The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 110)
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- The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 110)
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The most important exports of Jaffa were wheat, soap, sesame, oranges,
and olive oil, but also included barley, durra,® and cotton. In 1857, the wheat
exported amounted to merely 45,000 kiles, but by 1882 reached 483,000 Ailes. For
sesame, 503,000 oqqas were exported in 1857, and reached 2,293,000 in 1882.°
In 1857, 6,000,000 oranges were exported, and reached 52,967,000” units in
1881. However, exports of each product did not necessarily continuously increase
year after year. Nonetheless, the following average annual exports, derived by
Scholch, for 1857-1860 and 1862-1863, and 1873-1877 and 1879-1882,
respectively, provide a proper perspective: for wheat 58,000 kiles to 279,000, with
a growth multiple of 4.80; for barley 121,000 kiles to 102,000, with a growth
multiple of 0.84; for sesame 1,245,000 oggas to 2,059,000, with a growth multiple
of 1.65; olive oil from 706,000 ogqas to 904,000, with a growth multiple of 1.28;
Durra is “a type of cereal with leaves like Turkish maize [hence the name
durra, which means maize in Arabic] and white seeds like lentils.” See Scholch,
78, footnote 177.
°Scholch, 83, Table 18; figures rounded to nearest thousand.
Starting in 1880, data for oranges were in boxes, and Scholch reports
170,500 boxes for 1881. Using the value of orange exports given in Scholch on p.
85, and assuming the same export price for 1879, 1880, and 1881, I calculated the
unit price of .12876 piaster and the number of units, 310, in each box, which is
consistent with the number of 300 reported by Charles Issawi “Trade of Jaffa,
1825-1914,” in Studia Palaestina, ed. Hisham Nashabe (Beirut: Institute of
Palestine Studies, 1988), 45. However, for 1882, Scholch’s figure of 116,350
boxes and the corresponding value of 8,144,500 piaster do not seem to reconcile;
this suggests that either the price almost doubled between 1881 and 1882, and there
is no evidence for that, or that the number of boxes is too low, which seems to be
the case given the continuous increase in orange export for the several preceding
years.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. - هو جزء من
- The Dispossession of the Peasantry
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- Riyad Mousa
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