The History of Palestine in the Nineteenth Century*
THE history of Palestine in the Nineteenth Century is a most interesting study; it is likewise so very large and complicated a one, that it is quite impossible in a short address like this which I am about to deliver to you, to attempt to deal with it in anything like a thorough and comprehensive manner, for it may be approached in many ways. It may be viewed either from a religious or political standpoint. Much attention may be, and I think ought to be, given to questions of Geology and Archaeology —especially as recent investigations have shed much light on these matters; while the consideration of the Manners and Customs not merely of the Jews, but likewise of the other nations who inhabit Palestine, is a subject of the greatest magnitude, and one on which alone many volumes might be written.
But on this occasion I have, after much reflection, determined on a course which I think will be satisfactory, and of which I trust you will approve, namely, to attempt to bring before you some of the most important and salient facts which have taken place in both the Political and Social history of Palestine during the last century; to briefly describe some of the chief discoveries which have been made with regard to locating sites which have been connected with stirring episodes of sacred history, and also to show you how, in spite of adverse circumstances and innumerable difficulties and disabilities against which our Brethren
At the commencement of the last century the condition of Palestine was in every way unsatisfactory, for the country, which had in the year 1516 been definitely united to the Ottoman Empire, had a few years previously been attacked by General Bonaparte, who at that time entered visions of founding a vast Eastern Empire.
* Second of a series of lectures delivered this season before the London Zionist League.
have had to contend, they have managed not merely to hold their own, but likewise to prosper and progress, so that their position at the present time is in every way far more satisfactory than it was at the commencement of the last century. And this fact in itself ought, I think, to be sufficient to render the study of the history of Palestine during the last hundred years a very interesting one, and it renders it the more extraordinary that so much greater attention has generally been devoted to the consideration of other epochs apart from the Biblical one. But possibly the reason for this may be found in the fact that the history of the Holy Land during the last century is not tinged with that halo of romance which spreads so alluring a glamour over the period of the Crusades and the Frankish Kingdom; and though these later times are adorned with the records of many noble lives, they are not illuminated with the tales and legends that cluster round the names of a Richard Coeur de Lion, or a Saladin.
Time will not permit of my dwelling on the details of this expedition, though it is one replete with many interesting and exciting incidents. Suffice it to say that the French Army were finally compelled to