Abstract
THE appointment of Sir Harold A. MacMichael, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Tanganyika Province, to be High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief for Palestine and Commissioner for Trans-jordania in succession to General Sir Arthur Wauchope, who resigns on the ground of health, will be received as singularly well judged. Sir Harold is by personal qualities—which count for much in the East—by knowledge of Eastern mentality, and by long previous experience, peculiarly well qualified to cope with the difficulties of mediating between the conflicting interests now warring in Palestine. After a distinguished career as a classical scholar at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he joined the Sudan Political Service in 1905, and served in the provinces of Kordofan, Blue Nile and Khartum. During the Great War he served as political and intelligence officer with the expeditionary force which reoccupied Darfur in 1916. A successful official career culminated in the appointment of civil secretary, which he held from 1926 until 1934, on several occasions acting as governor. In the course of his service in the Sudan he became our foremost authority on the ethnology and history of the Sudanese tribes, his published works including "The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan" (1912), "A History of the Arabs in the Sudan" (1922) and "The Arabs of the Egyptian Sudan" (1924). For these studies he was awarded the Burton Memorial Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1928. Sir Harold's onerous duties as Governor of Tanganyika have not precluded his continued interest in scientific studies, which has been directed mainly to local archaeology and the foundation of a museum at Dar-es-Salaam.
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Sir Harold A. MacMichael, K.C.M.G. Nature 140, 1003–1004 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/1401003c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1401003c0