Author Archives: Jacob Norris

About Jacob Norris

Jacob Norris is a lecturer in Middle Eastern history at the University of Sussex. His research looks at Palestinian history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from transnational and global perspectives. He is the author of Land of Progress: Palestine in the Age of Colonial Development, 1905-1948 (Oxford University Press, 2013). His most recent work is focused on the town of Bethlehem, examining the ways the town was shaped by global circuits of migration in the nineteenth century.

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 Continue reading → Continue reading →