Churchill_ Walking with Destiny - Andrew Roberts.pdf (file not included in this release)

Quote: “dog in the manger”

Quote

“I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the red Indians had any right to say American continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here. They had not the right, nor they have the power.”

Churchill’s 1937 “dog in the manger” statement to the Peel Commission—which was tasked with finding a solution to the ongoing Arab-Jewish clashes in Mandatory Palestine—remains one of his most scrutinized quotes. Biographers and historians generally contextualize this quote through several distinct lenses:

Historians like John Charmley and Paul Addison note that Churchill was fundamentally a product of the Victorian era. He held a hierarchical, Social Darwinist view of human history, believing that civilizations were in constant competition. In this worldview, it was an inevitable and almost natural law that “stronger,” “higher-grade,” or technologically advanced societies would supplant indigenous populations. Addison points out that Churchill often viewed British and European imperialism not as an evil, but as an altruistic force that brought civilization, infrastructure, and order to the rest of the world.

The Definition of “Race”

Churchill scholars, including Richard M. Langworth (Senior Fellow at the Churchill Project), often point out that Churchill’s use of the word “race” differed from modern biological definitions. Churchill frequently used “race” interchangeably with “nation,” “culture,” or “people” (e.g., “the British race” or “the Jewish race”). In the context of the quote, biographers argue he was contrasting the technological and societal skills of the incoming Jewish immigrants with those of the native Arab population, rather than strictly focusing on skin color.

Economic and Agricultural Development

A major factor driving Churchill’s sympathy for the Zionist project was economic. Biographers highlight that Churchill was deeply impressed by the agricultural and technological progress Jewish immigrants brought to Palestine. To Churchill, the Arab population was the “dog in the manger”—a reference to the Aesop fable where a dog prevents livestock from eating hay it cannot eat itself. Because Jewish engineers and settlers were building irrigation schemes and turning “barren” land into productive agriculture, Churchill believed their “worldly-wise” development gave them a superior claim to the territory.

Endorsement of Settler Colonialism

More critical modern historians, such as Richard Toye (author of Churchill’s Empire) and Priyamvada Gopal, interpret the quote as explicit evidence of a white supremacist worldview. They argue that regardless of his era’s norms or his specific vocabulary, the quote functions as a blunt, unapologetic justification for settler colonialism and ethnic displacement. By explicitly dismissing the moral wrongs done to the “red Indians of America or the black people of Australia,” these historians note that Churchill was openly defending the violent dispossession of indigenous populations as long as the colonizers were deemed a “higher-grade” civilization.

Andrew Roberts

Churchill_ Walking with Destiny - Andrew Roberts, p.485 (file not included in this release)

In his acclaimed 2018 biography Churchill: Walking with Destiny, as well as in his broader commentary, British historian Andrew Roberts provides specific context for how to interpret Churchill’s “dog in the manger” statement to the Peel Commission.

Roberts generally pushes back against using this quote to paint Churchill merely as a genocidal racist or to cast the Zionist project purely as European colonization. Instead, he contextualizes the quote through three main lenses:

1. Economic and Agricultural Development

Roberts emphasizes that Churchill’s primary argument at the Peel Commission was grounded in economic progress and modernization. Churchill was highly critical of what he saw as Arab cultural and material stagnation in Mandatory Palestine. According to Roberts and other Churchill historians, Churchill believed that Jewish immigrants—with their advanced engineering, financial backing, and agricultural schemes—were literally making “the desert into palm groves and orange groves.”

In Churchill’s view, it was unjust for the Arab population (the “dog in the manger”) to indefinitely hold onto land they were leaving relatively uncultivated when a “more worldly-wise” group could develop it for the greater good of the region.

2. Historical Connection to the Land

Roberts argues that Churchill did not view Jewish immigrants as disconnected, foreign conquerors in the same way European settlers were in the Americas or Australia. Instead, Churchill held a deeply romanticized and historical view of the Jewish people. Roberts points out that Churchill understood the basic historical fact that Jews had inhabited the region since before the birth of Christ. Therefore, while Churchill used the analogy of the “Red Indians” and “black people of Australia” to make a point about the march of civilization, he believed the Jewish people had a legitimate, ancestral right to return to their homeland.

3. The Bedrock of Victorian Imperialism

While Roberts is highly sympathetic to Churchill, he acknowledges that Churchill’s language was steeped in the Social Darwinism of the Victorian era. The belief that a “stronger race” or “higher-grade race” had the right to displace a less developed one was a standard justification for the British Empire. However, Roberts frequently cautions modern readers against judging late-19th and early-20th-century figures strictly by 21st-century moral standards. He suggests that what we now view as abhorrent, explicitly racist rhetoric was, for Churchill, a statement of historical inevitability and the natural hierarchy of global civilizations.

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Winston Churchill