ABSTRACT
Jewish Zionism led to the emergence of a Palestinian national consciousness, especially after 1917 when the British, who favoured a divided Palestine, offered the territory to the Jews as a national homeland. The Ottoman Empire governed Palestine, and the rest of the Middle East, from the 16th Century to the end of the First World War. The Buddhist Cingalese majority has maintained hegemony over Sri Lanka since independence in 1948, and has discriminated against the Hindu Tamil minority, which includes Tamils indigenous to the isle and Tamils from Dravidian southern India who were forced to migrate there by the British in the 19th century. Ireland was Britain's oldest colony. In the Modern Age "plantations" were the property of Protestants, Catholics were subject to a range of legal exclusion measures; however, what the English had established was a colonial economy for the exclusive benefit of the metropolis, to the equal detriment of Catholics and Protestants.
