Join us for a talk on Elizabeth E. Imber’s award-winning new book: Uncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British Imperialism

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Following the British conquest of Ottoman Palestine, Jews across the British Empire—from Jerusalem to Johannesburg, London to Calcutta—found themselves at the heart of global Jewish political discourse. As these intellectuals, politicians, activists, and communal elites navigated shifting political landscapes, some envisioned Palestine as a British dominion, leveraging imperial power for Jewish state-building, while others fostered ties with anticolonial movements, contemplating independent national aspirations. This talk will explore this intricate interplay between British imperialism, Zionism, and anticolonial movements from the 1917 British conquest of Palestine to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. In doing so, it will show how the British Empire’s fate became central to Zionist and broader Jewish political thought during a time marked by profound urgency and exigency.

Elizabeth E. Imber is Associate Professor of History and the Michael and Lisa Leffell Chair in Modern Jewish History at Clark University. Her work examines the cultural and political dimensions and intersections of Jewish history and European imperial history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her first book, Uncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British Imperialism was published by Stanford University Press in 2025 winning that year’s National Jewish Book Awards – JDC-Herbert Katzki Award (Writing Based on Archival Material).