1800-1948

Excerpted from Palestine and the Palestinians (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1997), by Samih Farsoun with Christine Zacharia, pp. 21-22.

“The modern history of Palestine begins around 1800. … The transforming forces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries affected the social history of the entire Middle East.  Their particular configuration in Palestine, however, had consequences far more devastating for the indigenous Arab population of the country.  Together, these powerful forces may be [characterized as European interventionism].

European intervention in Palestine encouraged the process of European settlement in the country, transformed the economy, created new social classes, and rearranged power relations among existing social groups, including the recent Jewish immigrant settlers.  This process … started slowly in the early nineteenth century but intensified and accelerated in the second half of the century after the conclusion of the Crimean War (1853-1856), which hastened the opening of the Ottoman Empire, especially Palestine.

… Over the 150 years, economic activity and productivity in trade, agriculture, industry, and services expanded substantially but became more closely linked to and dependent on Europe, especially Britain, the [preeminent colonial] power.  European interventionism accelerated all the indigenous processes in place since the eighteenth century and propelled Palestine from a largely subsistence and semi-feudal, tribute-paying mode of existence into a market economy and finally, before its destruction, into dependent capitalist underdevelopment.  Most significant, it created the conditions for the destruction of Palestine and the dispossession of its people in 1948, the year of al-Nakbah (the catastrophe).

The nineteenth century thus saw not only a new emphasis on monetary relations over the whole of Palestine with the expansion of the market but also the initiation of capitalist social relationships of production and exchange.  Accompanying these shifts were structural changes in the land tenure and ownership systems, the development of industrial/artisanal and service activity, labor force transformation, population redistribution, and commensurate urban growth.  The Ottoman authorities introduced administrative, legal, and governmental reform (rationalization) and centralization, which also contributed to the process of transformation.  No less significant was the new ‘peaceful crusade’ of religiously inspired European immigration, investment, and institutional development.  Just as important, modern education expanded and increased in scope, and social values, norms, and lifestyles changed.  Arab and Palestinian nationalism and Islamist consciousness awoke.  And all of this occurred in the context of a rapidly increasing population, both because of natural increase and (to a lesser extent) because of the immigration of European Christians and Jews, which restructured the demographic composition of the country.  This latter aspect, which began in earnest only in the 1880s, became a critical factor in Palestine by the mid-twentieth century.”

To continue to learn about modern Palestine, proceed to Contradictory Pledges