This sequel to David Vital's The Origins of Zionism (Clarendon Press, 1980) traces the emergence of the Zionist movement through which the Jews were, to a large extent, re-formed as a political people. It concentrates on the decade following the launch of the Zionist movement by Herzl in 1897, when its main ideas and central institutions were established, along with its modes of political, social, and economic action, and its internal ideological and party-political divisions on such issues as religious orthodoxy and socialism.

Originally published in 1982, this book won the Jewish Chronicle Prize and the 'Present Tense' Literary Award for history. Professor Vital's major three-volume study of Zionism was completed in Zionism: The Crucial Phase (CP, 1987).