Edwin Samuel Montagu

Edwin Samuel Montagu (February 6 1879 – November 15 1924) was a British Liberal Jewish politician. The second son and seventh child of Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling, he was educated at Clifton College, the City of London School, University College London and Trinity College, Cambridge.

He was first elected as an MP in 1906, Edwin Montagu was Secretary of State for India between 1917 and 1922.

He was the second Jew to enter the British Cabinet but was strongly opposed to Zionism, which he called "a mischievous political creed." He opposed the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which he considered "anti-semitic" and whose terms he managed to modify. In a memo to the cabinet, he outlined his views on Zionism thus: "...I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test." [cite web | last =Montagu | first =Edwin | title =Memorandum of Edwin Montagu on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government | date =1917-08-23| url =http://www.zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Montagu_balfour.htm | accessdate =2007-08-29] He was opposed by his cousin Herbert Samuel, a moderate Zionist who became the first High Commissioner of Palestine.

Punch magazine 14 July 1920, on the occasion of Montagu labelling as "frightful" General Dyer for his role in the Amritsar massacre, as it was then known.He led the Indian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, where he opposed plans for dividing Turkey (including the Greek occupation of Smyrna and the projected removal of the Sultan from Constantinople). On this subject, at the Council of Four on 17 May 1919, he introduced representatives of Muslim India (including the Aga Khan) and urged that Muslim peoples were beginning to see the Conference as "taking sides against Islam". ["The Deliberations of the Council of Four: notes of the official interpreter Paul Mantoux" tr. A. S. Link (Princeton, 1992) vol. 2 p. 99. ]

Montagu was primarily responsible for the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms which led to the Government of India Act 1919 which committed the British to the eventual evolution of India to dominion status.

In 1915, he married Venetia Stanley (1887-1948), who converted to Judaism upon her marriage. Montagu resigned office in 1922 and died in 1924 at the age of 45.

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