"The twentieth century has seen one of the rare triumphs of the Jewish people as well as one of its greatest catastrophes; the re-creation of a sovereign Jewish nation-state and the swift and systematic destruction of most of its centuries-old European heartland. This is the first study to examine the political evolution of the Jews across the whole of Europe during the century and a half preceding these events."--BOOK JACKET.

"David Vital explores the Jews' consistently tense relationship with the rulers to whom they were subject and the peoples in whose midst they were embedded."--BOOK JACKET.

"Controversially, Professor Vital concludes that up until their total emasculation in the course of the Second World War, the modern history of the Jews needs to be seen as one which in important respects - though certainly not all - was of their own making, at times by their autonomous action and choice; at others by inaction and default.

The Jews, he argues, were not mere objects of the history and intentions of others, but had an internal political history that was authentically and distinctively their own."--BOOK JACKET.