New Article: Caquet, Guizot’s Absence of a Plan for Jerusalem

Caquet, P. E. “Guizot’s Absence of a Plan for Jerusalem.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.2 (2015): 224-37.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2014.972950

 

Abstract

Historians have speculated over the existence of an 1841 plan by the French foreign minister François Guizot to internationalize Jerusalem as a Christian city, a plan holding major implications for the eventual emergence of a Jewish state and for European–Ottoman relations. This article aims, based on fresh archival and other sources, to provide a definitive evaluation of Guizot’s plan, its scope, and its motivations. It broadens the field to encompass other great power plans mooted in 1841, including plans of a Protestant yet Zionist flavour, and it reassesses the political weight of early nineteenth-century European religious impulses with regard to Palestine.