The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine. By Jacob Metzer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xxii, 275.

Abstract

Like the rest of the Middle East, the economic history of Palestine in the early twentieth century has traditionally been the domain of social and political historians. The complexity and controversy surrounding the era of the British Mandate (1919–1948) ought to deter any serious economic historian from contemplating a comprehensive, quantitative analysis of economic life. After all, this was the period when the Zionist goal to create a Jewish national home in Palestine came into direct conflict with the native Arab community, and stretched the flexibility of a British administration that had committed itself to promoting the Zionist project while protecting the native population. Fortunately, Jacob Metzer has assumed the difficult task of producing an economically sophisticated study of the origins and the evolution of this divided economy while circumventing the political pitfalls associated with Mandatory Palestine.