MANDATE DAZE: STORIES OF BRITISH RULE IN PALESTINE, 1917–48

Abstract

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in British rule in Palestine. Although invariably selective, recent scholarship has nevertheless attempted to deal with the administration of the Palestinian Mandate over its entire time span. These studies provide an opportunity to reconsider more generally some of the methodological problems posed by the writing of Mandatory history. There already exists for Palestine a large body of literature, one that has prompted several historiographic reviews identifying particular assumptions, preoccupations, and conceptual frameworks.1 They include the extent to which histories of Mandatory Palestine invariably reflect current thinking and are thus not solely concerned with the past; the reliance on official archives, particularly British and Israeli; and the tendency to concentrate on Zionism as the moving force behind developments during the Mandate period (thus committing a conspicuous act of retroactive determinism).