Sionismo ed economia della Palestina nel pensiero di Riccardo Bachi

Riccardo Bachi was one of the most authoritative and prolific scholars of statistics and applied economics in Italy between the two wars. Born in Turin from a Jewish family, he became after the 1920s a passionate scholar of the history and cultural traditions of the Hebrew people, particularly the Italian Jewish community from the modern era to the 19th century. A firm supporter of the Zionist idea, he also dedicated several insightful studies to the economic conditions and outlook of Palestine, at that time under the British Mandate and base of a growing and dynamic immigrant Jewish community. This aspect, widely neglected by historiography, is the subject of this work. It focuses on Bachi’s studies on the economic and cultural history of the Jewish people, the prospects of the economic and social growth of Palestine and Bachi’s activity inside the Zionist movement between the two wars. In this framework, it reconstructs the events which led to his exclusion from the University of Rome in 1938, following the enactment of antisemitic laws by the fascist regime, his activity as a scholar in Tel Aviv in the years of the Second World War, his return to Italy in 1946 and his academic work in the last years.