Land Legislation in Mandate Palestine

This project provides the texts of major pieces of legislation that governed the rural land regime in Palestine between the years 1918 and 1948, and some context for that legislation by making accessible the major reports and memorandum produced by British officials during that period. Some of these reports (e.g. Sir J. Hope-Simpson, L. French, C. F. Strickland) are frequently cited in the extant literature, but exist only in government archives. Other reports are less well known than they ought to be. Embedded in the question of land is a rich diversity of economic, social, legal and political relationships. Political questions concerned with the dynamics of Jewish land acquisition are clearly highlighted in some laws and memoranda (particularly those following the 1929 disturbances) but this collection aims at providing a broader perspective on land rights, paying particular attention to comparisons with other colonial contexts, and to continuities with the Ottoman past.