Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation (ص 197)
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- عنوان
- Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation (ص 197)
- المحتوى
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the capitalist economy on the one hand and the decline and ruin of the
rural industry on the other, can also be demonstrated in the citrus
industry. The aifference between this and the olive oil industry is
in terms of the scale of competition and the extent of its effect on
the direct producers.
The competitors in the oil industry, it has been shown, were the
European Jewish industrialist class and a largely i:on- capitaiist
sector within the rural population. In the case of the citrus
industry, the competitors were two sets of capitalists; a larger and
more pcwerful settler class, aided by the colonial state, and a
smaller sector within the indigenous rural bourgeoisie.
Citrus, mainly orange, production was developed as a commodity in
the second half of the 19th century. The profitability of this produce
attracted the capital investment of various merchants both foreign
and indigenous. The Maritime plain, particularly Jaffa, produced and
exported a large amount of oranges during this period. In 1873, Jaffa
had over 420 orange groves, yielding 33 million oranges annually. One
sixth of this produce was consumed locally and the rest exported to
Egypt and Asia minor (Schulch,1982:17). In 1887-88, Palestine
exported to England 110 thousand cases of oranges. In mid 1890,
production of oranges was estimated at 500,000 cases and in 1914 at
1,500,000 cases (Gozansky, 1986:34).
Cheap labour power exploited in citrus groves came largely from the
fallaheen in the surrounding villages, for whom wage labour was a
necessary supplement to their meager agricultural income.
During British colonialism and particularly in the second half of
the 1920s, the citrus industry expanded on a very large scale. Most,
183
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- ١٩٨٩
- المنشئ
- Nahla Abdo-Zubi
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