When settlers buy land: Kristen Alff, ‘Changing Capitalist Structures and Settler-Colonial Land Purchases in Northern Palestine, 1897–1922’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2023 | settler colonial studies blog

When settlers buy land: Kristen Alff, ‘Changing Capitalist Structures and Settler-Colonial Land Purchases in Northern Palestine, 1897–1922’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2023

14Nov23

Abstract: By tracing Zionist and German Templer efforts to buy arable private property in Palestine between 1897 and 1922, I show the ways in which the changing balance of Ottoman and Levantine forces over land and labor—as well as political and economic institutions and social structures—facilitated settler-colonialism in northern Palestine. In this article, I examine official records of the Ottoman state, Jewish organizations, and Levantine, Jewish, and Templer real estate papers. I argue that changing capitalist practices in northern Palestine, driven especially by interactions of Beirut-based companies with the changing global capitalist market, facilitated settler-colonialism in the region. Specifically, Ottoman state-sponsored violence during World War I increased peasant dispossessions in the fertile region of northern Palestine, already in progress since at least the mid-19th century, making settler colonies possible.

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