A Jewish Australia
- Thread starter EvolvedSaurian
- Start date
Wendell said:
Especially if they take some Chinese with them. That'd make it very interesting, culturally/linguistically speaking. Especially when the Polynesians arrive.
Aozhouhuaren
Banned
I just had my attention turned to this thread by EvolvedSaurian, who seems embarrassed by it. He was a wee little teen back when this was posted.
The Kimberley Proposal, proposed by the guy, comes to mind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Steinberg
The wholesale massacres and epidemics have largely ended by the time of the proposal. However it was also the time where the policies of A O Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines, were gathering steam. Child abduction and the building of concentration camps were prominent during this time. Perhaps the establishment of this "Israel" would curb the effect of these policies, it depends on how much autonomy the Jewish settlers are given by the Commonwealth. I however don't see the Aborigines faring that much better.
Speaking of the Kimberleys and Aborigines, @DMA: I've recently been reading on Jandamarra and the Bunuba resistance. Enthralling stuff, one wonders if you'd be interested in reading on it or if you have already read about it.
One potential positive thing I see out of this is possibly a more intense development of the Northwest, in terms of infrastructure and agriculture. If this "Israel" attracts the same number of skill workers and scientists that OTL Israel did, there would be a lot of benefits. It would be curious to see how the Ord and Fitzroy Rivers will be utilised. It could a major foodbowl.
As people have mentioned before, more space, less hostile neighbours, more resources. It would seem to be a setting for a more prosperous Israel, especially when the huge iron deposits are discovered.
The Kimberley Proposal, proposed by the guy, comes to mind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Steinberg
The wholesale massacres and epidemics have largely ended by the time of the proposal. However it was also the time where the policies of A O Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines, were gathering steam. Child abduction and the building of concentration camps were prominent during this time. Perhaps the establishment of this "Israel" would curb the effect of these policies, it depends on how much autonomy the Jewish settlers are given by the Commonwealth. I however don't see the Aborigines faring that much better.
Speaking of the Kimberleys and Aborigines, @DMA: I've recently been reading on Jandamarra and the Bunuba resistance. Enthralling stuff, one wonders if you'd be interested in reading on it or if you have already read about it.
One potential positive thing I see out of this is possibly a more intense development of the Northwest, in terms of infrastructure and agriculture. If this "Israel" attracts the same number of skill workers and scientists that OTL Israel did, there would be a lot of benefits. It would be curious to see how the Ord and Fitzroy Rivers will be utilised. It could a major foodbowl.
As people have mentioned before, more space, less hostile neighbours, more resources. It would seem to be a setting for a more prosperous Israel, especially when the huge iron deposits are discovered.
Aozhouhuaren
Banned
However, as I posted above, the so-called "accepted" Aboriginal population figures these days are between 1.5 million to 3.3 million. I accept the 3.3 million figure as the historians etc now pushing the 1.5 million figure are still of the pro-white group. It goes without saying that I'm not of that group
I'm not disputing this at all, but wow, this is news to me. I wasn't aware that numbers were estimated to be this high! This makes the period of the frontier wars and colonisation that much more tragic.
DMA said:
Native title doesn't mean all that much. To me, it's a perfunctory treatise by the whites to appease the activists. Technically the Nyoongars own more than 800 thousand sq km in the Southwest of WA, yet they remain one of the disenfranchised and marginalised groups in our society.
As for Wiradjuri case, I think the high numbers are a show of solidarity by people who might have not been considered Wiradjuri before colonisation. Just as there were Nyoongar people who would have moreso identified as Bibbulmun and Whadjuk found, that as Aboriginal numbers were dwindling, unifying into one nation was more helpful demographically and politically. It staved off isolation and helped to maintain some form of cultural preservation.
I'm sure the same process happened with the Murri, Koori, Arrernte, Yolgnu and other large remaining nations.
If you want it to be a 'homeland', youre going to have to move lots and lots of people to the far side of the earth. This would be INCREDIBLY expensive. Who pays? Why?
Besides, European jews werent farmers, they werent allowed to be.
Besides, European jews werent farmers, they werent allowed to be.
While the percentage of European Jews who were agriculturalists of any sort was small compared to the percentage in the non-Jewish population it was not zero. Having said that, while a small group might follow a highly charismatic Rabbi (think the early Chasidim for example) you're simply not going to get a very large number of Jews to hie off to Australia - even if the practical difficulties of getting a large number there in the 18th century are waved away (and the cost thereof). Even after Herzl & the development of formal Zionism the numbers that went emigrate to Israel/Palestine were small - it took the Nazis and later the post WW2 Arab regimes to convince Jews that emigrating was a good idea.
FYI "next year in Jerusalem" is just as "valid" now as it was in the 18th century, repeated at every Seder. While a Jewish state elsewhere could come about for various reasons it would not extinguish the desire for Israel.
FYI "next year in Jerusalem" is just as "valid" now as it was in the 18th century, repeated at every Seder. While a Jewish state elsewhere could come about for various reasons it would not extinguish the desire for Israel.
Perhaps make the pograms in Russia much more severe while also intensifying the Great Game between Russia and Britain? Might make the British more open to extending the offer to the Jews if they have a bad relationship with the government oppressing them. Also solves the problems of a lack of Jewish agriculturalists.
NothingNow
Banned
It's not that much more than the cost of going to the US. Get Theodor Herzl or Someone else to seriously promote it, instead of the US, or Argentina, and it'd be financed by the community.
In Poland they were. It wasn't common, but it occurred. Jews just couldn't own land.
That didn't stop the Kibbutzim from being decently successful farmers, and in a situation where there's a demand for tradesmen, with favorable immigration policies and a little bit of promotion , and you'd get a thriving population soon enough.
In the early 20th century, sure, but by then it's too late for Jews to be a majority.
Right. But the kibbutzim started small and grew over decades. If you're talking about suddenly moving a million or more Jews, they'll mostly starve before they figure out how to grow enough food for the rest.
I don't think we are talking about that. First, you just have to create the state, not suddenly teleport all the Jews there. Over time the population can increase due to immigration, just like how OTL Australia grew. Also, You seem to be under the illusion that there were zero Jewish farmers in Europe. Simply not true. Plenty of Russian Jews were farmers, and there were also some in Poland as previously pointed out. Furthermore, you also make it sound like it's impossible to learn a new trade. Just because most Western European Jews were educated and in non-agricultural work doesn't mean they were all completely unfamiliar with its techniques, or couldn't have learned how given enough time. There is nothing stopping a slow initial trickle of Jewish immigrants to Australia until they figure out how to survive and support a larger population. If anything, history tells us this is how settlement usually goes. I'm sure there are other obstacles to settlement, but I think your grossly overstating the difficulties in finding Jewish farmers. In fact they exist in the places they most likely would be willing to move to Australia from.
Cook
Banned
Neither of these were ever a realistic proposal; the Kimberley was offered by the British government to Rothschild after the Australian Commonwealth was independent (and had introduced the White Australia Policy, which largely prevented European Jews immigrating.) The Western Tasmania proposal was even less likely since it was made by a state premier exceeding the authority of his position, considering the offer was the west coast of Tasmania, it is another case of someone looking at a map and circling a bit of empty coast. Both proposals were post-1900, so outside the scope of this thread anyway.
Cook
Banned
I had a chat with a mate of mine who is an anthropologist and who works for the government in indigenous affairs; amongst anthropologist’s the generally accepted figure is approximately 1 million or slightly lower.
And he burst out laughing at the idea of the Wiradjuri population numbering half a million, even a figure of 50,000 would have been generous.
It would not have mattered anyway; the Aboriginal ‘nations’ were language groups only, never political structures that could organise large scale or prolonged fighting groups. Something like a Zulu Impi was simply not possible in their society; not only was there not the social structure to organise such a formation, but a hunter-gatherer economy couldn’t concentrate much more than a thousand people together for more than a couple of days because of the need to feed them. That’s why nothing like the Zulu or Maori wars ever took place and nothing like the Treaty of Waitangi ever even considered; there was simply no structure above the local community to even try to negotiate with.
Fighting between white settlers and the indigenous inhabitants was mostly prolonged low level skirmishing, hence the reason why Australian towns at no stage resembled the fortified settlements of the early American colonial period and why farmers were willing to push into the hinterland and establish their homesteads well away from the main settlements after only a few years.
People on this thread talking about a Jewish Australia seem to be mostly overlooking one rather key feature of Australia: it is really, really BIG. Australia ended up as a single nation simply because the British had established complete maritime hegemony by the time the issue of its settlement came up, and even then it was a close run thing. A British Jewish settlement along the lines of Adelaide or Australind is easily conceivable, especially the latter, but not a large scale Jewish state independent of a European colonial empire and dominating much, or all, of the continent. The very best that an independent Jewish settlement is likely to achieve is an Australian analogue of South Africa’s Boer Republics or America's Mormons: states whose independence is lost to one of the colonial powers, resulting in their pushing into the ‘empty’ hinterland, only to have the imperialists follow.
Australind would probably be a very good basis for a Jewish Australia story; a settlement of four hundred inhabitants financed by investors in England. Would could have such a settlement financed by an early international Jewish organisation, or better yet by the Rothschilds themselves. The history of Australind is also a very good lesson as to the trials and tribulations that such a colony would undergo.
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