The Jewish Colonization Association
The Jewish Colonization Association (ICA) was
founded in 1891. It was incorporated in London as a joint-stock company and
supplied by Baron de Hirsch with a capital of £ 2 million, which he later
increased by endowment to £ 8 million. To the oppressed and persecuted Jews of
Czarist Russia, ICA brought hope, either by organizing their emigration to
countries where they could start a new life In freedom and dignity, or by
ameliorating their economic conditions in the places where they lived. Manual
crafts were seen as the medium through which these ends could best be achieved,
and of these crafts farming was considered as the most regenerative and
therefore the most important. This is the reason why the migratory movement from
Russia, which ICA sponsored, was mainly directed to the "new
countries" such as Argentina, Brazil and Canada, in which large tracts of
land were acquired and a number of Jewish agricultural colonies established.