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The Uganda Proposal was a plan in the early 1900s to give a portion of British East Africa to the Jewish people as a homeland. It drew support from Theodor Herzl, a prominent Zionist, as a refuge for European Jews facing antisemitism.
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Whilst the plan was unsuccessful, according to Adam Rovner the plan was attractive to early Zionists as it "twinned the adventures of [Henry Morton] Stanley with the adventurism of the Age of Empire, stagecraft with statecraft."
History
British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain was aware of the ambitions of the Zionist Organization, which had been on his mind during a trip to East Africa earlier in the year. Chamberlain noted during his trip that, "If Dr Herzl were at all inclined to transfer his efforts to East Africa there would he no difficulty in finding land suitable for Jewish settlers."
Herzl was introduced to Chamberlain by Israel Zangwill in the spring of 1903, a few weeks after the outbreak of the Kishinev pogroms.
Chamberlain offered 13,000 square kilometres (5,000 sq mi) at Uasin Gishu (also spelled "Gwas Ngishu"), an isolated area atop the Mau Escarpment in modern Kenya (not Uganda).
The land was thought suitable because of its temperate hill station-like climate and its relative isolation, being surrounded by the Mau Forest. The offer was a response to pogroms against the Jews in Russia, and it was hoped the area could be a refuge from persecution for the Jewish people.
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Chamberlain saw the land as he was passing by on the Uganda Railway, although the land was not in fact in Uganda but in the East Africa Protectorate (modern Kenya).
This territory had only recently been transferred from the Uganda Protectorate to the East Africa Protectorate in 1902, as part of the Uganda Railway development plan.