The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 314)
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- عنوان
- The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 314)
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298
differentiation of the peasantry. This was reflected in the increase in wage labor in
cash cropping and in public works, and the increase in landlessness that
accompanied the continuous concentration of Arab landholdings and the
appropriation of land by European settlers. The loss of land in the late 1920s and
through the 1930s by the peasants, while lacking meaningful alternative sources of
income, led to the pauperization of the majority of most peasants. Wage labor in
the 1920s and most of the 1930s, whether in agriculture or in public works, was
casual and seasonal.
The differentiation in the ownership of land, or its use, during the Mandate
period was quantitatively and qualitatively very different from the pre-Mandate
period to the extent of its development during the latter. The rise of large estates
during the last six decades of Ottoman rule was predominantly because of grants
by the sultan and the purchase of uncultivated land from the government by local
and non-Palestinian wealthy individuals and families. Some peasants lost their land
because of debt, but their numbers were insignificant. Whatever their “legal”
position with respect to land, peasants did not lose their access to it. In addition, as
discussed in Chapter 2, the Western expansion of cultivation benefited not only
large landowners and merchants but also small peasants and whole villages.
However, with the start of European settlement, the demand for land and
willingness to pay high prices for it gave a new meaning to the ownership of land.
This intensified under the Mandate with the spread of market relations. Thus,
peasants who had registered their land in the name of some powerful individual, or
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- The Dispossession of the Peasantry
- تاريخ
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- المنشئ
- Riyad Mousa
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