By the mid-19th century, the popular appeal of theories about racial differences among people was growing in Western society. These views stressed that some racial groups--white Europeans, for example--were "superior" to others who were less "civilized" or "weaker." In the hands of antisemitic thinkers such as Wilhelm Marr, racial theories legitimized the claim that Jews are a race that is both threatening and inferior.

Meanwhile, in imperial Russia during the late 1800s, the governments organized or at least did not prevent large-scale violence against Jewish communities. These attacks became known as "pogroms." The brutality of the pogroms forced Jews to flee these areas, which was an outcome both welcomed and intended by the perpetrators. In the late 1890s, antisemitism also raged in France during the "Dreyfus Affair." A Jewish captain in the French Army, Alfred Dreyfus had been falsely accused and convicted of spying for Germany. Covering the Dreyfus case for the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, a Jewish journalist named Theodor Herzl heard Parisian mobs shouting, "Death to the Jews." Reversing his earlier view that emancipation and assimilation could provide a viable future for Jews in Europe, Herzl became convinced that Jews must have a state of their own, a decision that led to his becoming a founder of modern political Zionism.