par Fisher, Axel 
Référence Promised Lands: internal colonisation in 20th century Mediterranean history (ESF-exploratory reserach workshop: 7-10 octobre 2013: Rome-Sabaudia (Italie))
Publication Non publié, 2013-10-07
Référence Promised Lands: internal colonisation in 20th century Mediterranean history (ESF-exploratory reserach workshop: 7-10 octobre 2013: Rome-Sabaudia (Italie))
Publication Non publié, 2013-10-07
Communication à un colloque
| Résumé : | The “return to the land” and the formation of a Jewish peasantry represented the main lines and the noblest ambitions of early Zionist ideology. Hence, the Jewish village was considered as the cornerstone of the future Jewish nation. However, the moshav (co-operative village) and the kibbutz (collectivist village) models’ prominent role in the building of Israeli statehood throughout the 20th century widely overshadowed the available alternatives. In fact, the extent and range of Zionist rural utopianism is impressive. The outbreak of WWI put a damper on the Jewish colonization of Ottoman Palestine, but opened up to unforeseen possibilities in the Entente Powers’ influence could be extended to the area. This transition period – which ended with the first post-war Zionist annual conference (London, 1920), the 12th Zionist Congress (Carlsbad, 1921), and the establishment of the British civil administration in Palestine (1921) – offered the opportunity for Zionist agronomists, experts, planners, architects and pioneers to engage in a battle of ideas addressing central issues of colonization. Which kind of agriculture should be practiced, for which kind of market? How could the available “human material” be involved, and which forms of social structures should be favored? Which settlement patterns should be adopted, for which kind of city-countryside relationships, and how could architectural expression support the construction of a peculiar Zionist rural landscape? These and more issues were addressed at the time. This paper discusses five different solutions: the ideal scheme for a circular agricultural colony by agronomist Jacob Oettinger, the prototype of an agricultural colony and garden-city to be founded in the Land of Israel by the Varsovian association Ma’agal (1917), the co-operative settlement model by Zionist pioneer and settler Eliezer Joffe (1919), the garden-city model by sociologist Franz Oppenheimer and architect Alexander Baerwald (1920), the siedlung model by Zionist agronomist Selig E. Soskin and German landscape architect Leberecht Migge (1920). Such proposals, focused on the establishment of smallholders’ settlements, were opposed by Solomon Kaplansky, a prominent Labour Zionism politician, and by agronomist Isaac Wilkanski (Elazari-Volcani). Both plead for different forms of collective communes which shall also be reviewed, together with the insights of two relevant international figures: North-American engineer Elwood Mead (chairman of the California State Land Settlement Board, and an influential figure in president Roosevelt’ New Deal Resettlement Administration) whose 1924-report explored the possibilities for intensive irrigated capitalistic citrus culture in Palestine; and Emilio Sereni (a young Roman Jew, later to turn into a key-figure of the Italian Communist Party), whose 1927-graduation thesis exposed his plans to establish a private farm in Palestine. Altogether, the comparison of these different proposals, placing the focus on the fundamental interrelation between different disciplinary approaches, allows to draw the mutual influences between Zionist plans and other coeval colonization schemes adopted across the Mediterranean, but also shows a timely emphasis on general issues in the planning of agricultural settlements which are gaining momentum again within the frame of present-day research for new forms of sustainable agricultural settlement in Europe and elsewhere. |
