ABSTRACT
Political Zionism appears against a backdrop of anti-Semitic violence, nationalist rhetoric, and social Darwinism. Zionism was subdivided into religious, economic, and political manifestations, Indian and Arab nationalisms by the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century are best examined in terms of their smaller, more localized movements. In the case of Arab nationalism, this supra-structure was revisited and refined in the middle of the twentieth century by Gamal Abdel Nasser in his pan-Arab movement, but in the late nineteenth century this superstructure was vague and never all-encompassing. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani advocated a political revolution to bring modernism in line with Islam, creating a hybrid of European nationalism and traditional regional structures. Arab nationalism was informed by the minority groups of Christians living throughout Greater Syria, who had their own loyalties and complaints. Before 1917 Palestinian Arabs were generally disorganized in their nationalist rhetoric, largely asserting Greater Syrian nationalism.
