British Orientalists, Lord Palmerston, and the British imperialist origins of political Zionism, 1831--1841 (Anthony Ashley Cooper, Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, Theodor Herzl)

Through reexamination of some British Foreign office dispatches, official and personal memoirs of Jewish and British personalities, secondary sources, and a new postcolonial methodology this study takes a new look at the origins of political Zionism in the years between 1831--1841. Such persona as Lord Henry Palmerston, the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, and Theodor Herzl are in the center of this project. It is concluded that the original idea of a Jewish state was born out of Lord Palmerston's policy to create a Jewish colony in Palestine in order to keep the growing Russian and French hegemony in the Ottoman province of Syria and keep the zealous Egyptian viceroy Mehemet Ali pasha out of this geographical area. In order for Palmerston to realize such plan, he created the "Jewish Protection Doctrine," which called for a British policy to help the European Jews to move to, and settle in, Palestine, which then the British government would protect them.