Arthur Balfour
The Marquess of Salisbury | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Succeeded by | Henry Campbell-Bannerman | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Born | Arthur James Balfour 25 July 1848 Whittingehame House, East Lothian, Scotland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Died | 19 March 1930 Woking, Surrey, England | (aged 81)||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Resting place | Whittingehame Church, Whittingehame | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Political party | Conservative | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour,
Entering Parliament in
. An esteemed debater, he was bored by the mundane tasks of party management.In July 1902, he succeeded his uncle as prime minister. In domestic policy he passed the
Balfour returned as First Lord of the Admiralty in Asquith's Coalition Government (1915–1916). In December 1916, he became foreign secretary in David Lloyd George's coalition. He was frequently left out of the inner workings of foreign policy, although the Balfour Declaration on a Jewish homeland bore his name. He continued to serve in senior positions throughout the 1920s, and died in 1930, aged 81, having spent a vast inherited fortune. He never married. Balfour trained as a philosopher – he originated an argument against believing that human reason could determine truth – and was seen as having a detached attitude to life, epitomised by a remark attributed to him: "Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all".
Background and early life
Arthur Balfour was born at
Personal life
Balfour met his cousin May Lyttelton in 1870 when she was 19. After her two previous serious suitors had died, Balfour is said to have declared his love for her in December 1874. She died of typhus on Palm Sunday, 21 March 1875; Balfour arranged for an emerald ring to be buried in her coffin. Lavinia Talbot, May's older sister, believed that an engagement had been imminent, but her recollections of Balfour's distress (he was "staggered") were not written down until thirty years later.[9]: 29–33
Historian R. J. Q. Adams points out that May's letters discuss her love life in detail, but contain no evidence that she was in love with Balfour, nor that he had spoken to her of marriage. He visited her only once during her serious three-month illness, and was soon accepting social invitations again within a month of her death. Adams suggests that, although he may simply have been too shy to express his feelings fully, Balfour may also have encouraged tales of his youthful tragedy as a convenient cover for his disinclination to marry; the matter cannot be conclusively proven.[9]: 29–33
In later years mediums claimed to pass on messages from her – see the "
Balfour remained a lifelong bachelor.
Although one biographer writes that "it is difficult to say how far the relationship went", her letters suggest they may have become lovers in 1887 and may have engaged in
Balfour was a leading member of the social and intellectual group The Souls.
Early career
In 1874 Balfour was elected
Balfour divided his time between politics and academic pursuits. Biographer Sydney Zebel suggested that Balfour continued to appear an amateur or dabbler in public affairs, devoid of ambition and indifferent to policy issues. However, in fact he actually made a dramatic transition to a deeply involved politician. His assets, according to Zebel, included a strong ambition that he kept hidden, shrewd political judgment, a knack for negotiation, a taste for intrigue, and care to avoid factionalism. Most importantly, he deepened his close ties with his uncle Lord Salisbury. He also maintained cordial relationships with Disraeli, Gladstone and other national leaders.[15]: 27
Released from his duties as private secretary by the
Service in Lord Salisbury's governments
Irish Secretary
In 1885, Lord Salisbury appointed Balfour
In Parliament he resisted overtures to the
Leadership roles
In 1886–1892 he became one of the most effective public speakers of the age. Impressive in matter rather than delivery, his speeches were logical and convincing, and delighted an ever-wider audience.[18]
On the death of W. H. Smith in 1891, Balfour became First Lord of the Treasury – the last in British history not to have been concurrently prime minister as well – and Leader of the House of Commons. After the fall of the government in 1892 he spent three years in opposition. When the Conservatives returned to power, in coalition with the Liberal Unionists, in 1895, Balfour again became Leader of the House and First Lord of the Treasury. His management of the abortive education proposals of 1896 showed a disinclination for the drudgery of parliamentary management, yet he saw the passage of a bill providing Ireland with improved local government under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 and joined in debates on foreign and domestic questions between 1895 and 1900.[18]
During the illness of Lord Salisbury in 1898, and again in Salisbury's absence abroad, Balfour was in charge of the
Prime minister
With Lord Salisbury's resignation on 11 July 1902, Balfour succeeded him as prime minister, with the approval of all the Unionist party. The new prime minister came into power practically at the same moment as the
In foreign affairs, Balfour and his foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne, improved relations with France, culminating in the Entente Cordiale of 1904. The period also saw the Russo-Japanese War, when Britain, an ally of the Japanese, came close to war with Russia after the Dogger Bank incident. On the whole, Balfour left the conduct of foreign policy to Lansdowne, being busy himself with domestic problems.[15]
Balfour, who had known Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann since 1906, opposed Russian mistreatment of Jews and increasingly supported Zionism as a programme for European Jews to settle in Palestine.[27] However, in 1905 he supported the Aliens Act 1905, one of whose main objectives was to control and restrict Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe.[28][29]
The budget was certain to show a surplus and taxation could be remitted. Yet as events proved, it was the budget that would sow dissension, override other legislative concerns and signal a new political movement.
Balfour resigned as prime minister in December 1905, hoping the Liberal leader
Achievements
According to historian Robert Ensor, Balfour can be credited with achievement in five major areas:[31]: 355
- The Education Act 1902 (and a similar measure for London in 1903);[32]
- The
- The Licensing Act 1904;[35]
- In military policy, the creation of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1904) and support for Sir John Fisher's naval reforms.
- In foreign policy, the Anglo-French Convention (1904), which formed the basis of the Entente Cordiale with France.
The Education Act lasted four decades and eventually was highly praised. Eugene Rasor states, "Balfour was credited and much praised from many perspectives with the success [of the 1902 education act]. His commitment to education was fundamental and strong."[36]: 20 At the time it hurt Balfour because the Liberal party used it to rally their Noncomformist supporters. Ensor said the Act ranked:
among the two or three greatest constructive measures of the twentieth century....[He did not write it] but no statesman less dominated than Balfour was by the concept of national efficiency would have taken it up and carried it through, since its cost on the side of votes was obvious and deterrent....Public money was thus made available for the first time to ensure properly paid teachers and a standardised level of efficiency for all children alike [including the Anglican and Catholic schools].[31]: 355–56
For most of the 19th century, the very powerful political and economic position of the Church of Ireland (Anglican) landowners opposed the political aspirations of Irish nationalists. Balfour's solution was to buy them out, not by compulsion, but by offering the owners a full immediate payment and a 12% bonus on the sales price. The British government purchased 13 million acres (53,000 km2) by 1920, and sold farms to the tenants at low payments spread over seven decades. It would cost money, but all sides proved amenable.[31]: 358–60 Starting in 1923 the Irish government bought out most of the remaining landowners, and in 1933 diverted payments being made to the British treasury and used them for local improvements.[37]
Balfour's introduction of Chinese coolie labour in South Africa enabled the Liberals to counterattack, charging that his measures amounted to "Chinese slavery".[31]: 355, 376–78 [38] Likerwise Liberals energised the Nonconformists when they attacked Balfour's Licensing Act 1904 which paid pub owners to close down. In the long run it did reduce the great oversupply of pubs, while in the short run Balfour's party was hurt.[31]: 360–61
Balfour failed to solve his greatest political challenge – the debate over tariffs that ripped his party apart. Chamberlain proposed to turn the Empire into a closed trade bloc protected by high tariffs against imports from Germany and the United States. He argued that tariff reform would revive a flagging British economy, strengthen imperial ties with the dominions and the colonies, and produce a positive programme that would facilitate reelection. He was vehemently opposed by Conservative free traders who denounced the proposal as economically fallacious, and open to the charge of raising food prices in Britain. Balfour tried to forestall disruption by removing key ministers on each side, and offering a much narrower tariff programme. It was ingenious, but both sides rejected any compromise, and his party's chances for reelection were ruined.[39][40]: 4–6
Historians generally praised Balfour's achievements in military and foreign policy. Cannon & Crowcroft 2015 stress the importance of the Anglo‐French Entente of 1904, and the establishment of the Committee of Imperial Defence.[41] Rasor points to twelve historians who have examined his key role in naval and military reforms.[36]: 39–40 [31]: 361–71 However, there was little political payback at the time. The local Conservative campaigns in 1906 focused mostly on a few domestic issues.[42] Balfour gave strong support for Jackie Fisher's naval reforms.[43]
Balfour created and chaired the
Balfour may have been personally sympathetic to extending suffrage, with his brother
Later career
After the general election of 1906 Balfour remained party leader, his position strengthened by Joseph Chamberlain's absence from the House of Commons after his stroke in July 1906, but he was unable to make much headway against the huge Liberal majority in the Commons. An early attempt to score a debating triumph over the government, made in Balfour's usual abstruse, theoretical style, saw Campbell-Bannerman respond with: "Enough of this foolery," to the delight of his supporters. Balfour made the controversial decision, with Lord Lansdowne, to use the heavily Unionist House of Lords as a check on the political programme and legislation of the Liberal party in the Commons. Legislation was vetoed or altered by amendments between 1906 and 1909, leading David Lloyd George to remark that the Lords was "the right hon. Gentleman's poodle. It fetches and carries for him. It barks for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to. And we are told that this is a great revising Chamber, the safeguard of liberty in the country."[48] The issue was forced by the Liberals with Lloyd George's People's Budget, provoking the constitutional crisis that led to the Parliament Act 1911, which limited the Lords to delaying bills for up to two years. After the Unionists lost the general elections of 1910 (despite softening the tariff reform policy with Balfour's promise of a referendum on food taxes), the Unionist peers split to allow the Parliament Act to pass the House of Lords, to prevent mass creation of Liberal peers by the new King, George V. The exhausted Balfour resigned as party leader after the crisis, and was succeeded in late 1911 by Bonar Law.[15]
Balfour remained important in the party, however, and when the Unionists joined
Balfour resigned as foreign secretary following the
On 5 May 1922, Balfour was created
Balfour was not initially included in Baldwin's second government in 1924, but in 1925, he returned to the Cabinet, in place of the late Lord Curzon as Lord President of the Council, until the government ended in 1929. With 28 years of government service, Balfour had one of the longest ministerial careers in modern British politics, second only to Winston Churchill.[52]
Last years
Lord Balfour had generally good health until 1928 and remained until then a regular tennis player. Four years previously he had been the first president of the International Lawn Tennis Club of Great Britain. At the end of 1928, most of his teeth were removed and he suffered the unremitting circulatory trouble which ended his life. Before that, he had suffered occasional
His obituaries in
Personality
Early in Balfour's career he was thought to be merely amusing himself with politics, and it was regarded as doubtful whether his health could withstand the severity of English winters. He was considered a dilettante by his colleagues; regardless, Lord Salisbury gave increasingly powerful posts in his government to his nephew.[18]
Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary:
A man of extraordinary grace of mind and body, delighting in all that is beautiful and distinguished––music, literature, philosophy, religious feeling and moral disinterestedness, aloof from all the greed and crying of common human nature. But a strange paradox as Prime Minister of a great empire! I doubt whether even foreign affairs interest him. For all economic and social questions I gather he has an utter loathing, while the machinery of government and administration would seem to him a disagreeable irrelevance.[55]
Balfour developed a manner known to friends as the Balfourian manner. Harold Begbie, a journalist, attacked him for what Begbie considered Balfour's self-obsession:
This Balfourian manner...an attitude of mind—an attitude of convinced superiority which insists in the first place on complete detachment from the enthusiasms of the human race, and in the second place on keeping the vulgar world at arm's length....To Mr. Arthur Balfour this studied attitude of aloofness has been fatal, both to his character and to his career. He has said nothing, written nothing, done nothing, which lives in the heart of his countrymen....the charming, gracious, and cultured Mr. Balfour is the most egotistical of men, and a man who would make almost any sacrifice to remain in office.[56]
However, Graham Goodlad argued to the contrary:
Balfour's air of detachment was a pose. He was sincere in his conservatism, mistrusting radical political and social change and believing deeply in the Union with Ireland, the Empire and the superiority of the British race....Those who dismissed him as a languid dilettante were wide of the mark. As Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1887 to 1891 he manifested an unflinching commitment to the maintenance of British authority in the face of popular protest. He combined a strong emphasis on law and order with measures aimed at reforming the landowning system and developing Ireland's backward rural economy.[39]
Churchill compared Balfour to H. H. Asquith: "The difference between Balfour and Asquith is that Arthur is wicked and moral, while Asquith is good and immoral." Balfour said of himself, "I am more or less happy when being praised, not very comfortable when being abused, but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained."[57]
Balfour was interested in the study of dialects and donated money to Joseph Wright's work on The English Dialect Dictionary. Wright wrote in the preface to the first volume that the project would have been "in vain" had he not received the donation from Balfour.[58]
Balfour was into the 1920s a keen player both of
Writings and academic achievements
As a philosopher, Balfour formulated the basis for the evolutionary argument against naturalism. Balfour argued the Darwinian premise of selection for reproductive fitness cast doubt on scientific naturalism, because human cognitive facilities that would accurately perceive truth could be less advantageous than adaptation for evolutionarily useful illusions.[61]
As he says:
[There is] no distinction to be drawn between the development of reason and that of any other faculty, physiological or psychical, by which the interests of the individual or the race are promoted. From the humblest form of nervous irritation at the one end of the scale, to the reasoning capacity of the most advanced races at the other, everything without exception (sensation, instinct, desire, volition) has been produced directly or indirectly, by natural causes acting for the most part on strictly utilitarian principles. Convenience, not knowledge, therefore, has been the main end to which this process has tended.
— Arthur Balfour[62]
He was a member of the
Views on race
In 1906, during a House of Commons debate, Balfour argued that the disenfranchisement of the blacks in South Africa was not immoral. He said:[66]
We have to face the facts. Men are not born equal, the white and black races are not born with equal capacities: they are born with different capacities which education cannot and will not change.
Political scholar Yousef Munayyer has claimed that Arthur Balfour's antisemitism played a role in the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, citing Balfour's presiding over, as prime minister, the passage of the Aliens Act 1905 that mainly aimed to restrict Jewish immigration to Britain from Eastern Europe.[66] Balfour had written in 1919, in his introduction to Nahum Sokolow's History of Zionism, that the Zionist movement would:[67]
mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body [the Jews] which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb.
Artistic
After the First World War, when there was controversy over the style of headstone proposed for use on British war graves being taken on by the
Popular culture
Balfour occasionally appears in popular culture.[36]
- Balfour was the subject of two parody novels based on Alice in Wonderland, Clara in Blunderland (1902) and Lost in Blunderland (1903), which appeared under the pseudonym Caroline Lewis; one of the co-authors was Harold Begbie.[69][70]
- The character Arthur Balfour plays a supporting, off-screen role in Upstairs, Downstairs, promoting the family patriarch, Richard Bellamy, to the position of Civil Lord of the Admiralty.
- Balfour was portrayed by Thames TV production Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill.
- Balfour was portrayed by Lyndon Brook in the 1975 ATV production Edward the Seventh.
- A fictionalised version of Arthur Balfour (identified as "Mr. Balfour") appears as British prime minister in the science fiction romance The Angel of the Revolution by George Griffith, published in 1893 (when Balfour was still in opposition) but set in an imagined near future of 1903–1905.
- The indecisive Balfour (identified as "Halfan Halfour") appears in "Ministers of Grace", a satirical short story by Saki in which he, and other leading politicians including Quinston, are changed into animals appropriate to their characters.
Legacy
Balfour's premiership from July 1902 to December 1905 is unusual among modern prime ministers because it did not mark the culmination of his political career. Instead, it was merely an episode in a long life of public service, and he quickly recovered from the setbacks of his chequered premiership. He continued to serve in government for nearly a quarter of a century after leaving 10 Downing Street, despite being forced from the leadership of his party.[71]
Balfour's reputation among historians is mixed. There is agreement about his achievements, as represented by G. M. Trevelyan:
- As the prime author of the Education Act, the Licensing Act, Irish Land Purchase and the Committee of Imperial Defence, Balfour has a strong claim to be numbered among the successful Prime Ministers.[72]
But Trevelyan admits that, "owing to the portentous character of the electoral catastrophe of 1906 that claim is not always been allowed; yet Balfour had done great things on his own initiative and by his own strength of character."[73] John L. Gordon pays more attention to the defeats he suffered, stating:
- Although Balfour's achievements during his brief prime ministry are noteworthy... he is usually seen as an ineffective leader. He was unable to prevent a split in his party over trade policy, and the Unionist-Conservatives suffered a massive defeat in the election of January 1906. Failing to lead his party to victory in the two general elections of 1910, he resigned as leader in 1911.[74]
Memorials
Balfouria, a moshav in northern Israel, along with many streets in Israel, are named after him. The town of Balfour in Mpumalanga, South Africa, was named after him.[75]
A portrait of Balfour by
The Lord Balfour Hotel, an Art Deco hotel on Ocean Drive in the South Beach neighbourhood of Miami Beach, Florida, is named after him.
Honours and decorations
- His appointment as a
- He was sworn of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1885, giving him the style "The Right Honourable" and after ennoblement the post-nominal letters "PC" for life.[80]
- On 3 June 1916 he was appointed to the Order of Merit, giving him the post-nominal letters "OM" for life.[81]
- He was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1902 and an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1917.[82][83]
- In 1919 he was elected Lord Rayleigh.
- He was made a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter on 3 March 1922, becoming Sir Arthur Balfour and giving him the post-nominal letters "KG" for life.[84]
- On 5 May 1922 Balfour was raised to the peerage as Earl of Balfour and Viscount Traprain, of Whittingehame, in the county of Haddington. This allowed him to sit in the House of Lords.[85]
- He was awarded the Estonian Cross of Liberty (conferred between 1919 and 1925), third grade, first class, for Civilian Service.
He was given the Freedom of the City/Freedom of the Borough of the following:
- 28 September 1899: Dundee
- 20 September 1902: Haddington, East Lothian[86]
- 19 October 1905: Edinburgh
Honorary degrees
Country | Date | School | Degree |
---|---|---|---|
England | 1909 | University of Liverpool | Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)[87]
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England | 1912 | University of Sheffield | Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)[88]
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Canada | 1917 | University of Toronto | Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)[89]
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Wales | 1921 | University of Wales | Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.)[citation needed] |
England | 1924 | University of Leeds | Doctor of Laws (LL.D.)[90]
|
See also
- Balfour Declaration
- Balfour Declaration of 1926
- Palm Sunday Case
References
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- ^ Chisholm 1911, p. 250.
- ^ Tuchman, Barbara (1966). The Proud Tower. Macmillan. p. 46.
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Balfour warned the House of Commons in his speech of 'the undoubted evils that had fallen upon the country from an immigration which was largely Jewish'
- ^ Chisholm 1911, p. 254.
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- ^ Trevelyan, (1937) p 432.
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- ^ "The London Gazette". 5 May 1922. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
- ^ "Mr. Balfour at Haddington". The Times. No. 36879. London. 22 September 1902. p. 5.
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- ^ "Honour for Earl of Balfour". The Scotsman. No. 25, 446. 17 December 1924. p. 8 – via British Newspaper Archive.
Sources
- Adams, R.J.Q. (2002). Ramsden, John (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century British Politics.
- Cannon, John; Crowcroft, Robert, eds. (2015). A Dictionary of British History (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
- Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn Limited 2006)
- Chisholm, Hugh (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 250–254. This article was written by Chisholm himself soon after Balfour's premiership, while he was still leader of the Opposition. It includes a significant amount of contemporaneous analysis, some of which is summarised here.
Further reading
Biographical
- Adams, R. J. Q.: Balfour: The Last Grandee, John Murray, 2007) excerpt
- Alderson, Bernard. Arthur James Balfour, the Man and his Work (1903) online
- Brendon, Piers: Eminent Edwardians (1980) ch 2
- Buckle, George Earle (1922). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 30 (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. pp. 366–368.
- Dugdale, Blanche: Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour KG, OM, FRS- Volume 1, (1936); Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour KG, OM, FRS- Volume 2- 1906–1930, (1936), official life by his niece; vol 1 and 2 online
- Eccleshall, Robert, and Graham Walker, eds. Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (1998) pp. 231–238. online
- William Collins and Company Ltd, 1980
- ISBN 978-1-904950-55-4
- Mackay, Ruddock F.: Balfour, Intellectual Statesman (Oxford 1985) ISBN 978-0-19-212245-2 online
- Mackay, Ruddock F., and H. C. G. Matthew. "Balfour, Arthur James, first Earl of Balfour (1848–1930)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 accessed 19 Nov 2016 18,000 word scholarly biography
- Pearce, Robert and Graham Goodlad. British Prime Ministers From Balfour to Brown (2013) pp 1–11.
- Raymond, E. T. (1920). A Life of Arthur James Balfour. Little, Brown.
- Young, Kenneth: Arthur James Balfour: The Happy Life of the Politician, Prime Minister, Statesman and Philosopher- 1848–1930, G. Bell and Sons, 1963 online
- Zebel, Sydney Henry. Balfour: A Political Biography (ICON Group International, 1973) online
Specialty studies
- Curtis, Lewis Perry. Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland 1880-1892 (1963) online
- Davis, Peter. "The Liberal Unionist party and the Irish policy of Lord Salisbury's government, 1886–1892." Historical Journal 18.1 (1975): 85–104. online
- Dutton, David. His Majesty's Loyal Opposition: the Unionist Party in Opposition 1905-1915 (Liverpool UP, 1992).
- Ellenberger, Nancy W. Balfour's World: Aristocracy and Political Culture at the Fin de Siècle (2015). excerpt
- Gollin, Alfred M.Balfour's burden: Arthur Balfour and imperial preference(1965).
- Green, E.H.H. The Crisis of Conservatism: the politics, economics and ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880-1914 (Routledge, 1995)
- Halévy, Élie (1926) Imperialism And The Rise Of Labour (1926) online
- Halévy, Élie (1956) A History Of The English People: Epilogue vol 1: 1895-1905 (1929) online as prime minister pp 131ff,.
- Jacyna, Leon Stephen. "Science and social order in the thought of A.J. Balfour." Isis (1980): 11–34. in JSTOR
- Judd, Denis. Balfour and the British Empire: a study in Imperial evolution 1874–1932 (1968). online
- Marriott, J. A. R. Modern England, 1885–1945 (1948), pp. 180–99, on Balfour as Prime Minister. online
- Massie, Robert K. Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (1992) pp 310–519, a popular account of Balfour's foreign and naval policies as prime minister.
- Mathew, William M. "The Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate, 1917–1923: British Imperialist Imperatives." British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40.3 (2013): 231–250.
- O'Callaghan, Margaret. British high politics and a nationalist Ireland: criminality, land and the law under Forster and Balfour (Cork Univ Pr, 1994).
- Ramsden, John. A History of the Conservative Party: The age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940 (1978); vol 3 of a scholarly history of the Conservative Party.
- Rempel, Richard A. Unionists Divided; Arthur Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain and the Unionist Free Traders (1972).
- Rofe, J. Simon, and Alan Tomlinson. "Strenuous competition on the field of play, diplomacy off it: the 1908 London Olympics, Theodore Roosevelt and Arthur Balfour, and transatlantic relations." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 15.1 (2016): 60–79. online
- Shannon, Catherine B. "The Legacy of Arthur Balfour to Twentieth-Century Ireland." in Peter Collins, ed. Nationalism and Unionism (1994): 17–34.
- Shannon, Catherine B. Arthur J. Balfour and Ireland, 1874–1922 (Catholic Univ of America Press, 1988) online.
- Sugawara, Takeshi. "Arthur Balfour and the Japanese Military Assistance during the Great War." International Relations 2012.168 (2012): pp 44–57. online
- Taylor, Tony. "Arthur Balfour and educational change: The myth revisited." British Journal of Educational Studies 42#2 (1994): 133–149.
- Tomes, Jason. Balfour and foreign policy: the international thought of a conservative statesman (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- Tuchman, Barbara W.: The Proud Tower – A Portrait of the World Before the War (1966)
- Young, John W. "Conservative Leaders, Coalition, and Britain's Decision for War in 1914." Diplomacy & Statecraft (2014) 25#2 pp 214–239.
Historiography
- Loades David, ed. Reader's Guide to British History (2003) 1:122–24; cover major politicians and issues
- Rasor Eugene L. Arthur James Balfour, 1848–1930: Historiography and Annotated Bibliography (1998)
Primary sources
- Balfour, Arthur James. Criticism and Beauty: A Lecture Rewritten, Being the Romanes Lecture for 1909 (Oxford, 1910) online
- Cecil, Robert, and Arthur J. Balfour. Salisbury-Balfour Correspondence: Letters Exchanged Between the 3. Marquess of Salisbury and His Nephew Arthur James Balfour; 1869-1892 (Hertfordshire Record Society, 1988).
- Ridley, Jane, and Clayre Percy, eds. The Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho 1885–1917. (Hamish Hamilton, 1992).
- Short, Wilfrid M., ed. Arthur James Balfour as Philosopher and Thinker: A Collection of the More Important and Interesting Passages in His Non-political Writings, Speeches, and Addresses, 1879-1912 (1912). online
External links
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Arthur Balfour
- More about Arthur James Balfour on the Downing Street website.
- Portraits of Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour at the National Portrait Gallery, London
- Works by or about Arthur Balfour at Internet Archive
- Works by Arthur Balfour at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Spikily, Samir: Balfour, Arthur James Balfour, Earl of, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.