Abstract :
The 1937 Peel Commission proposal for the partition of British mandatory Palestine has
generally been framed as the precursor to the United Nations partition plan of 1947. This article demonstrates
the importance of tracing the roots of the 1937 Peel Commission plan back to conversations taking
place in the Colonial Office and government of Palestine as early as 1929. A close analysis of dialogues over
territorial division and of preliminary partition plans, particularly those drawn up by L. G. Archer Cust and
D. G. Harris, leads to the conclusion that Britain’s focus on the ideal of representative government played a
primary role in the development of partition proposals. This article argues that inter-ethnic violence played
a much smaller role in the development of partition proposals than has previously been thought. Instead,
partition was proposed as a solution to the political implications of non-representative government in
Palestine, a topic constantly in the spotlight thanks to the League of Nations.
