This period has been commonly understood as a foundational chapter in the history of Zionism. Both academics and politicians have explained the influx with reference to East-European Jewish nationalism, and viewed immigration as a precursor to the state of Israel. This panel will question such assumptions and reexamine Jewish migration through the prism of transimperial history. Not only was Palestine firmly under Ottoman imperial rule up til 1917, but most Jews who settled there were subjects of other imperial powers. Jewish migrants maintained ties to their empires of origin, enjoying extra-territorial privileges, freedom of movement and commercial privileges. Many also returned or migrated elsewhere, benefiting from new forms of imperial mobility that linked Palestine to global networks of exchange. Still others forged new kinds of attachments to Palestine from afar, as a way of negotiating new forms of diasporic belonging. For all its alleged nationalism, Jewish migration remained embedded in a complex network of imperial mobility, capitulations and extra-territorial governance.

A transimperial framework opens several lines of inquiry. With regard to identity, we ask in what ways Jewish identity drove migration to Palestine, and in what ways migration to Palestine reshaped conceptions of Jewishness beyond Ottoman borders. How did migration to Ottoman Palestine shape Jewish migrants' attachment to their empires of origin? What identities emerged from the ability to move across and between imperial spheres? And in what ways did networks of Zionist organizations intersect with existing commercial and family networks?

Moreover, with regard to imperial politics, the panel asks how states monitored and managed Jewish migration. In what ways did Russian, Persian (Qajar), British and French imperial officials manage and interpret Jewish migration to Palestine? To what extent did “Jewishness” matter to empires in their dealings with migrants moving to Palestine?

Finally, the panel will interrogate questions of legal belonging and citizenship. To what extent did Jews maintain ties such as subjecthood, passports and citizenship to their states of origin? What frameworks of privilege and extra-territoriality shaped these legal ties? And how did various empires manage legal ties to their Jewish subjects in Palestine?

The panelists hope to reconceptualize the history of modern Jewish migration to Palestine and supplement existing accounts of European migration with in-depth studies from the Russian, Persian (Qajar) Empire as well as migration within the Ottoman empire itself. This panel should be of interest to historians of empire and global history, as well as migration, citizenship, and nationalism.