Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918 (review)

126 SHOFAR Fall 1993 Vol. 12, No. 1 rarely been examined as a unique expression of Jewish life as it was shaped by the sociopolitical realities prevailing in the Ottoman Empire. In fact, it has seldom been recognized that Ottoman Jewry formed one entity whose constituent communitieswere-materially, spiritually, and politically -closely linked and interconnected, in spite of their cultural diversity" (p. 14). The study ofJews in the Ottoman Empire is receiving the recognition that the achievements of the many Jewish communities, not all of which were Sephardic, warrant. For those wishing to build up their professional or personal libraries Stanford J. Shaw's A History of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (New York: New York University Press, 1992) offers a more detailed survey and follows the story of the Jewish communities in Turkey to almost the end of this century. Avigdor Levy's forthcoming edited volume TheJews of the Ottoman Empire has the advantage of combining Levy's own essay with what appears to be a number of fascinating, more specialized studies. For those seeking a shorter, onevolume introduction to Ottoman Jewry who do not intend to buy the larger, multi-authored work, this book is worth acquiring. Jere L. Bacharach Department of History University of Washington Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering ofJewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918, by DerekJ. Penslar. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991. 224 pp. $25.00. Derek Penslar's stimulating and well written Zionism and Technocracy ranks high among recent important studies occupied with Jewish settlement policy and characteristics in Palestine at the end of the Ottoman period. Among these are books written in Hebrew (most of them, like Penslar's work, based on thorough Ph.D. dissertations): Ran Aaronsohn, Baron Rothschild and the Colonies, the Beginning ofJewish Colonization in Eretz Israel, 1882-1890, Jerusalem 1990; Yossi Ben-Artzi, JeWish Moshava Settlements in Eretz Israel, 1882-1914, Jerusalem 1988; Margalit Shilo, Experiments in Settlement (Fbe Palestine Office 1908-1914), Jerusalem 1988; Zvi Shilony,Jewish National Fund and Settlement in Eretz Israel, 1903-1914, Jerusalem 1990 (all published by Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, Jerusalem). Book Reviews 127 While these researchers were concerned with ideology and practice, with stress on practice in Palestine, Penslar chose to focus on social, intellectual and institutional settlement history in three somewhat overlapping periods, presented in the three sections ofthe book. Revealing a broad historical and analytical base, he identifies (by following in detail the settlement policy of several European Jewish and Zionist institutions and central individuals) three main periods, or preferably schools of thought, underlying Jewish settlement policy in Palestine during the late Ottoman rule. The author argues, with the help of extensive documentation , that the intellectual sources that shaped settlement policy in Palestine during the half century preceding the first world war can be traced to the context of European social policy. These schools were influenced from the end of the eighteenth century by numerous European and American thinkers, philosophers, and movements. Included among them are SaintSimon , Proudhon, Schame, Henzka, Fliirscheim, George, Oppenheimer, Kropotkin, and a number of movements including the physiocrats, utopian socialism, the agrarian reform movement of the end of the nineteenth century, populism, and anarchism. As a means for evaluating the contribution of the three schools (or "periods" in the terminology of Penslar), with their variations, to the Jewish settlement of Palestine, Penslar appears to have created a technological scale for the settlement ideologues and experts, in which "architects " and "engineers" rank at the top, followed by "technocrats" and "technicians." The basis for the categorization is at times difficult to follow. Many of these figures were acquainted with European colonial practices and technologies of their time. The first "period" between 1870 and 1908 comprises the French Palestinophilic philanthropic Jewish Alliance Israelite Universelle, Baron Rothschild, and the Paris-based Jewish Colonization Association that adapted contemporary French concepts to the creation of an ideal Jewish farmers community in Palestine. From the founding of Miqveh Yisrael in 1870 and subsequently these organizations were nonpolitical and stressed productivization, agricultural education, and the use of technicians to introduce modern technology into Palestine. The emphasis and main contribution of this book lies in its consideration of the second...