Summary
Historian quoted by Doumani as the exemplar of the assumption that agrarian change in Palestine began only with European Jewish immigration in 1882 (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 148-171).
Details
- Baer, in “The Impact of Economic Change on Traditional Society in Nineteenth Century Palestine” (in Moshe Ma’oz, ed., Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period, 1975, p. 495): “Arab agriculture did not change its traditional character throughout the nineteenth century. German and Jewish settlers introduced some innovations, but subsistence farming continued to be the predominant type of agriculture in the country, and the growing of cash crops was rare.” (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 148-171)
- Doumani answers that Baer confused traditional methods of farming with subsistence agriculture: the methods were suited to the hills’ thin topsoil and rocky ground, and with them Palestine produced large surpluses for export in 1856-1882 (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 148-171).
Related pages
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, Alexander Schölch, Jabal Nablus