18th century
Manifesto of Catherine II
1762·Empire russe
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
the appeal to foreign colonists from all countries carries the named exclusion of Jews
Upon ascending the throne, Catherine II issued a call to foreign settlers to populate the empty lands of the Russian Empire: freedom of worship, tax exemptions, land grants. The manifesto enumerated the nations invited and explicitly excluded Jews from the invitation. The exclusion was not the result of chance: the empress, who had just refused to admit them into the interior provinces, later wrote that she had not wished to offend the religious sensibilities of her subjects at the outset of her reign. The principle of prohibited residence thus established preceded the Pale of Settlement by thirty years — a Pale rendered necessary by the partitions of Poland, which placed under the imperial scepter the largest Jewish population in Europe.
- Period :
- 18th century
- Type :
- Persecution
- Region :
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Country :
- Empire russe
Simon Doubnov, *Histoire des Juifs de Russie et de Pologne* ; John Doyle Klier, *Russia Gathers Her Jews* ; *Encyclopaedia Judaica*, article « Catherine II ».