Summary
Historian whose pioneering study of Palestine in 1856-1882 Doumani uses to argue that the period’s leap in trade with Europe presupposed an already commercialized agriculture in Ottoman Palestine (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 148-171).
Details
-
Through Western sources, especially consular reports on imports and exports through Jaffa, Acre and Haifa, Schölch showed Palestine was integrated into the world capitalist economy as an exporter of wheat, barley, sesame, olive oil, soap and cotton in 1856-1882, that exports closely shadowed European demand, and that exports exceeded imports of European machine-manufactured goods, helping Greater Syria minimize its overall negative balance of trade with Europe (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 148-171).
-
Schölch chose the Crimean War as his starting point because of its grain demand and the new political environment created by the Tanzimat (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 148-171).
-
His article “European Penetration and the Economic Development of Palestine, 1856-1882” (1982) was expanded into Palestine in Transformation, 1856-1882: Studies in Social, Economic, and Political Development (1993) (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 199-380).
-
In Chapter 3, Schölch detailed the efforts of European powers to convince the Ottoman authorities that one single governor, based in Jerusalem, should be made responsible for all of the surrounding regions in Palestine (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 2331-2389).
-
Table 5, Cotton Exports from Acre, Haifa, and Jaffa, 1852-1875, is adapted from Tables 1.3 and 1.7 in Schölch, “European Penetration,” pp. 58, 61; Doumani’s Conclusion holds that the qualitative leap in trade relations with Europe during 1856-1882, which Schölch meticulously documented, was not a sudden development nor solely an outcome of European “penetration,” as he phrased it (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 2167-2330, lines 2390-2529).
Related pages
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, Gabriel Baer, Jabal Nablus