Rediscovering Palestine : merchants and peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 /
Beshara Doumani.
- Berkeley : University of California Press, c1995.
- xv, 340 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: Palestine and the Ottoman Interior -- 1. The Meanings of Autonomy -- 2. Family, Culture, and Trade -- 3. Cotton, Textiles, and the Politics of Trade -- 4. The Political Economy of Olive Oil -- 5. Soap, Class, and State -- Appendix 1. Weights and Measures -- Appendix 2. Court Records, Judges, and Private Family Papers -- Appendix 3. Soap Factories and the Process of Production.
"Drawing on previously unused primary sources, this book paints an intimate and vivid portrait of Palestinian society on the eve of modernity. Through the voices of merchants, peasants, and Ottoman officials, Beshara Doumani offers a major revision of standard interpretations of Ottoman history by investigating the ways in which urban-rural dynamics in a provincial setting appropriated and gave meaning to the larger forces of Ottoman rule and European economic expansion. He traces the relationship between culture, politics, and economic change by looking at how merchant families constructed trade networks and cultivated political power, and by showing how peasants defined their identity and formulated their notions of justice and political authority."--Publisher description.