In 1882, the British newspaper The Globe wondered whether it would be possible to find room and employment in Cyprus for some of the “unfortunate Hebrews who are flying from Russia.... For some reason or other the project for transporting these miserable immigrants to Palestine hangs fire.”
The “unfortunate Hebrews who are flying” were the thousands of Jews who were fleeing Russia due to the infamous May Laws instituted that year by Czar Alexander III. The “project… that was hanging fire” was an agreement between Britain and the Turkish Sultan for the refugees to settle in Palestine. The agreement was not working out; the Sultan was making it difficult for refugees to reach Palestine and as an alternative The Globe proposed Cyprus, which had recently fallen under British control. The newspaper also pointed out that the island would make an ideal location for the cultivation of cotton.
Around the same time as the newspaper made its suggestion, a fund was established in London by a couple of well-meaning English aristocrats to assist the resettlement of Jewish refugees. Known as the Syrian Colonisation Fund, it raised the money for 200 Russian refugees to establish a farming colony near Latakia in Syria. The Fund provided them with the land and tools they needed and built them a synagogue, slaughter house and a ritual bath. Lord Shaftesbury, one of the founders of the Fund, acquired and donated a Torah scroll for the aspiring colonists. They sailed from London in August 1882.
However things did not work out well for them in Syria. They were plagued by malaria, unable to grow crops in the stony soil and had no schools or even teachers for their children. In August 1883 the Syrian Colonisation Fund offered to relocate them to Cyprus. 25 of the 42 families who had settled in Syria accepted the offer. There were already 69 Jews living in Cyprus; the arrival of the newcomers raised the total population to around 550. The British government gave them three square miles of land and the Fund launched an appeal to help them build houses, sink wells and sow crops.
It didn’t take long to see that the settlers were faring no better in Cyprus than they had in Syria. In London The Jewish Chronicle worried “that the better prospects which were said to await them in Cyprus…are likely to prove a delusion. They have no means for building houses, and the soil is described as sterile and not adapted for cultivation. It would be far preferable to repatriate these poor people than to allow them to continue to suffer as they have done since they left their native country.”
Despite the newspaper’s call to repatriate the settlers, no action was taken and conditions in Cyprus continued to deteriorate. By February 1884 The Jewish Chronicle was reporting that a third of the colonists were sick and that several had died. In addition to fighting malaria, they had to travel 3 miles to collect water and the mountainous land was unsuitable for growing crops. A visiting English farmer had expressed his astonishment at the attempt to establish a farming community on the site. The colonists had begged the Fund to resettle them in a different location but nothing had been done.
By the end of the year the colony had been abandoned. The settlers sold all their goods to pay for travel for the women and children, while the men walked for 15 hours to the harbour at Limassol. When they arrived, some boarded a ship sailing to Palestine while others journeyed to Odessa, planning to return to their former homes in Russia.
The failure of the settlement did not stop other Jews from attempting to settle in Cyprus. In 1885, after the virulently antisemitic Romanian government had expelled several Jewish leaders and activists, 27 refugee families arrived in Cyprus seeking the protection of the British flag. They intended to form an agricultural colony near Larnaca which other Romanian families would join in due course.
Once again The Jewish Chronicle waded in, warning that the lessons of the previous, failed colonisation attempt should not be forgotten. Unlike the Russian Jews who had returned home the previous year, if things went wrong for the Romanian families their government would not allow them to go back to their villages. The Jewish Chronicle’s caution was laughed off by Major Albert Goldsmid who wrote to the paper saying that “Romanian Jewish types” were “bronze faced and horny handed”, more than capable of making a success of the colony.
Major Goldsmid was wrong. In June 1886 a telegram was sent to Berlin from a Jerusalem charity asking for help for the Cyprus colonists. They were in danger of death from hunger and in peril of being forced to convert to Christianity. It turned out that they had been defrauded by the man who had originally brought them to Cyprus, a Jewish convert to Christianity named Michael Friedland. He had extorted 500 francs from each family and had failed to keep his promise to provide support and tools. They were now sick and starving. They had sent two representatives to the charity in Jerusalem telling them that they would not be given any support in Cyprus unless they converted to Christianity.
Through the combined efforts of the Jerusalem charity and the German Jewish leadership all but 62 of the colonists were eventually resettled in Palestine and Turkey. The Board of Deputies in London and the Anglo Jewish Association launched an appeal for funds to help those who remained in Cyprus to return to Romania. The fact that the Romanian government was persecuting and expelling Jews at the time did not appear to have occurred to them. Fortunately none of them were sent back to Romania; they ended up in Jerusalem and Alexandria.
Jewish refugees had now twice failed to make a new life for themselves in Cyprus but the island continued to act as a magnet, even if only as a sanctuary of last resort. In the early 1890s a group of Jews in London’s East End resolved to emigrate to Palestine. They formed a Society of 100 members, each of whom contributed 2 shillings and sixpence per week. By 1896 they had collected enough money to purchase a plot of land and sent two representatives to Palestine to find and acquire a suitable site. However, when their boat docked at Jaffa the two men were prevented from disembarking due to quarantine regulations. They sailed instead to Larnaca in Cyprus.
On arrival in Cyprus the two men met Paul Blattner, the island’s deputy chief constable, who coincidentally happened to be an observant Jew. Blattner introduced them to a Greek landowner who offered them an estate of 4000 dunams at Margo Chiflik, on the main road between Larnaca and Nicosia, at an asking price of £3,725. The two men purchased the land and told their comrades in London what they had done.
Displeased but unable to renege on the deal, the Society decided to send new delegates who they hoped would be more practical than the pair who had made the unfavourable land purchase. The new delegates, Abraham Milstein and Jacob Bender sent back an unflattering report about the quality of land that had been bought. In desperation the Society sought help from the London branch of Baron Hirsch’s Jewish Colonisation Association. They sent an agronomist to inspect the land. He dispelled the Society’s fears by providing a favourable report. The Jewish Colonisation Association helped further, defraying the costs of the original purchase by arranging a mortgage.
Relieved, Jacob Bender showed his commitment to the project by purchasing three plots on the estate. He bought one for himself and his wife, one for his son and another for his daughter in the event of her marriage. He still had another four sons and one daughter who he intended to buy land for in the future.
In 1897 the first sixteen families arrived from London. The Jewish Colonization Association had already built bungalows to accommodate them. Jacob Bender bought two horses for the colony and a mechanical baler, the first on the island. But again things did not go well. The work was unremittingly hard, living conditions were primitive and the Jewish Colonization Association proved to be bureaucratic and inflexible. Worst of all, malaria was rife. Jacob Bender’s son Joseph was the first to die of the disease and on the day that his daughter Esther was due to marry the estate’s agronomist, Nahum Adler, they both fell ill. They survived but by this time most of the settlers were deeply disillusioned.
Family by family, they began to sell up and leave. Jacob Bender sold his land and cattle to a London dealer who paid using banknotes cut in half – he only sent the second half of each note when he had been informed that the first had arrived safely. Most of the families returned to England. However they were uncomfortable about returning shamefacedly to London, where all their old friends were, deciding instead to move to Liverpool.
Three times in the 19th century Jewish families tried to settle in Cyprus. Three times they failed. Nevertheless, at the Zionist Congress of 1899, when the Ottoman Empire was still making it difficult for Jews to enter Palestine it was once more proposed that Cyprus become a Jewish colony. And again, in 1902, the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl suggested that a Jewish colony be established on British territory in Sinai or Cyprus. The same year a pamphlet was presented to the Parliamentary committee on immigration in London entitled “The problem of Jewish immigration to England and the United States solved by furthering the Jewish colonisation of Cyprus”. Nothing came of it.
Cyprus never became a Jewish colony. The British authorities shamefully interned 11,000 Jewish refugees there after the Shoah instead of allowing them to enter Palestine. They were finally released once Israel became independent. Today around 300 Jews live on the island. Their lives are immeasurably better than those who tried to settle there in the past.
The first successful oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania one year before the Civil War.
Perhaps if slavery had not been outlawed it would have died a natural death as machines replaced slaves.
In the South, slaves were more valuable than the land itself. Put yourself in the shoes of a Plantaton owner faced with having to give up his expensive "farm equipment" and replace it with newer equipment all at once. It would have ruined them financially and that is why they opted for secession.
Sympathizing with a slave owner is not a popular sentiment, but it is worth doing for the sake of historical perspective.
In the end, more advanced people knew that machines would replace slaves and the carpet baggers were ready to pounce when the war ended. Many Southern families still harbor bad feelings over the loss of great grandpa's plantation.
The advance of civilization can be cruel. Ask the Native Americans.