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Writing the Journey: June 1999

"Homesick Crusaders: British Soldiers in the Holy Land, 1917-18"


Eitan Bar-Yosef
St. Anne's College, University of Oxford
eitan.bar-yosef@st-annes.oxford.ac.uk

From the early 1870s onwards, with the inauguration of Thomas Cook's Eastern Tours, travel to Palestine was becoming increasingly accessible. However, averaging 31 shillings a day, a tour of the Holy Land was still well beyond the reach of most British men and women. Consequently, it was only during the British military Campaign in Palestine, in 1917-18, that a substantial number of lower-middle- and working-class men were able, for the first time, to encounter, explore, and experience the Holy Land, its landscape and its people. The soldiers' unique perspective provides an exceptional specimen of popular Orientalism, which stands against the academic, high-brow Orientalist tradition charted by Edward Said. Drawing on soldiers' diaries, letters and memoirs, this paper examines these popular depictions of the Holy Land, and of the British presence in it.

The allusion to the Palestine campaign as the "last Crusade", and to the British soldiers as "modern" Crusaders, has been widely disseminated, both during and after the War. Indeed, the image of the Crusade, signifying an uncompromising imperial quest, was consciously invoked by the British propaganda apparatus, in an attempt to present the war as a repetition, or rather a culmination, of a previous venture. Set against this "official" representation, the soldiers' testimonies present a competing version of the events, very different from the one fabricated in London. The juxtaposition of these two discourses, then, reveals the tension between public consumption and private conception, between calculated fabrication and unprompted reaction, the manipulating and the manipulated, those here and those there.

Most significantly, it was vernacular Biblical culture, and not the Crusading metaphor, which gave meaning and depth to the soldiers' understanding of their presence in Palestine. Their image of the Holy Land was coloured by the popular religious discourse, derived from hymns and Sunday-School lessons, Church and Chapel. However, more often than not, the soldiers found that the reality of the Holy Land contrasted with their expectations. The Biblical vocabulary was thus employed subversively, to demystify, even debunk, the Holy Land. Earlier Victorian travellers frequently felt that Palestine functioned as a kind of "home". These British soldiers, on the other hand, could not, or did not want to, imagine such a likeness. Their Palestine was constructed as the opposite of Blighty. Indeed, it was England, not Palestine, which was presented in their writings as the real Promised Land. This representation could be attributed to the harsh conditions of war, but it could also imply a weariness with imperial expansion, a return to an indigenous, rather than imperial, existence. The historian David Fromkin has asserted that from a British point of view, the Middle East settlement of 1922 had become largely out of date by the time it was effected. Fromkin is discussing a complex web of political, military and economical interests; however, it seems to echo a very basic sentiment shared by the soldiers. Their letters, diaries and memoirs embody an alternative canon of travel literature, which offers - from below - a contesting Orientalist vision.


Eitan Bar-Yosef
St. Annes College, University of Oxford
eitan.bar-yosef@st-annes.oxford.ac.uk

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