Standard colonialist discourse associates settler-colonies with a colonial motherland, which dispatches colonists to regions under imperial control. In the case of Zionism, the British government was not dispatching its own citizens to colonize Palestine and does not fit the role of a traditional colonial motherland. Identifying the colonial motherland requires understanding of the politics of historic Poland. The Polish government from the medieval to early modern period treated different ethnic groups functionally in a sort of caste system and gave them full autonomy as long as they fulfilled their designated role. Polish Armenians had a governing council called the Voit while in principle the Council of the Four Lands, to which the most important Jewish communities (kehillot) sent delegates, ruled Polish Jewry from the 16th until the 18th century when the Jewish Council failed to meet its tax obligations. Thus Eastern European Jews or ethnic Ashkenazim had the habit of a sort of virtual state system. After Commonwealth Poland was divided between Prussian, Russia, and Austria, ethnic Ashkenazim developed transnational politics.