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Land of progress: Palestine in the age of colonial development, 1905-1948
No full textHistories of Palestine in the pre-1948 period usually assume the emergent Arab-Zionist conflict to be the central axis around which all change revolves. In Land of Progress Jacob Norris suggests an alternative historical vocabulary is needed to broaden our understanding of the region's recent past. In particular, for the architects of empire and their agents on the ground, Palestine was conceived primarily within a developmental discourse that pervaded colonial practice from the turn of the twentieth century onwards. A far cry from the post-World War II focus on raising living standards, colonial development in the early twentieth century was more interested in infrastructure and the exploitation of natural resources. Land of Progress charts this process at work across both the Ottoman and British periods in Palestine, focusing on two of the most salient but understudied sites of development anywhere in the colonial world: the Dead Sea and Haifa. Weaving the experiences of local individuals into a wider narrative of imperial expansion and anti-colonial resistance, Norris demonstrates the widespread excitement Palestine generated among those who saw themselves at the vanguard of progress and modernisation, whether they were Ottoman or British, Arab or Jewish. Against this backdrop, Norris traces the gradual erosion during the mandate period of the mixed style of development that had prevailed under the Ottoman Empire, as the new British regime viewed Zionism as the sole motor of modernisation. As a result, the book's latter stages relate the extent to which colonial development became a central issue of contestation in the struggle for Palestine that unfolded in the 1930s and 40s
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Letter from Jacob Spafford, 15/10/1927
No full textThis is a digital reproduction of a handwritten letter from Jacob Spafford (to Mr Peters?), dated 15 October, 1927. Jacob Spafford was the adopted son of Horatio and Anna Spafford, two of
the founding members of the American Colony in Jerusalem.Mentions the earthquake but also “good news” that the road from Damascus Gate to their house has been paved, as have roads to Jaffa, Bethlehem and Ramallah. The letter was digitised by the Planet Bethlehem Archive and exists as
part of the 1927 Earthquake collection within the Library of Congress
project of the Planet Bethlehem Archive.</div
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Letter from Jacob Spafford, 02/08/1927
No full textThis is a digital reproduction of a letter held in the Library of Congress from Jacob Spafford to a "dear friend”, dated 2 Aug., 1927. Jacob Spafford was the adopted son of Horatio and Anna Spafford, two of the founding members of the American Colony in Jerusalem.Describes the devastating effects of the earthquake. Included is a description of an encounter with a man from Bethlehem who says no one was killed there but the damage suffered would require £100,000 to rectify (p.2). Also describes damage and loss of life in Nablus (70 dead), Ramleh, Ludd and Rama – the worst effected towns - as well as the kindness of people helping each other out, including Bedouins. Says Jerusalem got off relatively lightly although damage was worse on Mount of Olives. This image was digitised by the Planet Bethlehem Archive and exists as part of the 1927 Earthquake collection within the Library of Congress project of the Planet Bethlehem Archive.</div
Return Migration and the Rise of the Palestinian Nouveaux Riches, 1870–1925
No full textThis article examines the figure of the returning e´migre´ in late Ottoman and early Mandate Palestine. The wave of Palestinians who emigrated in the pre–World War I period did not, for the most part, intend to settle abroad permanently. Hailing largely from small towns and villages in the Palestinian hilly interior, they moved in and out of the Middle East with great regularity and tended to reinvest their money and social capital in their place of origin. The article argues that these emigrants constituted a previously undocumented segment of Palestinian society, the nouveaux riches who challenged the older elites from larger towns and cities in both social and economic terms. The discussion focuses in particular on their creation of new forms of bourgeois culture and the disruptive impact this had on gender and family relations, complicating the assumption that middle-class modernity in Palestine was largely effected by external actors
Exporting the Holy Land: Artisans and Merchant Migrants in Ottoman-Era Bethlehem
No full textThis article explores an aspect of Arab migration in the nineteenth century that is often retold in popular memory but rarely discussed in academic work: that of Bethlehem merchants and the “Holy Land” wares they sold. Beginning roughly in the 1850s, these travelling salesmen established trading connections in all corners of the globe, constituting one of the earliest manifestations of the wider movement of Arabic-speaking people away from the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To properly contextualize the emergence and significance of this merchant activity, the article firstly offers an account of how Bethlehem came to be the manufacturing center of a global industry in religious souvenirs. It then turns to the nineteenth-century merchants themselves, exploring their multi-directional trajectories in the nineteenth century. Through these twin dynamics of production and circulation, the article questions some of the commonly held assumptions about the nature of the nineteenth-century “Arab diaspora” or mahjar
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Development and disappointment: Arab approaches to economic modernization in mandate Palestine
No full textArab intellectuals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are well-known for their fascination with notions of progress and modernisation. Much of the historiography to date has examined this strand of thought within the context of political reform, examining the various solutions (liberalist, egalitarian or nationalist), put forward to remedy the ills of a ‘backward’ Arab society. This paper argues there was an equally strong, economic aspect to this reformism that has hitherto been understated in the literature. A firm belief in the need for the modernisation of infrastructure and the exploitation of nature for economic profit was a consistent feature in the writings and pronouncements of Arab reformists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The paper explores the enthusiasm for this type of development in the context of Palestine through the late Ottoman and British periods of rule. If firstly discusses the writings and pronouncements of prominent Palestinian intellectuals and public figures. It then moves on to describe a particular case: the debates over the development of the Dead Sea for mineral extraction. Through this case study the paper argues that the disenfranchisement of a generation of Arab developers-in-waiting constituted a major element of Palestinian opposition to the British Mandate
Return migration and the rise of the Palestinian nouveaux riches, 1870-1925
No full textThis article examines the figure of the returning e´migre´ in late Ottoman and early Mandate Palestine. The wave of Palestinians who emigrated in the pre–World War I period did not, for the most part, intend to settle abroad permanently. Hailing largely from small towns and villages in the Palestinian hilly interior, they moved in and out of the Middle East with great regularity and tended to reinvest their money and social capital in their place of origin. The article argues that these emigrants constituted a previously undocumented segment of Palestinian society, the nouveaux riches who challenged the older elites from larger towns and cities in both social and economic terms. The discussion focuses in particular on their creation of new forms of bourgeois culture and the disruptive impact this had on gender and family relations, complicating the assumption that middle-class modernity in Palestine was largely effected by external actors
Across confessional borders: a microhistory of Ottoman Christians and their migratory paths
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Toxic waters: Ibrahim Hazboun and the struggle for a Dead Sea concession, 1913-1948
No full textIn 1930, the British Colonial Office signed a formal agreement with Moshe Novomeysky, a Jewish Russian mining engineer from Siberia and committed Zionist, creating Palestine Potash Ltd (PPL). This company was given exclusive rights over the extraction of mineral salts from the Dead Sea for a period of 50 years and was the predecessor to today’s Israeli enterprise, the Dead Sea Works (DSW). Reading through Novomeysky’s memoirs, as well as the handful of Israeli histories of the Dead Sea industry, the concession appears as a hard-fought Zionist victory in the face of stiff opposition within British parliamentary circles. From this point, the formation and subsequent success of PPL is described as an important early stage in the attempt to build up a national chemical industry in the state of Israel. Arab Palestinians are almost entirely invisible in this story, save for Novomeysky’s occasional mention of PPL’s ‘friendly relations’ with Arab communities in the area. Focusing on the story of Ibrahim Hazboun, a Catholic merchant trader from Bethlehem, this article retells the story of the Dead Sea concession from a local Arab perspective, employing a variety of sources, both written and oral, to fill in the gaps left by the colonial and Zionist archives. Contrary to the claims of British and Zionist officials, it is shown that Arab Palestinians had been intensely interested in exploiting the riches of the Dead Sea since the end of Ottoman rule, and they continued to express their interest throughout the Mandate period. Weaving Ibrahim’s personal story into the bigger picture of national opposition to the Dead Sea project, it is argued that this neglected historical episode can serve as a window onto the wider problems facing the Arab merchant classes during the transition from Ottoman to British rule in Palestin
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