ABSTRACT

Zionism grew out of the French revolutionary tradition and the Jewish and European enlightenments – with the Bible as a cultural and historical backdrop. It was a progeny of early nineteenth-century European nationalism – when nationalism belonged to the left rather than the right. In part, it took as the paradigm the national revolutionary movements that arose in post-Napoleonic Europe which sought their independence from the great empires that were restored after Waterloo. There was a cross-fertilization between movements, spawning an internationalism which appealed to the Jewish sense of universalism. As early as 1792, an international army, fighting for the French revolutionary forces, had defeated the Prussians at Valmy and at Jemappes.