Thomas Clarke. India and Palestine; Or, the Restoration of the Jews, Viewed in Relation to the Nearest Route to India

(INDIA)

William Bremner

Manchester

1861

Map

This book is an example of English proto-Zionism. Long before the advent of Theodor Herzl, there were sympathethic English Christians who proposed the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. This search for a political solution to the so-called "Jewish Question" was fed by a combination of Biblical belief and British imperialism (perhaps not so different from the worldview that led to the Balfour Declaration of 1917). Thus, we come across this pious sentiment: "When I ponder over the hallowed associations with which every foot of that sacred soil is blended - when I think of the site of God's holy temple profaned by the blasphemy of Mohammed - Jerusalem, the beloved, trodden down by her relentless enemies - my heart murmurs - 'How long, O Lord!'" (p.2). Perhaps the immediate circumstances prompting our pamphlet was the palpable fear that with the foreseeable collapse of the decaying Ottoman Empire, either Tsarist Russia or Napoleonic France will seize the strategically located Palestine, driving a wedge between England and its most valued possession, the Jewel in the Crown - India