The ‘Hole-y’ City: British Soldiers’ Perceptions of Jerusalem During Its Occupation, 1917–1920

Abstract

Murphy examines the British entry into Jerusalem in 1917 to explore how soldiers reflected on their presence in the Holy City and represented it in their letters home while also analysing how the British occupation of the city was portrayed in official propaganda as a victory for the British Empire at a particularly difficult point in the war. Murphy analyses how the soldiers frequently employed religious vocabulary to describe their experiences of the city while also considering how this occupation rapidly redrew the cultural map of the city along confessional lines in an attempt to recreate and ‘re-sanctify’ the biblical Jerusalem under secular British authority.