Rediscovering Palestine : merchants and peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 / Beshara Doumani.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Doumani, Beshara, 1957- author.

Contributor:

California Digital Library. eScholarship.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Peasants--Palestine--History.

Peasants.

Nablus Region--Economic conditions.

Nablus Region.

Nablus Region--Politics and government.

Nablus Region--Commerce--History.

Palestine--History--638-1917.

Palestine.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 340 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [1995]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Drawing on previously unused primary sources, this book paints an intimate and vivid portrait of Palestinian society on the eve of modernity. Through the voices of merchants, peasants, and Ottoman officials, Beshara Doumani offers a major revision of standard interpretations of Ottoman history by investigating the ways in which urban-rural dynamics in a provincial setting appropriated and gave meaning to the larger forces of Ottoman rule and European economic expansion. He traces the relationship between culture, politics, and economic change by looking at how merchant families constructed trade networks and cultivated political power, and by showing how peasants defined their identity and formulated their notions of justice and political authority.Original and accessible, this study challenges nationalist constructions of history and provides a context for understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is also the first comprehensive work on the Nablus region, Palestine's trade, manufacturing, and agricultural heartland, and a bastion of local autonomy. Doumani rediscovers Palestine by writing the inhabitants of this ancient land into history.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Maps, Plates, and Tables

Preface

Abbreviations

Note on Translation and Transliteration

Introduction: Palestine and the Ottoman Interior

1 The Meanings of Autonomy

2 Family, Culture, and Trade

3 Cotton, Textiles, and the Politics of Trade

4 The Political Economy of Olive Oil

5 Soap, Class, and State

Conclusion

Appendix 1 Weights and Measures

Appendix 2 Court Records, Judges, and Private Family Papers

Appendix 3 Soap Factories and the Process of Production

Glossary

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-325) and index.

ISBN:

0-585-25890-2

0-520-91731-6

OCLC:

56778489