Diasporic Cartography and the Limits of National Territoriality: The Jabotinsky–Perlman Atlas (1925)

This article examines the Jabotinsky–Perlman Atlas (1925), the first Hebrew-language world atlas, as a cartographic intervention into Jewish spatial identity under conditions of statelessness. Edited by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Meir Perlman, the atlas adopts the thematic and pedagogical form of the modern national atlas while systematically displacing its territorial foundation. Rather than centring on a bounded homeland, it visualises the Jewish people as a globally dispersed yet relational collective, structured through routes, infrastructures and shared symbolic frameworks. The article argues that the atlas articulates a model of ‘networked spatiality’, in which connectivity, circulation and cultural mediation replace borders as the foundation of nationhood. Through close analysis of its visual conventions, linguistic choices and ideological context, the article situates the atlas at the intersection of Zionist modernism and a diasporic nationalism, revealing a productive tension between territorial aspiration and nonterritorial cartographic logic. In doing so, it challenges the conventional equation of nationalism with territorial enclosure and demonstrates how cartography can render stateless nationhood politically and visually legible.