–Jewish Colonization Association formed
London: September: Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a German–Jewish banker / businessman / philanthropist who lived in France, England and in the Austro–Hungarian Empire founds the Jewish Colonization Association (in England). The JCA was endowed with upwards of the enormous amount (at that time) of 12,000,000 pounds–sterling by him and his wife directly or later via their estates. The fund was established by Hirsch to provide opportunities for persecuted Russian Jews to reestablish themselves, generally in agriculturally oriented colonies in South America (primarily Argentina), Canada and Palestine. At the time, it was probably the largest charitable trust in the world.
His other “grand scale” philanthropic activities involved and included:
- the Alliance Israelite Universelle of Paris
- in 1881 organizing a benevolent trust in the United States for the benefit of Jewish (primarily Russian) immigrants
- c. 1882, after negotiations with the Russian government, single–handedly funding a system of secular education for the Jews of the Russian Pale of Settlement