Balfour, Arthur James, 1st Earl

Balfour (of Whittingehame), Arthur James, 1st Earl

Arthur James Balfour, c. 1900.

(credit: Bassano and Vandyk)

(born July 25, 1848, Whittinghame, East Lothian, Scot.—died March 19, 1930, Woking, Surrey, Eng.) British statesman. The nephew of the marquess of Salisbury, Balfour served in Parliament (1874–1911) and in his uncle's government as secretary for Ireland (1887–91). From 1891 he was the Conservative Party's leader in Parliament and succeeded his uncle as prime minister (1902–05). He helped form the Entente Cordiale (1904). His most famous action came in 1917 when, as foreign secretary (1916–19), he wrote the so-called Balfour Declaration, which expressed official British approval of Zionism. He served as lord president of the council (1919–22, 1925–29) and drafted the Balfour Report (1926), which defined relations between Britain and the dominions expressed in the Statute of Westminster.