This article explores the formative stages of Ronald Storrs’s governorship of Jerusalem by focusing on the nascent years of British control in Palestine from 1917 to 1919. While much scholarship has concentrated on Storrs’s patronage of the Pro-Jerusalem Society, his response to the Nabi Musa riots of April 1920, and his early relationship with the Zionist Commission, less consideration has been given to the establishment of his authority in Jerusalem during his first two years in the city. Drawing upon Storrs’s personal papers and archival research, it traces the roots of his style of governing back to his childhood experiences and education, together with his early years as a colonial administrator in Egypt. In doing so, greater context is given to Storrs’s initial perceptions of the city after his arrival in December 1917, and his subsequent relations with the communities of Jerusalem during the first two years of British rule.
