PUBLISHED BY THE JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND Mocatta Library and Museum U niversity C ollege ( University of London ) GOWER STREET, LONDON, W.C. 1 1919 All rights reserved...

T he substance of this volume was read as a Paper before the Jewish Historical Society of England on February 11, 1918. It has now been expanded and supplied with a full equipment of documents—Protocols of Congresses and Conferences, Treaty Stipulations, Diplomatic Correspondence and other public Acts—in the hope that it may prove useful as a permanent record, and serviceable to those of our communal organisations whose duty it will be to bring the still unsolved aspects of the Jewish Question b

ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS LIBERTY GENERALLY. T he Jewish Question is part of the general question of Religious Toleration. Together with the questions relating to the toleration of "Turks and Infidels," it raises the question of Religious Liberty in its most acute form. It is both local and international. Locally it seeks a solution through Civil and Political Emancipation on the basis of Religious Toleration. Internationally it arises when a State or combination of States which has been gained

Long before the Peace of Westphalia an attempt was made by the famous Jewess, Donna Gracia Nasi, to obtain protection for her persecuted co-religionists by diplomatic action, and it proved successful. The circumstances will be narrated presently. [11] It stood, however, alone for two hundred years. Even after the Peace eminent Jews, who sought in a like way to enlist the sympathy and help of European governments, failed. Menasseh ben Israel made representations in this sense on behalf of the opp

( a ) STATUS OF JEWS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES. Not all the diplomatic interventions on behalf of Jews have proceeded on humanitarian grounds. Through the political assimilation of the Jews with the populations among whom they dwell, and more particularly through their emancipation in the various countries of Western Europe and America, they have acquired the same rights in foreign countries under International Law and treaties as their Christian fellow-citizens. Unfortunately this has not been unive

U ntil quite recently the question of the national restoration of the Jews to Palestine did not play a conspicuous part, or, indeed, much of a part at all, in practical international politics. This is not a little strange in view of the great mass of religious opinion which has always been deeply interested in it. It may be profitable to indicate some of the reasons. In the first place, from the middle of the second down to the middle of the nineteenth centuries the Palestine problem, as a polit

INTERNATIONAL ANTI-SEMITISM IN 1498. T he earliest appearance of the Jewish Question in international European politics—or rather the earliest reference to it in the British State Papers—happened in 1498, shortly after the great expulsion of the Jews from Spain. In that year Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain sent a mission to England on business connected with Prince Arthur's marriage. The mission was apparently instructed to deal with the Jewish Question. The envoys expressed to the King their so