Transforming the Holy Land: The Ideology of Development and the British Mandate in Palestine

This essay resituates the British Mandate in Palestine within a broader picture of colonial development in the early twentieth century. While most scholarship depicts the mandatory administration as an arbiter between rival Jewish and Arab nationalisms, this essay argues the British regime should be viewed within wider trends in imperialist policy making at the close of World War I that produced a more interventionist style of colonialism. The essay firstly discusses the ideological and political frameworks that produced British policies in Palestine, before exploring the specific case study of the Dead Sea mineral development project—the most successful colonial development project in mandatory Palestine.