Book reviews

Selwyn Ilan Troen and Benjamin Pinkus, eds., Organizing Rescue: National Jewish Solidarity in the Modern Period, London, Frank Cass, 1992, pp. xi, 424.

Idith Zertal, From Catastrophe to Power: Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine 1945–1948 (Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1996. 674 pp.; notes; bibliography; index.

Yoav Gelber, Jewish‐Transjordanian Relations, 1921–48, London: Frank Cass, 1997. 320 pp., glossary, sources and bibliography, index.

Moshe Shemesh, The Palestinian Entity, 1959–1974; Arab Politics and the PLO, Second (Revised) Edition, London: Frank Cass, 1996. xxiii, 433pp., bibliography, index.

Yeshayahu A. Jelinek, ed., Zwischen Moral und Realpolitik: Deutsch‐israelisch Bezeihungen 1945–1965: Eine Doku‐mentensammlung. Gelingen: Bleicher Verlag, 1997. 687 pp.

Angelika Timm, Jewish Claims Against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997, xi + 291pp.     

Italian immigration: the origins,nature and evolution of Italy’s migratory systems

This article reconstructs the historical development of foreign settlement in Italy. It shows how Italy is part of a number of different migratory patterns, some of which are interconnected, while others are quite strongly differentiated. This diversity means that the standard images that link Italian immigration with a high degree of social marginalization do not correspond to the more complex realities, and by focusing on short-term aspects simply conflate highly differentiated patterns of migration into one single type. The article begins by reconstructing the patterns of foreign settlement in Italy since the time of Unification and then goes on to analyze the mechanisms of contemporary migrant flows to demonstrate how these derive from very different sets of motives and expectations. The motivations also explain why different immigrant groups respond to the different forms of regulation adopted by the Italian state. The article concludes by reviewing the data presently available on the numbers of foreigners currently in Italy, which indicate that over the last twenty years those numbers have decreased.     

Geo-centric education and anti-imperialism: theosophy, geography and citizenship in the writings of J. H. Cousins

While much has been written of the complicity of geography with British Imperialism and projects of the nation state, the focus of this paper is the educational writings of James H. Cousins who advocated geography as a source of ordered knowledge, mystic insight, and resistance to imperialism. Cousins' formulation of nationhood in his writing on national education, his scheme of geographical education and his concern of ideal citizenship are discussed in order to explore his attempt to develop a Theosophical geographical imagination of non-hierarchical difference and global spiritual unity.