The Uganda Scheme was a plan in the early
1900s to give a portion of British East Africa
to the Jewish people as a homeland.
It drew support from Theodor Herzl, a prominent
Zionist, as a temporary refuge for European
Jews facing antisemitism.
== History ==
British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain
was aware of the ambitions of the Zionist
Organization, which had been on his mind during
a trip to East Africa earlier in the year.
Chamberlain noted during his trip that, "If
Dr Herzl were at all inclined to transfer
his efforts to East Africa there would be
no difficulty in finding land suitable for
Jewish settlers."Herzl was introduced to Chamberlain
by Israel Zangwill in the spring of 1903,
a few weeks after the outbreak of the Kishinev
pogroms.Chamberlain offered 13,000 square
kilometres (5,000 sq mi) at Uasin Gishu (also
spelled "Gwas Ngishu"), an isolated area atop
the Mau Escarpment in modern Kenya (not Uganda).The
land was thought suitable because of its temperate
hill station-like climate and its relative
isolation, being surrounded by the Mau Forest.
The offer was a response to pogroms against
the Jews in Russia, and it was hoped the area
could be a refuge from persecution for the
Jewish people.Chamberlain saw the land as
he was passing by on the Uganda Railway, although
the land was not in fact in Uganda but in
the East Africa Protectorate (modern Kenya).This
territory had only recently been transferred
from the Uganda Protectorate to the East Africa
Protectorate in 1902, as part of the Uganda
Railway development plan.
== In fiction ==
The story of the 1904 expedition, as well
as an imagined vision of a Jewish state in
Uasin Gishu, is told in Lavie Tidhar's novelette
"Uganda", in his 2007 collection HebrewPunk.
Adam Rovner's "What If the Jewish State Had
Been Established in East Africa", a travel
guide for the fictional Jewish homeland of
New Judea, located in present day Uganda,
won the 2016 Sidewise Award for Alternate
History award for short form alternate history.According
to Adam Rovner the plan was attractive to
early Zionists as it "twinned the adventures
of [Henry Morton] Stanley with the adventurism
of the Age of Empire, stagecraft with statecraft."
== 
See also ==
Abayudaya
Madagascar Plan
Jewish Autonomous Oblast
Slattery Report
Fugu Plan
Beta Israel
Lemba people
Proposals for a Jewish state
Jewish Territorialist Organization
