Economic Nationalism in a Comparative Perspective: Jewish Port Workers between Salonika and Haifa, 1923-1936

Abstract

The article presents a comparative analysis of the patterns of economic nationalism as observed in two port cities – Salonica, Greece, and Haifa, Eretz-Israel - during different phases of the development of the respective nation-states. The article positions Salonica’s Jewish port workers in the role of ‘control population’ within the context of the ports of Salonica and Haifa. This enables a comparison of revelations of economic nationalism associated with the forms of initial formation of the national labor forces in industrial sectors linked to the port – the public infrastructure; it is therefore sensitive to discrimination based on national criteria. 

The article examines signs of Greek economic nationalism directed against the Jewish minority labor force, which was eventually driven out of its traditional positions in the port of Salonica, for the benefit of Greek orthodox refugees from Anatolia (1923) during the final demographic and geo-political consolidation of the Greek nation-state (the ‘post-colonial phase’). The preference for Athens and the port of Piraeus, as opposed to Salonica and its port; the drop in job opportunities in the port as a result of newly-introduced efficiency measures; and the tendency among Greek shippers from the already-established Greek-owned shipping industry to employ co-nationals – i.e. Greek (and not Ladino) speakers – for onshore work; all of the above contributed not only to intensifying the competition between Jewish and Greek port workers in Salonica, but also to negatively divert the scope of Jewish labor employed in the port. 

The article shows that expressions of economic nationalism by Jewish leaders in pre-State Israel – who hoped to absorb Salonica’s Jewish port workers in order to establish a Jewish manual working class – and the ‘Judaization’ of the work force, which took place simultaneously in the new port of Haifa during the long processes, both stemmed from the processes of de-colonization from alien rule (British) and of the formation of the Jewish nation-state.