Sir John Robert Chancellor (1870-1952) was a British soldier and colonial official. After a career in the British Army he became a colonial administrator seving as governor of Mauritius (1911-1916), Trinidad and Tobago (1916-1921) and Southern Rhodesia (1923-1928). In 1928 he became High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine where he was perceived as being cool to Zionism. While he was in London in 1929, Arab riots protesting Jewish immigration broke out. On his retunr he initially condemned Arab attacks but was subsequently less critical. He helped write the Lord Passfield's White Paper of 1930 which aimed to reinterpret the Balfour Declaration in order to back away from a commitment to the creation of a Jewish state. He left Palestine in 1931.