Will the Real Palestinian Peasantry Please Sit Down? A New History of British Rule in Palestine

Speaker: Charles Anderson, Georgetown University Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE Charles Anderson discusses his paper, which is part of a broader argument for a history from below of Arab society under the Palestine Mandate. By reexamining the political economy of the countryside under the first 18 years of British rule and the responses of peasants and ex-peasants to the escalating pressures they faced, it contends that greater attention to the history of the rural majority has much to teach us. In tandem, it advances an analysis of the Mandatory regime as a liberal despotism, the policies of which consolidated the emergence of a “landless class” that ultimately rose against it during the multifaceted rebellion known as the Great Revolt (1936-39). Recorded on 20 May 2014. This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.