f.241 and f.227 respectively.

35. See Guizot to Sainte-Aulaire, 13 Jan. 1841, AN/42 AP/8/2 and Guizot to Bourqueney, 23 Feb. 1841, AN/42 AP/9, ff.286–7.

36. Vereté, ‘A Plan for the Internationalisation of Jerusalem’, p.25.

37. There is nothing at AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Naples/165 & 167; AMAE/Correspondance Commerciale et Consulaire/Naples/49; AMAE/Mémoires et documents/Naples/14; or AN/42 AP/72.

38. Police report, 10 Feb. 1841, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Naples/167, ff.17–18.

39. Guizot to Barante, 31 Dec. 1840, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Russie/196, f.324.

40. Guizot to Sainte-Aulaire, 13 Jan. 1841 and Guizot to Bresson, 5 Feb. 1841, AN/42 AP/8/2 & 3.

41. Even if these were chiefly established in Lebanon and Syria proper, not Palestine and let alone Jerusalem.

42. Metternich to Neumann, 8 Feb. 1841, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Turquie/282, f.71.

43. Metternich to Stürmer, 18 Dec. 1840, HHStA/Staatenabteilungen/Türkei VI/78, ff.565–70.

44. All three are reproduced, albeit with questionable dates, in Wolf, Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question, pp.107–16.

45. Tatishchev, Vnieshniaia politika Imperatora Nikolaia, pp.570–71.

46. The holy sites would return to haunt Russian and indeed French policy in the prelude to the Crimean War: this lied in the future, however, and the Crimean War answered to different national and international contexts.

47. Memorandum, AMAE/Correspondence Politique/Turquie/282, f. 82.

48. Ibid., f.82.

49. Sainte-Aulaire to Guizot, 26 Jan. 1841, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Autriche/429, ff.32–3.

50. See Guizot to Bourqueney, 16 Feb. 1841, where the French desiderata have been reduced to obtaining guarantees of justice and good administration from the Porte, and where Bourqueney is copied on the Austrian correspondence, AN/42 AP/9, ff.253–4.

51. Memorandum, 20 June 1841, FO 78/435, f.125.

52. Pontois to Guizot, 27 June 1841, AMAE/Correspondance Politique/Turquie/283, ff.120–27 and ff.130–33.

53. Werther to Bülow, 24 Feb. 1841 and attached Memorandum, FO 64/235, ff.63–4 and 65–8.

54. Ibid., and as related in Radowitz's diary in P. Hassel, Joseph Maria von Radowitz (Berlin: E.S. Mittler, 1905), p.95.

55. Bunsen's memoirs are ambiguous on this point, but they make clear that the Prussian court had been contemplating action in the Holy Land well before Bresson's approach: Bunsen, Aus seinen Briefen, Vol.2, pp.200–202.

56. Memorandum, FO 64/235, f.68.

57. For Frederick William's Pietist and BSJ associations, see C. Clark, ‘Missionary Politics: Protestant Missions to the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Prussia’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (1993), pp.33–4.

58. D. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

59. The Morning Herald, 13 Nov. 1841, p.3.

60. See Jewish Intelligence, the LSJ's periodical, Vol.5 (1839), pp.125–41.

61. Bunsen, Aus seinen Briefen, Vol.2, pp.151–2.

62. C.K. von Bunsen, A Memoir of Baron Bunsen (London: Longmans, Green, 1868), pp.607–8.

63. Ibid., p.609.

64. Frederic William IV to Bunsen, 26 Aug. 1841, in Frederick William IV, Aus dem Briefwechsel Friedrich Wilhelms IV. mit Bunsen (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1873), p.94.

65. A. Green, ‘The British Empire and the Jews: An Imperialism of Human Rights?’, Past and Present, Vol.199 (2008), pp.175–205.

66. Ashley to Palmerston, 23 Nov. 1840, FO 195/165/250.

67. M. Vereté, ‘Why was a British Consulate Established in Jerusalem?’, English Historical Review, Vol.85 (1970), pp.316–45.

68. Lady Palmerston to Princess Lieven, 13 Nov. 1840, in Sir J. Squire (ed.), The Lieven–Palmerston Correspondence, 1828–1856 (London: J. Murray, 1943), p.196.

69. Nesselrode to Meyendorff, 30 Nov. 1841, in K.R. von Nesselrode, Lettres et papiers du chancelier comte de Nesselrode, 1760–1850, Vol.8 (Paris: A. Lahure, 1904), p.153.