Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation (ص 117)

غرض

عنوان

Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation (ص 117)

المحتوى

regard was taxation. The burden of taxes lay heavily on the
Palestinian peasants, the majority of whom were actually or
potentially ruined. The peasants were not only required to pay heavy
taxes they could never afford, they were also forced to deal with new
methods of tax levies introduced by the colonial rule. These methods
included imprisonment, collective punishment, confiscation of crops
and even land seizure.
The scale and intensity within which these policies were carried
out are graphically illustrated, as early as the first decade of
British rule, by the emergence of massive impoverishment and
widespread indebtedness among the Palestinian direct agricultural
producers. Although as the previous chapter showed, the process of
peasant indebtedness, impoverishment and partial expropriation had
already begun under the Ottoman rule, British colonialism, it will be
demonstrated, marked the turning point in the history of socio-
economic transformation of Palestine.
The process of land concentration and partial commoditization
(i.e., the land sales to the Rothschilds), it was argued in the
previous chapter, did not cause a radical change in the forces of
production. It did, however, leave its imprint on the existing
relations of production. One dimension of this change was the small-
scale expropriation of the peasants who had previously lived on the
land which was turned into the private property of the Rothschilds.
These peasants were partly turned into share-croppers and partly into
wage labourers working on the Rothschilds' plantations.
The most important change which took place between the late 19th
century and the first two decades of the 20th century was with regard
to a large section of the peasantry whose land came under the control
103
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

هو جزء من

Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation

تاريخ

١٩٨٩

المنشئ

Nahla Abdo-Zubi

مجموعات العناصر

Generated Pages Set

Theses رسائل ماجستير ودكتوراه