Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation (ص 144)

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Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation (ص 144)

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indebted population. Realizing his indispensability to the rural
masses, the usurer knew how to exploit the situation and charged
whatever rate of interest he wished. Rates of interests on loans
taken from merchants throughout the 1920s and 1930s ranged between 20-
100 per cent per annum. (49) Referring to interest rates, Simpson
observed:
The rate of 30 percent is regarded as quite
reasonable, and is indeed exceeded in many cases..
--It is a usual practice for the money lender or
the merchant to make an advance on terms Known as
“ashara~hamestash’, which means that a sum of P.L.
10 advanced at the time of sowing is repaid by a
sum of P.L.15 at the time of harvest. Another
arrangement ts interest at the rate of Ils. in the
pound per month. (50)
Heavy taxation also resulted in indebtedness and impoverishment.
Both phenomena were widespread during the British rule. In 1929, for
example, the Director of Education noted:
Hardly any Arab village exists which is not in
debt. The fallaheen [peasants] are so over-taxed
that they find great difficulty in paying the tithe
(51)
In one instance, in 1930, in the village of Bir Zeit it was
reported that the village as a whole was indebted in the amount of
P.L.7,000 or an average of P.L. 39 per family. (52) Moreover, the 1929
"Survey into the Economic Conditions of the Agriculturists" found that
the average debt per peasant family amounted to P.L. 27, on which
P.L.6 per annum was paid as interest by each family. (53)
The burden of heavy taxation also reached various other sectors of
the agricultural population, such as small commodity or capitalist
producers. In Palestine the landowner/merchants in the citrus belt
as well as some grain merchants were greatly affected by the increased
130
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Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation

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Nahla Abdo-Zubi

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