The McMahonHusayn correspondence has been at the heart of AngloArab relationssince the end of World War I. Written in obscure and ambiguous terms itaroused grea... » 

The McMahonHusayn correspondence has been at the heart of AngloArab relationssince the end of World War I. Written in obscure and ambiguous terms itaroused great controversy particularly over the issue of Palestine.Here Professor Kedouri examines the correspondence in historical context todetermine why its terms were so obscure and what lay in the minds of those whodrafted it. The second part is an historiographical enquiry which reviews thewidely differing interpretations of the correspondence which were produced invarious departments of the Foreign Office from 1916 to 1939 when thecorrespondence was made public. This examination throws light on civil servantsamong them Harold Nicolson and Arnold Toynbee as historians on the relationbetween knowledge and policy and on the structure of policy making. «