A revelatory history of a document that laid the foundation stone of the state of Israel, the reverberations of which continue to be felt to this day.Born in the furnace of shifting great-power alliances, the Balfour Declaration, issued in 1917, was a defining moment in world history. In paving the way for the establishment of the State of Israel, it fundamentally reshaped the Middle East and yielded repurcussions that we are still feeling, powerfully, today. Jonathan Scheer has written a sweeping, deeply researched, and provocative history of this crucial document and the politics, double-dealing, backstabbing, and geopolitical crises that led to it. The result shows us the evolution of a fraught region in a wholly original and unbiased light.From the Hardcover edition.