The Chatham House Version: And Other Middle Eastern Studies

Kedourie argues that Britain's faulty and disastrous handling of Middle East problems stemmed from a sensibility he calls 'the Chatham House version.' This was a view of Middle Eastern history and politics propounded and propagated through publications of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, written or edited by Arnold Toynbee. Infected with moral defeatism and guilt over imperialism, this view led Britain to abandon its imperial responsibilities, leaving the region to the depredations of intolerant nationalism. The episodes Kedourie investigates show 'successive and cumulative manifestations of illusion, misjudgment, maladroitness, and failure.'

Chatham House was the popular name for the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. From the 1920s through the 1950s, it exercised profound influence on British policy in the Middle East. Arnold Toynbee, the celebrity historian and mainstay of Chatham House, presided as Director of Studies for some thirty years. Kedourie named his target after the institution because he saw it as the epicentre of a moral orientation—'a whole intellectual style'—that combined sentimental anti-Westernism with a belief that history could be enlisted 'to save mankind.' He traced this sensibility back to the moral defeatism of English radicalism, personified by Toynbee.

Reception was sharply divided. Bernard Lewis, writing in The Spectator, praised the book as 'brilliant' and a 'striking departure' from the prejudices and ignorance that vitiated most Middle East writing . A reviewer in Middle East Forces, however, disputed Kedourie's virtual identification of Chatham House with Toynbee's views, noting that Toynbee from 1946 onwards was almost wholly engaged in completing A Study of History and rarely appeared at Chatham House meetings . The New Criterion later called the title essay 'the most devastating polemic since the Second World War' . The book went out of print twice and was reissued in 2004 with an introduction by David Pryce-Jones .

The Chatham House Version applies Kedourie's critique of nationalism to the specific case of British policy in the Middle East. Where Nationalism (1960) traced the doctrine's philosophical origins and its destructive consequences in general, this 1970 collection shows how British policymakers, influenced by Chatham House's moral defeatism, facilitated the triumph of Arab nationalism at the expense of imperial order and minority populations. The book's essay 'Minorities' articulates Kedourie's sober political truth: the areas said to suffer from imperialism had known nothing but alien rule throughout most of their history, and until the coming of Western powers, their experience of government was 'the insolence and greed of unchecked arbitrary power' .

Critics raised two main objections. First, Kedourie's tendency to overstate his case, as in his claim that modern Middle Eastern society had only 'two classes: the official class and the non-official class' . Second, his virtual identification of Chatham House with Toynbee's views derived from an outsider's perusal of publications rather than informed awareness of what went on at the institution; Toynbee rarely attended meetings from 1946 onwards, and Chatham House hosted dissenting voices including pro-Zionist critics of British policy . Some reviewers also noted that Kedourie's fervour in marshalling arguments sometimes led him into abuse of hindsight regarding British wartime strategy .

The 2004 reissue by Ivan R. Dee was framed as a 'victory for memory' amid the Iraq War, offering 'hard lessons for the Bush administration or any outside power that would intervene in Middle Eastern affairs' . The new edition carried an introduction by David Pryce-Jones, a writer on Middle Eastern affairs described as a worthy heir to Kedourie . The New Criterion editorial argued that no one could comprehend the realities of contemporary Iraq without absorbing Kedourie's admonitory history, particularly his essay 'The Kingdom of Iraq: A Retrospect' .