The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 167)

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The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 167)

المحتوى

15]
tax-farming estates, and in some cases as a result of peasant indebtedness, but also
because of the westward expansion of cultivation that in many cases was in
previously uncultivated areas. Equally important was the peasants’ registering of
title in the name of some wealthy or influential individual, and thus became
“landless” in the legal sense. In all these situations, customary rights were
honored, and access to land was maintained, whether a peasant had “legal” title to
it or not. At the same time, any loss of land or access to it because of the rise in
large-landed estates was mitigated by the westward expansion of cultivation by
individuals and whole villages, and not only by large owners, as Owen points
out.** Moreover, this Western movement led to the expansion of the musha’a
system.”
As for the transition to agricultural labor that Stein points to, it too was
very limited in scope during Ottoman rule. Although we lack exact figures on
wage labor in general, and on agricultural wage labor specifically, we do know
that the latter was primarily confined to the cash crop citrus plantations and
European settlements that hired some of the original cultivators of these lands. The
extent of incorporation in the world capitalist market, combined with the limited
development of cash crops, the limited extent of market relations in the country,
and the changes in land tenure, all point to, as described and analyzed in Chapter
2, to extremely limited changes in the existing social relations of production. Thus,
*Owen, Middle East, 267.
*Scholch, 111.
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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