In the middle of the 19th century, Zionism, or what the next generation of Jews was to know as Zionism, was already being preached in western Europe by Moses Hess (1812-1875) and in eastern Europe by Hirsch Kalischer (1795-1874) and Perez Smolenskin (1842-1885). A powerful impetus was given to the movement by the rise and spread of anti-Semitism, which, in one form or another, began to harass the Jews and embitter their lives in nearly every part of Europe. In Russia it reached its climax in 1882, when murder and pillage raged unchecked through the Jewish pale of settlement. It was in this fateful year that the immediate precursor of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist organization, appeared in the person of Leo Pinsker of Odessa (1821-1891), whose "auto-emancipation" was a plea for the solution of the Jewish problem by the re-establishment of a Jewish nation living its own life on Jewish soil. The "back to Zion" movement soon began to assume a practical form. A society known as Choveve Zion ("Lovers of Zion") was formed for the purpose of promoting Jewish colonization in Palestine.
A new chapter opened in 1896 with the publication of a pamphlet entitled The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl (q.v.). In his "Jewish State" he elaborated in detail a scheme for the establishment of an autonomous Jewish commonwealth in Pales tine under the suzerainty of the sultan.
The sultan of Turkey at first appeared to be favourably dis posed. The Armenian massacres had inflamed the whole of Europe against him, and for a time the Ottoman Empire was in very grave peril. Dr. Herzl's plan provided the sultan, as he hoped, with a means of securing powerful friends. Through a secret emissary, the Chevalier de Newlinsky, whom he sent to London in May 1896, he offered to present the Jews a charter in Palestine provided they used their influence in the press and otherwise to solve the Armenian question on lines which he laid down. The English Jews declined these proposals, and refused to treat in any way with the persecutor of the Armenians. When, in the following July, Dr. Herzl himself came to London, the Macca baean Society, though ignorant of the negotiations with the sultan, declined to support the scheme. None the less, it secured a large amount of popular support throughout Europe and in 1897 the first international Zionist congress met at Basle. The congress established the Zionist Organization for the purpose of giving effect to the following programme : "Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law. The congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end : (I) The promotion on suitable lines of the coloniza tion of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers.
(2) The organization and binding together of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country. (3) The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and consciousness. (4) Preparatory steps towards obtaining Government consent where necessary to the attainment of the aim of Zionism." In 1901 and again in 1902 Dr. Herzl had audiences with the sultan, Abdul Hamid, but the negotiations led to nothing. He now sought from the British Government a grant of territory on an autonomous basis in the vicinity of the Holy Land, which would provisionally afford a refuge and a political training-ground for persecuted Jews. A site was suggested in the Sinai peninsula, but owing to the waterless character of the country the project was given up. Then Joseph Chamberlain suggested the uninhabited highlands of the East Africa Protectorate, and in 1903 the British Government made the Zionist Organization a provisional offer of an area of 6,000 sq.m. in the Guas Ngishu plateau. This offer was warmly appreciated as a mark of British goodwill, but it gave rise to sharp differences of opinion between a minority who urged its acceptance and a much larger body of Zionists who were alarmed at any suggestion of the diversion of Zionist energies from Palestine. In the end the project was shelved by the Seventh Zionist Congress (1905).
Meanwhile Zionism had suffered an irreparable blow by the death of Dr. Herzl (1904). He was succeeded by David Wolff sohn, a banker of Cologne. The movement was further shaken by the dissensions which followed the rejection of the East African project. Israel Zangwill led an influential minority which com bined with certain non-Zionist elements to found a rival organiza tion under the name of the ITO (Jewish Territorial Organization) with a view to taking over the East African offer or establishing an autonomous place of refuge elsewhere. On the other hand, the Zionist Organization had now dedicated itself irrevocably to Palestine, and under the auspices of Wolffsohn fresh negotiations were opened with the Porte. These, however, were rendered hopeless by the Turkish revolution, which postulated a united Ottoman nationality, and resolutely set its face against any ex tension of the racial and religious autonomies under which the integrity of the empire had already severely suffered.