Abstract Social scientists have long examined the relationship between war and state formation, especially in Europe and Latin America. However, work on non-European and colonial cases questioned the significance of war for state formation. Analyzing the Israeli case, I examine the relationship between war and state formation in a colonial context by focusing not on war itself but on the crises war may cause. I argue that war can shape state formation in a colonial context and suggest that theorizing crisis in political development reveals novel ways in which the relationship between war and state formation plays out. Empirically, I show that some of the main obstacles that hampered Zionist colonization and state formation in Palestine were the country’s health conditions, which seriously deteriorated during World War I. These health-related obstacles to colonization and state formation were removed by the work of American Jewish organizations after the war. Importantly, the critical work of these public health organizations stemmed from the local and global crises caused by the war. I also consider how responses to the postwar health crisis in the Jewish sector shaped the plight of Palestinian Arabs. Having noted the significance of crisis, I build on existing literature to theorize it as a potentially structurally transformative “event.” But unlike eventful analyses, I claim that transformative crises are not necessarily rifts or radical breaks from past patterns. Rather, preexisting patterns and conditions that precede eventful crises shape how transformation plays out.
Omri Tubi (Fri,) studied this question.