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 A History of Modern Palestine

Tracing the history of Palestine from the Ottomans in the nineteenth century,
through the British Mandate, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948,
and the subsequent wars and conflicts that have dominated this troubled
region, Ilan Pppe’s widely acclaimed A History of Modern Palestine provides
a balanced and forthright overview of Palestine’s complex history. Placing at
its centre the voices of the men, women, children, peasants, workers, town
dwellers, Jews and Arabs of Palestine, who lived through these times, this
tells a story of co-existence and co-operation, alongside oppression, occupa-
tion and exile, exposing patterns of continuity as well as points of fracture.
Now in an updated third edition, Pappe draws links among contemporary
events, from the war in Lebanon, violence in the Gaza Strip and the Arab
Spring, with the long history of Palestine, taking into account the success of
Israel without neglecting the ongoing catastrophe suffered by Palestinians,
leaving hope for a better future for all who live in, or were expelled from,
Palestine.

ilan pappe is the Director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at
the University of Exeter, Britain. He has written extensively on the politics of
the Middle East and is well known for his revisionist interpretation of Israeli
history and as a critic of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. In 2017, he
received the lifetime achievement award at the Palestine Book Awards. He is
the author of The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951 (1992/
1994, I.B. Tauris), The Modern Middle East (2005, Routledge) and The Ethnic
Cleansing of Palestine (2006, Oneworld Publications).

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press
 A History of Modern Palestine
Third edition

Ilan Pappe
University of Exeter

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108415446
DOI: 10.1017/9781108233743
© Ilan Pappe 2004, 2006, 2022
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2004
Second edition 2006
10th printing 2015
Third edition 2022
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pappe Ilan, author.
Title: A history of modern Palestine / Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter.
Description: Third edition. | Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY :
Cambridge University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021056160 (print) | LCCN 2021056161 (ebook) | ISBN
9781108415446 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108401449 (paperback) | ISBN
9781108233743 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Palestine – History – 20th century.
Classification: LCC DS125 .P298 2022 (print) | LCC DS125 (ebook) | DDC
956.9405–dc23/eng/20211201
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056160
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056161
ISBN 978-1-108-41544-6 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-40144-9 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 A History of Modern Palestine

Tracing the history of Palestine from the Ottomans in the nineteenth century,
through the British Mandate, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948,
and the subsequent wars and conflicts that have dominated this troubled
region, Ilan Pppe’s widely acclaimed A History of Modern Palestine provides
a balanced and forthright overview of Palestine’s complex history. Placing at
its centre the voices of the men, women, children, peasants, workers, town
dwellers, Jews and Arabs of Palestine, who lived through these times, this
tells a story of co-existence and co-operation, alongside oppression, occupa-
tion and exile, exposing patterns of continuity as well as points of fracture.
Now in an updated third edition, Pappe draws links among contemporary
events, from the war in Lebanon, violence in the Gaza Strip and the Arab
Spring, with the long history of Palestine, taking into account the success of
Israel without neglecting the ongoing catastrophe suffered by Palestinians,
leaving hope for a better future for all who live in, or were expelled from,
Palestine.

ilan pappe is the Director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at
the University of Exeter, Britain. He has written extensively on the politics of
the Middle East and is well known for his revisionist interpretation of Israeli
history and as a critic of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. In 2017, he
received the lifetime achievement award at the Palestine Book Awards. He is
the author of The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951 (1992/
1994, I.B. Tauris), The Modern Middle East (2005, Routledge) and The Ethnic
Cleansing of Palestine (2006, Oneworld Publications).

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press
 A History of Modern Palestine
Third edition

Ilan Pappe
University of Exeter

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108415446
DOI: 10.1017/9781108233743
© Ilan Pappe 2004, 2006, 2022
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2004
Second edition 2006
10th printing 2015
Third edition 2022
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pappe Ilan, author.
Title: A history of modern Palestine / Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter.
Description: Third edition. | Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY :
Cambridge University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021056160 (print) | LCCN 2021056161 (ebook) | ISBN
9781108415446 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108401449 (paperback) | ISBN
9781108233743 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Palestine – History – 20th century.
Classification: LCC DS125 .P298 2022 (print) | LCC DS125 (ebook) | DDC
956.9405–dc23/eng/20211201
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056160
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056161
ISBN 978-1-108-41544-6 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-40144-9 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 A History of Modern Palestine

Tracing the history of Palestine from the Ottomans in the nineteenth century,
through the British Mandate, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948,
and the subsequent wars and conflicts that have dominated this troubled
region, Ilan Pppe’s widely acclaimed A History of Modern Palestine provides
a balanced and forthright overview of Palestine’s complex history. Placing at
its centre the voices of the men, women, children, peasants, workers, town
dwellers, Jews and Arabs of Palestine, who lived through these times, this
tells a story of co-existence and co-operation, alongside oppression, occupa-
tion and exile, exposing patterns of continuity as well as points of fracture.
Now in an updated third edition, Pappe draws links among contemporary
events, from the war in Lebanon, violence in the Gaza Strip and the Arab
Spring, with the long history of Palestine, taking into account the success of
Israel without neglecting the ongoing catastrophe suffered by Palestinians,
leaving hope for a better future for all who live in, or were expelled from,
Palestine.

ilan pappe is the Director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at
the University of Exeter, Britain. He has written extensively on the politics of
the Middle East and is well known for his revisionist interpretation of Israeli
history and as a critic of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. In 2017, he
received the lifetime achievement award at the Palestine Book Awards. He is
the author of The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951 (1992/
1994, I.B. Tauris), The Modern Middle East (2005, Routledge) and The Ethnic
Cleansing of Palestine (2006, Oneworld Publications).

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press
 A History of Modern Palestine
Third edition

Ilan Pappe
University of Exeter

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108415446
DOI: 10.1017/9781108233743
© Ilan Pappe 2004, 2006, 2022
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2004
Second edition 2006
10th printing 2015
Third edition 2022
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pappe Ilan, author.
Title: A history of modern Palestine / Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter.
Description: Third edition. | Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY :
Cambridge University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021056160 (print) | LCCN 2021056161 (ebook) | ISBN
9781108415446 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108401449 (paperback) | ISBN
9781108233743 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Palestine – History – 20th century.
Classification: LCC DS125 .P298 2022 (print) | LCC DS125 (ebook) | DDC
956.9405–dc23/eng/20211201
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056160
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056161
ISBN 978-1-108-41544-6 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-108-40144-9 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 To Ido and Yonatan, my two lovely boys. May they live
not only in a modern Palestine but also in a peaceful one.

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press
 Contents

List of Figures page x

List of Maps xi
Chronology xii
Foreword xix
Acknowledgements xxi

Introduction: A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel 1

I.1 The Emergence of Modern Palestine: The Common Version 3
I.2 Deconstructing the Emergence of Modern Palestine 5
I.3 Writing the History of One Land, Two Peoples 7

1 Fin de Siècle (1856–1900): Social tranquillity and Political

Drama 13
1.1The Rural Landscape and Its People 13
1.2Urban Palestine and Its Society 16
1.3A Society without Politics 19
1.4Globalization of the Local Economy 19
1.5The Political Economy of ‘Modern Palestine’ in the 1880s 22
1.6Invading Civil Society: The Making of the Modern Ottoman State (1876–
1900) 23
1.7 End of an Era: Rural Chieftains and the A’ayan 25
1.8 New Beginnings and New Influences 28
1.9 The Zionist Impetus 32
1.10 A New Crusade: Templars, Colonists and Profiteers 37

2 Between Tyranny and War (1900–1918) 41

2.1 Palestine in the Last Years of Abdul Hamid (1900–1908) 44
2.2 The Arrival of Zionism 46
2.3 Palestine in the Aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution (1908–1916) 52
2.4 Palestine in World War I 57

3 The Mandatory State: Colonialism, Nationalization and

Cohabitation 68
3.1 Allenby’s Palestine 68
3.2 The Nationalization of the Cities (1918–1920) 74
3.3 The End of ‘Southern Syria’ 76

vii

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 viii Contents

3.4 Early Years of the Mandate (1920–1929) 79

3.5 Where Politics and Society Met: The 1929 Watershed 84
3.6 The Making of the Zionist Enclave (1929–1936) 87
3.7 The Pauperization of Rural Palestine (1929–1936) 90
3.8 Questions of Leadership and Nationalism (1930–1936) 95
3.9 The 1936 Revolt 97
3.10 The 1939 White Paper 99
3.11 Encountering Nationalism: The Urge for Cohabitation 101
3.12 Palestine in World War II 108

4 Between Nakba and Independence: The 1948 War 115

4.1 The UNSCOP Days 115
4.2 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (March–May 1948) 120
4.3 The Palestine War (May 1948–January 1949) 122
4.4 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (May 1948–January 1949) 126

5 The Age of Partition (1948–1967) 133

5.1 Dislocation and Dispossession 133
5.2 Patterns of Response: Guerrilla Fighters, Isolation and Co-Optation 138
5.3 The Suez Campaign 150
5.4 Revolutionizing Politics: The Resistance Movement Institutionalized 153
5.5 The Arab League’s PLO (1964–1968) 155
5.6 Subduing Israeli Politics: Institutionalizing a State 157
5.7 The Marginalization of ‘Arabism’ in Israeli Society 163
5.8 In Limbo: The Bedouin and the Druzes 170

6 Greater Israel and Occupied Palestine: The Rise and Fall of High
Politics (1967–1987) 172
6.1 The War of June 1967 173
6.2 Struggle for Survival: Palestinian Refugees after the 1967 War 175
6.3 Popular Uprising, Guerrilla Warfare and Terrorism (1968–1972) 179
6.4 The Occupation (1967–1982) 182
6.5 The Settlements and Internal Debate in Israel (1967–1973) 186
6.6 Survival under Occupation 189
6.7 Pax Americana, War and Peace (1973–1977) 192
6.8 The Question of Borders: The Jordanian Option and Greater Israel 194
6.9 The Mizrahi Revolution 197
6.10 The Begin Revolution 198
6.11 Navigating between Agendas: The Politics of Palestine (1967–1987) 201
6.12 The War in Lebanon and Its Aftermath (1982–1987) 205
6.13 Breaches in the Wall: The Polarization of Israeli Society 207
6.14 Palestinians in Israel (1967–1987) 210
6.15 The Road to Intifada 213

7 The Uprising and Its Political Consequences (1987–1996) 215

7.1 Gender and Class 220
7.2 The Oslo Process and After 224
7.3 In the Shadow of Politics: Religion, Nationalism
and Multiculturalism 229

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 Contents ix

8 A Post-Zionist Moment of Grace? 236

8.1 The Academic Debate: The Post-Zionist Scholars 236
8.2 The Political Background 237
8.3 The Academic Background 238
8.4 De-Zionizing Other Periods 240
8.5 Post-Zionist Poetry, Pop Music and Literature 241
8.6 Post-Zionist Theatre and Films 243
8.7 The Post-Zionist Media 249

9 The Suicidal Track: The Death of Oslo and the Road to Perdition 253
9.1 The Second Intifada 256
9.2 The Desperate Tilt to Martyrdom 265
9.3 The Demise of Post-Zionism 269

10 The Consolidation of the Greater Israel Republic (2005–2020) 272

10.1 Into the New Century 272
10.2 Fitna and More Self-Bleeding (2007) 277
10.3 Hopes and Their Demise (2008) 278
10.4 The Netanyahu Era (2009–2020) 281
10.5 The Social Protest (2011) 283
10.6 The Killing Fields of Gaza 285
10.7 ‘Protective Edge’ Operation (2014) 289
10.8 The Fourth Netanyahu Government (2015–2019) 290
10.9 The Palestinians in Israel (2005–2020) 293
10.10 The Palestinian Refugees (2005–2020) 298

Postscript 301
Notes 303
Bibliography 314
Glossary of Terms 326
Index 336

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 Figures

2.1 Palestinians and Jews in the Jerusalem market near the Jaffa
Gate, circa 1900 page 66
2.2 A rural family from the Ramallah area at the end of the
Ottoman era 67
3.1 The Girls’ College of Jerusalem, 1920 113
3.2 The Atlit stone quarries, where Arabs and Jews were jointly
employed by the Mandate government 114
4.1 The women and children of Tantura shortly after the occupation
in May 1948 129
6.1 Demonstration of the Black Panthers in Jerusalem, 1972 214
6.2 Palestinians at a West Bank checkpoint in December 2002 214
7.1 Haifa 2002, a view from the Carmel 234

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 Maps

1.1 Administrative boundaries under the Ottomans page 40

3.1 Landownership in Palestine, 1948 112
4.1 The UNGA Partition Plan, 1947 130
4.2 Palestine after the June 1967 war 131
7.1 Interim Oslo Agreement, 28 September 1995 233
9.1 Camp David protection, July 2000 271

xi

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 Chronology

1699 Austro–Ottoman war ends; peace of Karlovitz

1703–30 Sultanate of Ahmet III
1710–11 Russo–Ottoman war
1725–30 Ismail Pasha is governor of Damascus
1730–54 Sultanate of Mahmoud I
1745 First Wahhabiyya state founded in Arabian Peninsula
1746–75 Dahir al-Umar rules Galilee
1754–57 Sultanate of Uthman III
1757–74 Sultanate of Mustafa III
1767–74 Further Russo–Ottoman war
1770–73 Ali Bey al-Kabir rules Egypt
1771 Dahir al-Umar and Ali Bey occupy Damascus
1774–89 Sultanate of Abdul Hamid I
1774 Kaucuc Kainerge Agreement between Russia and Ottoman
Empire
1775–1804 Ahmad al-Jazzar rules vilayet of Syda from Acre
1783 Russia occupies the Crimean Peninsula
1787–92 Further Russo–Ottoman war
1789–1807 Sultanate of Selim III
1789 Austrian army invades Bosnia and Serbia; Russian army invades
Moldavia and Wallachia
1789–1840 Bashir II Amir of Mount Lebanon
1798 Napoleon invades Egypt
1799 Napoleon in Palestine and Syria
1800 French army retreats from Egypt
1801 Wahhabis occupy Karbala
1802 Mecca and Medina were taken by Wahhabis
1805–48 Muhammad Ali rules Egypt
1806–12 Further Russo–Ottoman war
1807–08 Sultanate of Mustafa IV
1808–39 Sultanate of Mahmoud II
1818–32 Abdullah Pasha rules vilayet of Syda and Acre

xii

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 Chronology xiii

1820 London Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the

Jews begins activity in Palestine
1820–30 Greek War of Liberation
1824 First modern hospital opens in Palestine
1826 Massacre of Yeneceris in Istanbul
1828–29 Further Russo–Ottoman war
1830 French invade Algeria; British consulate opens in Jerusalem
1831–40 Ibrahim Ali rules Syria and Palestine
1834 Revolt in Palestine against Egyptian rule; First Arab printing
house opens in Beirut
1838–58 Mustafa Rashid is grand vizier
1839 British occupy Aden; Hat-I-Sharif of the Gulhana lifts
discrimination against non-Muslims in Ottoman Empire;
the beginning of the Tanzimat period
1839–61 Sultanate of Abdul Majid I
1840 Treaty of London ends Egyptian rule in Syria and Palestine
1843 Lebanon divided into two subdistricts: Maronite and Druze
1850 Riots in Aleppo against Tanzimat
1853 Sahayun Anglican School opens
in Jerusalem
1853–56 Crimean War
1856 Paris Conference ends Crimean War
1857 Land law of the Ottoman Empire
1858–61 Civil war in Lebanon
1858–71 Ali Pasha is grand vizier
1860 Massacre of Christians in Syria and Lebanon; French forces
land
1861–69 Fuad Pasha is grand vizier
1861 Organic law of Lebanon
1861–76 Sultanate of Abdul Aziz II
1864 New vilayet law of the Ottoman Empire
1868 Young Ottoman movement founded; first Templars’ colony
founded in Haifa
1869 Suez Canal opened; Fuad Pasha dies
1870 Mikveh Israel, the first Jewish agricultural school, founded in
Palestine
1871 Sanjaq of Jerusalem autonomous; Templars’ colony founded
in Sharona, near Jaffa
1875 Partial bankruptcy of Ottoman Empire; newspaper Al-Ahram
founded in Egypt; first Muslim and Jewish neighbourhoods
outside Old City of Jerusalem; first national associations
appear in the Arab world

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 xiv Chronology

1876–1908 Sultanate of Abdul Hamid II

1876 New constitution for Ottoman Empire and the first parliament
1877–78 Further Russo–Ottoman war
1878 Zionist colony Petach Tikva founded; dissolution of Ottoman
parliament
1879 Britain takes over Cyprus; full bankruptcy of Ottoman
Empire
1880 Urabi Pasha revolt in Egypt
1881 American colony founded in Jerusalem
1882 British occupation of Egypt; the foundation of Rishon le
Ziyon, Zichron Yaacov and Rosh Pina; Pinsker publishes
Auto-emancipation
1882–1903 First wave of Zionist immigration (First Aliya)
1885 First newspapers in Hebrew (Ha-Shahar and Ha-Megid)
founded in Europe
1892 Railway opened between Jaffa and Jerusalem
1893 Founding convention of Hibat Ziyon in Katowitz
1896–1904 Herzl precursor and leader of Zionist movement
1897 First Zionist Congress in Basel
1898 St George’s School opened in Jerusalem; Kaiser Wilhelm II
of Germany visits Palestine
1902 El-Arish plan of Herzl
1903 Herzl’s Uganda plan; first Palestinian women’s association
convenes in Palestine
1903–14 Second Aliya
1905 Final determination of line dividing Egypt and Palestine
1908 Sharif Husayn appointed guardian of Mecca and Medina; oil
discovered in Persia; Young Turks come to power
1909–20 Hashomer movement in Palestine
1909 Building of Tel-Aviv
1911 Al-Fatah founded
1911–13 Balkan wars
1913 Enver Pasha, Talat Pasha and Jamal Pasha (‘the trio’) take
over Ottoman Empire
1915–16 McMahon–Husayn correspondence
1916 Sykes–Picot agreement between Britain and France; Sharif
Husayn’s revolt in the Hejaz against Ottomans
1917 Balfour Declaration; Allenby’s troops occupy most of
Palestine and enter Jerusalem and Damascus
1918–20 British military rule in Palestine
1918 Muslim–Christian Association founded; first Palestinian
National Conference

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 Chronology xv

1919 King–Crane Commission visits Palestine; upper Galilee

ceded from Syria to Palestine; Ahdut Ha’avoda movement
founded
1920 Palestine becomes mandatory entity; clashes between Jews
and Palestinians in Jerusalem; Faysal declared king of
Greater Syria; San Remo Conference; Hebrew University
built in Jerusalem; Jewish Agency established; Palin
Commission, the Histadrut founded
1921 Transjordan separated from Palestine; clashes in Jaffa
between Jews and Palestinians
1922 Britain recognizes Transjordan as a separate political entity
and Amir Abdullah as its ruler; Amin al-Husayni appointed
Grand Mufti; Supreme Muslim Council founded; Egypt
gains independence
1923 Lausanne Conference finalizes borders of Palestine
1925 Beitar founded
1926 Major earthquake in Palestine
1927 Palestine currency (pound) introduced
1928 British resident appointed to Transjordan to guide Amir
Abdullah in foreign and defence policies
1929 Violent clashes between Jews and Palestinians
1930 Shaw Commission and White Paper of Lord Passfield; Ha-
Poel founded; Arab Workers’ Union founded
1931 Pan-Islamic conference in Jerusalem
1932 Louis French Report
1933 Assassination of Haim Arlosaroff by Jewish right-wingers;
Izz al-Din al-Qassam operated in Palestine until his death
in 1935
1936 Arab Higher Committee founded; al-Difa’ party founded
1936–39 The Arab revolt
1937 Peel Royal Commission; Grand Mufti flees Palestine
1939 White paper restricting Jewish immigration and land
purchase
1946 Amir Abdullah proclaimed king of Jordan; new Arab Higher
Committee appointed; King David Hotel was blown up by
Jewish terrorists
1947 British Cabinet decides to refer the question of Palestine to
the UN; UN General Assembly Resolution 181 proposed
partition of Palestine between the Jewish and Palestinian
states
1948 The State of Israel proclaimed; Arab armies enter Palestine,
and uprooting of Palestinian population begins; pro-

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 xvi Chronology

Hashemite notables in Jericho declare wish for union

between Palestine and Transjordan under Hashemite rule;
Resolution 194 orders Israel to allow repatriation of
refugees expelled from Palestine and the
internationalization of Jerusalem; David Ben-Gurion
becomes Israel’s first prime minister; Herut founded
1949 Armistice agreement signed between Israel and the Arab
states, apart from Iraq
1950 West Bank officially annexed to Jordan; tripartite declaration
by the United States, Britain and France recognizes borders
in the Middle East as final
1954–55 Moshe Sharett replaces Ben-Gurion as prime minister
1954 Lavon affair (Ha-Parasha); espionage and sabotage plan
exposed by a group of Jews in Egypt under orders from the
Israeli defence minister, Pinchas Lavon
1956 Suez campaign; national religious party, Mafdal, founded
1957 Eisenhower Doctrine ignites a cold war between Nasser and
the West
1958 British forces land in Jordan, American marines in Lebanon;
Hashemite rule in Iraq ends
1959 Wadi Salib riots
1963 End of Ben-Gurion era; Levi Eshkol elected prime minister
1964 First Arab summit; PLO founded; al-Ard movement in Israel
outlawed
1965 The Fatah and Gahal founded
1967 The Six-Day War; Israel occupies the West Bank, the Gaza
Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights; 200,000
new Palestinian refugees; Resolution 242 adopted by UN
Security Council
1968 The Fatah takes over PLO; Karameh campaign; hijacking of
El-Al aeroplane to Algeria; PFLP and PDFLP founded
1969 Golda Meir becomes prime minister of Israel
1969–70 The United States attempts to resolve conflict
1970 Civil war between Jordanian army and PLO; the mass killing
of Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan and subsequent
expulsion of many of them to Lebanon as part of the
agreement between Arafat and King Hussein; Nasser dies
1972 Russian advisers leave Egypt; Husayn plan for federation
between Palestine and Jordan
1973 October War among Egyptian, Syrian and Israeli forces;
superpower intervention ends fighting; during the war,
Arab oil countries impose an embargo on West (apart from

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 Chronology xvii

Britain and France); Resolution 338 adopted by UN

Security Council affirming Resolution 242 with added
reference to a need to solve the refugee problem
1974 UN includes Palestine on its agenda and PLO invited as an
observer; Arab summit in Rabat recognizes PLO as a sole
legitimate representative of Palestinian people; Jordan
abrogates parliament representing two banks of River
Jordan; Agranat Report leads to falling of Meir government
and election of Rabin as prime minister; Kissinger’s
‘shuttle diplomacy’ in the Middle East to seek bilateral
peace between Israel and neighbours; Gush Emunim,
settlement movement in occupied territories, founded
1975 Arafat addresses UN General Assembly; outbreak of civil
war in Lebanon; first disengagement agreement between
Israel and Egypt; partial Israeli withdrawal in Palestine
1976 Syrian army enters Lebanon
1977 President Anwar Sadat of Egypt visits Jerusalem and begins
bilateral peace talks with Israel. Likud and Begin come to
power; the Peace Now movement founded in Israel
1978 A peace treaty signed between Israel and Egypt on White
House lawn; PLO attack on the northern entrance to Tel-
Aviv reciprocated by Litani operation, in which Israel
occupies part of southern Lebanon
1981–84 Free-market and liberalization policies in Israel
1981 New leadership emerges in West Bank; crushed by IDF
1982 The Rest of Sinai returned to Egypt; Israel invades Lebanon in
operation ‘Peace for the Galilee’
1983 End of Begin era; Itzhak Shamir elected prime minister
1984 Rabbi Kahana was elected to Knesset; Shas movement
founded
1985 Israel withdraws from Lebanon, apart from the south, which
is kept; agreement between PLO and Jordan allows the
latter to represent Palestinian case in negotiations
1987 First Intifada in occupied territories
1988 King Hussein announces Jordan’s secession from West Bank;
Hamas founded; Palestinian National Council publishes
Palestinian Declaration of Independence in Tunis
1989 The collapse of the USSR and mass migration of Jews and
non-Jews from there and from Eastern Bloc to Israel
1991 The First Gulf War; Iraqi Scud missiles land on Haifa and
Tel-Aviv;

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 xviii Chronology

the United States convenes international conference on

Palestine in Spain; Abu Iyad is assassinated by the Abu
Nidal Group
1992 Tripartite peace talks in Washington among Israel,
Palestinians and Jordan; Rabin prime minister for
the second time; expulsion of 400 Hamas activists from the
occupied territories to South Lebanon
1993 Oslo Declaration of Principles signed on White House lawn
1994 Israel and Jordan sign an official peace treaty; Arafat arrives
in occupied territories and becomes president of Palestinian
Authority; an Israeli settler murders twenty-nine
Palestinians in the Ibrahimiyya mosque in Hebron, which
leads to the first Palestinian suicide bomber attack; Israeli
forces withdraw from Jericho and Gaza and Arafat returns
to Palestine
1995 Israel and PLO sign Oslo II agreement; interim agreement for
Palestinian control of parts of West Bank and Gaza Strip;
Prime Minister Rabin assassinated
1996–98 Benjamin Netanyahu elected prime minister; the
assassination of Yihya Ben Ayash, the head of Izz al-Din al-
Qassam brigades in Gaza; operation Grapes of Wrath ends
with the massacre in Kafr Qana; elections to the Palestinian
Legislative Council; the Hebron protocol; failed Israeli
assassination of the Hamas leader, Khalid al-Mashal; Wye
River Memorandum is signed
1999 Israeli election, Ehud Barak elected prime minister
2000 Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon; the Camp Davis
Summit; Ariel Sharon enters Haram al-Sharif; the second
Intifada erupts

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 Foreword

The idea of this book germinated in my Haifa University class titled ‘The
history of the Palestine conflict’. Very alert and eager Palestinian and Jewish
students demanded, again and again, a narrative of their country’s history that
did not repeat the known versions of the two conflicting parties – one that
respected the other, included those who are not part of the story, and above all
was more hopeful about the future. I began writing the book in the twilight of
the Oslo Agreement and found it difficult to comply with the last request. But
then I realized that, by then, industrious researchers had already provided us
with new perspectives on Palestine, but they were never presented in one
narrative. What these novel approaches had in common was that they attempted
to tell the story of the people and the land, and not just that of high politics,
dogmatic ideologies or rehearsed national narratives.
The fact that the students, Palestinians and Jews, wanted to hear the story
told from a humanist, and not nationalist, ethnic or religious, perspective was
itself a hopeful sign for the future. It is this perspective that dictates the tone of
this book. It is a narrative of those in Palestine who were brutalized and
victimized by human follies well known from many other parts of the world.
The abusive power used by people against other people in the name of one
ideology or another is condemned in this book for being the source of much evil
and few blessings. These human ambitions wrought invasions, occupations,
expulsions, discrimination and racism in Palestine. The heroes of this book are
therefore the victims of these calamities: women, children, peasants, workers,
ordinary city dwellers, peaceniks and human rights activists. The ‘villains’ to
a certain extent are the arrogant generals, the greedy politicians, the cynical
statesmen and the misogynist men. Many of the victims were, and still are, the
indigenous people of Palestine, the Palestinians, but many of them also belong
to the community of the newcomers, now evolving into the second generation
of natives, the Jews.
We are constantly warned that we should not be slaves of our history and
memory. This book is written with the view that in order to perform this
liberation act in Israel and Palestine, you need first to rewrite, indeed salvage,
a history that was erased and forgotten. The violent, symbolic and real

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 xx Foreword

exclusion of people from the hegemonic narrative of the past is the source of the
violence of the present. Various historians who came directly from the forgot-
ten and marginalized communities in Palestine provided with their original and
pioneering works the bricks with which I could attempt the present project of
redrawing the historical picture of Palestine. This is done not for the sake of
intellectual curiosity but out of a wish to disseminate a more expanded narra-
tive of what happened in a country that never ceases, to the great dismay of its
inhabitants, to capture the global headlines, even if its population does not
exceed that of London or New York and its territory is smaller than that of any
of the Great Lakes of North America. It is both an introduction to those
interested for the first time in the country – if there are still such fortunate
persons – and a suggestion for an alternative narrative for those who think,
quite understandably, that they have read everything they need to know of the
torn and tortured land of Palestine.

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 Acknowledgements

Many people made this book possible. All of them had to be, above all, patient
with someone who felt, rightly or wrongly, that he was writing from the
trenches. Being in Palestine at one of its most dramatic moments and writing
about its past was beneficial to the book but not for those who needed manu-
scripts in time, speedy answers to crucial questions or the usual last bits and
pieces that make a manuscript a book. I would like to thank them all: Marigold
Acland, Karen Hildebrandt and Amanda Pinches.
Equally important for someone whose mother tongue is not English (and is
actually a dormant German, but whose native tongue is Hebrew, and who today
converses more and more in Arabic) is the help of linguistic and stylistic
editors. I am most grateful to Mary Starkey who did the bulk of the work;
Dick Bruggman who, as always, had a thorough and constructive look; and
Donna Williams who did the copy-editing. I thank them all for the excellent
work they have done.
Finally, as always, thanks to Revital and the kids for paying the price of my
love for the country, my dislike of the state and my devotion to my work.
I wish to thank Rahel Hazanov Alexander who showed me her family letter
collection, which included letters of Yacov Hazanov from June 1905 on these
and other matters.

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 Introduction
A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel

From my classroom at Haifa University, up on the Carmel Mountains, there is

seldom a clear view of the city below. On a rare day, when smog and pollution
are miraculously absent, I can see the Jewish and Palestinian neighbourhoods
of Haifa. The city stretches from the seacoast to the Carmel Mountains. The
Palestinians live below, in the areas adjacent to the harbour, but in recent years
have moved up to the slopes of the mountains, to parts of the town in which they
lived before 1948. In Haifa, the standard of living improves as one moves up
the slopes; poverty decreases with altitude.
Socio-economic well-being is closely entwined with national and ethnic
affiliations and topography. This forms a pyramid that encapsulates the stratifi-
cation of Israeli society and, more importantly, the history of the land. Given
this geographical polity, it is not surprising to find the university at the top of the
mountain, marked by a tower of thirty storeys and overlooking the Palestinians,
Mizrachi Jews and the less fortunate socioeconomic classes of the town. Like
all other national institutions in Israel, the community of Haifa University is
predominantly Jewish, European and middle class.
Haifa University, however, has a large share of Palestinians, 20 per cent to be
exact, more than their share of the population at large. My class consists of both
Palestinian and Jewish students, and the course deals with the history of the
land. In this very politically charged country of mine, both groups regard
history as just another prism through which to view present rather than past
reality. I often ask my students, on those unexpected clear days, to associate the
view from the window with history. Palestinian students will describe a town
that was once a flourishing Palestinian city but was then emptied and destroyed
by the Jews in 1948; Jewish students will see a flourishing town built where
emptiness and destruction once reigned. Everywhere else in the country, the
same two conflicting views exist. They represent historical narratives, powerful
versions of history accepted as truth, whether told by childcarers to kindergar-
ten children or by university professors to students of history. The thickness of
the narrative varies but not its sequence or its heroes and villains.
A concise history of Israel and Palestine must take into account these
narratives but cannot accept them as ‘historical truth’, if only because each is

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 2 A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel

the mirror image of the other. If one version is the historical truth, then the other
has to be a lie. If both are correct, then there is no historical truth, only fictional
versions of the past. Something else is needed: an alternative narrative that
recognizes similarities, criticizes overt falsifications and expands the history of
the region to the areas not covered by the two national narratives.
Bridging conflicting narratives is difficult enough, but this book also
attempts to tell a chapter in ‘modern’ history. (The two narratives, by the
way, accept more or less the same definition of what is ‘modern’.)
Approaching the concept of modernity critically is thus one possible way of
deconstructing both narratives without discriminating against either. There are
therefore two hurdles to be crossed before setting off on our journey to the past.
The first is coping with, and even struggling against, two very distinct versions
of the country’s history deeply planted in the minds of most of its people. These
are the two opposing national historiographies of Israel and Palestine, which
are of course better told in two distinct textbooks. Here, they appear in one,
where they are sometimes rejected for their pretensions and criticized for their
ethnocentricity and elitism and at others respected for their epic chapters while
being ridiculed for their absurdity.
The second hurdle is challenging the principal paradigm of history accepted
by national historiographers. This paradigm is based on the theory of modern-
ization, which produces a story with a clear beginning, a distinct present and
a reasonably predictable future. Adherents of modernization, whether advo-
cates of the Palestinian or the Israeli view, can pinpoint readily the departure
point for the history of modern Israel and Palestine. This is always the first
contact with Europe. Challenging this paradigm may help produce alternative
departure points for our story.
The term ‘modern’ is no longer taken for granted as a ‘reality’, nor is
‘modernization’ still a universally understood concept. Therefore,
a discussion of the question of beginnings, of where and when one begins
a journey back into the ‘modern’ past of Palestine and Israel, is no mere
discussion of periodization. Any attempt at it raises complex and interrelated
issues ranging from the definition of modernity to the role of national ideology
in the writing of history. This introduction is not the place for an elaborate
discussion of these problems, but they are too important to be pushed aside.
Historiographical reconstructions are deeply affected by historians’ definitions
of ‘modernity’, ‘progress’ and ‘nationalism’, especially where the history of
Asian and African societies is concerned.
While recent theoretical debates on history, modernity and nationalism have
to be taken into account in any introduction to such an intricate subject as the
history of Palestine and Israel, I have chosen an indirect treatment. This is to
present a summary of how modern histories of either Israel or Palestine usually
begin. My aim is not to show that the theoretical approach is ‘wrong’ or ‘right’,

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 The Emergence of Modern Palestine: Common Version 3

but that it exposes only part of the historical reality, albeit a significant one.
Books on the region are abundant because of its high profile in the global
media, but the narratives are similar due to the dominance of modernization
theory in Middle Eastern studies. This introduction tries to explain why, despite
extensive scholarly and popular endeavours, there is room for a new account of
the region’s modern history that differs from the common version.

I.1 The Emergence of Modern Palestine: The Common Version

In the common narrative, the historiography of Palestine begins with the
incursion of Napoleon’s army into Palestine and Syria at the end of the
eighteenth century. But his stay was too short to be regarded as an ‘influence’.
The role of modernizing Palestine was kept for the Egyptian ruler, Muhammad
Ali, who held Palestine between 1831 and 1840. Muhammad Ali was a general
in the service of the Ottoman sultan and had worked his way up through
intrigues and coalitions to become Egypt’s ruler at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. His ambitions stretched beyond the Nile, perhaps even to
overthrowing the sultan. As part of his bid to widen his power in the area, he
annexed Palestine and Syria.
It was Muhammad Ali’s son Ibrahim Pasha who became Palestine’s most
impressive modernizer. Ruling the lands in his father’s name, he introduced
agricultural reforms, centralized taxation, safer roads and a constitutional sys-
tem that gave fair representation to the local elite (for the first time in the history
of the Ottoman Empire, the new representative bodies included Christians and
Jews).1
The old system was restored when, with the help of the European states, the
Ottoman reformers of Palestine defeated and replaced Ibrahim. The Europeans
returned the status quo ante to Palestine but enabled modernization to continue
in full force. It began, according to most models suggested by modernization-
ists, with technology and economics. More structural reforms from Europe
were implemented, first in the capital, Istanbul, then in the principal provinces
and finally in marginal areas. The Ottoman reformers, at work from the 1830s
until at least 1876, created new social and political realities in Palestine. The
reforms, known as the Tanzimat, were mainly a centralizing and reorganizing
effort designed to hold together an empire that threatened to disintegrate under
the pressure of ambitious local rulers, embryo national movements and greedy
European imperialists. In Palestine, their implementation began in the 1840s.
The agents of change in Palestine were thus the reforming governors of Beirut
and Damascus, the two regional capitals, which between them shared power.
Other agents of modernization were the European consuls, who had been there
since the late 1830s, and European merchants and bankers who began arriving
in the wake of the Crimean War (1833–1856). From a modernizationist point of

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 4 A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel

view, this war was a catalytic event, facilitating and accelerating the process of
change. The Tanzimat signified the decline of Ottoman power in Palestine and
the rise of European interest in the region. The result was economic integration
with Europe, and greater interference by European consuls in both local affairs
and central politics.
The most important consequence of integration with Europe, from
a modernizationist point of view, was the emergence of a national and secular
society in Palestine. This was possible only after a fundamental change in the
relationship between Palestine’s Muslim majority and Christian minority.
Under European pressure, exacerbated by the Ottomans’ dependence on
British and French aid during the Crimean War, and afterwards, in the face of
the ongoing Russian threat, the sultans promised improvement in the status of
their Christian subjects. This promise was fulfilled to some extent by the
creation of a basis for the secularization of society and coincidentally of
a common base for future Arab nationalism.
At the point where nationalism emerges, the common narrative is very much
in line with modernization theories, according to which nationalism is the
penultimate stage in the process of becoming ‘modern’ and follows the import-
ation of Western technology and military know-how and the emulation of
Western administrative structures and institutions. This stage is said to appear
only when a society is ‘ripe’ enough to be transformed conceptually with the help
of Western ideology and moral political philosophy.2 A very particular group of
people facilitated Palestine’s entry into this phase of perceptional transformation:
American missionaries teaching in schools opened in the second half of the
nineteenth century. Through these schools, the future leaders of Palestinian
nationalism were introduced to nationalism, democracy and liberalism. At first,
only Christians were interested in this secular education, but with the admission
of Muslims, these schools became the private schools par excellence for the elite.
While Egyptian rulers, Ottoman reformers, European consuls, advisers and
bankers were all bringing the message of Europe to the local elite in Palestine
and Syria, there was a reaction by guardians of the old ways. These ‘reactionary’
forces prevented the completion of the process. As with everywhere else in the
Middle East, Palestine was frozen in what modernizationists call a ‘transitional’
period, namely between tradition and modernity. This means that only parts of
the elite were modernized and that most of the land was still ‘primitive’. This
would have continued were it not for the arrival of new agents of modernization
in Palestine in 1882, the early Zionists. Zionism was a European phenomenon,
and so, from a modernizationist point of view, its influence in Palestine was part
of Westernization. Zionism acquired the power, and motivation for change
previously accorded to colonialism. The British Mandate after World War
I consolidated European influence in Palestine and was the last modernizing
factor in the narrative of pre-1948 Palestine. It was due to its presence and

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 Deconstructing the Emergence of Modern Palestine 5

policies, on the one hand, and Zionist plans and ambitions, on the other, that the
Arab community in Palestine regrouped under traditional leadership, headed by
Amin al-Husayni, and became a new national Palestinian movement. In fact, at
the juncture of 1918, most history books diverge and divide the region’s history
into two distinct parts, Palestinian and Zionist. As for the post-1948 period,
I doubt whether more than a handful of books deal with the two national histories
as a single subject, except in the specific context of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
The narrative thus presents a linear history of the modernization of
Palestine from a primitive to a modern era. In the Zionist narrative,
Zionism is part of that progress, and in the Palestinian one, Palestinian
nationalism is the message and outcome of modernity. The conflict is seen
almost as inevitable, but temporary and dispensable, product of these two
conflicting consequences of modernization, to be brought to an end by the
completion of the modernization process

I.2 Deconstructing the Emergence of Modern Palestine

Modernization theory presupposes that there is a detectable moment in history,
in this case 1799, when societies cease to be traditional and stop living in the
past. In this view, Palestine left the past behind with the help of the West. With
Europe’s magic touch, it was exposed to enlightenment and progress. As in
other cases of Westernization, whether this exposure was a tale of success or
failure has yet to be determined.
In the modernizationist view, local Palestinians, the subaltern society, are not
valid subject matter for historians unless they were, or until they are, modern-
ized. It happened that Palestine’s elites succeeded in becoming Westernized,
which is why the narrative of the country’s modernization is more their story
than a ‘people’s’ story. The elite left behind written evidence of their world,
which helped historians reconstruct the elites’ history as if it were Palestine’s
history. In other words, the conventional history of Palestine and Israel is one
that is extrapolated from the political archive.
But the local elites are not the heroes in the drama of modernization; theirs is
a secondary role. The principal players are the foreigners who facilitated the
fusion between the West and Palestine. These external facilitators are referred
to in the modernization literature as ‘agents’. As we have seen, several agents
of modernization entered Palestine after Bonaparte’s brief invasion in 1799. In
the eyes of the conventional historians, all these agents had one thing in
common: they succeeded in transforming Palestine beyond recognition. So,
in their view, the history of modern Palestine is both Eurocentric and highly
dramatic.
It would be natural to assume, at the present stage, that Israeli historiography
will subscribe to the modernizationist narrative and that Palestinian

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 6 A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel

historiography will challenge it. The Israeli (and before that the Zionist)
version of past events adopts and echoes what I call the ‘common version’.
Israel’s self-image as a Western entity in the midst of an Arab wilderness, and
its perception of the Palestinians as ‘Other’, feeds this view. But the present
state of affairs is not that simple.
At first glance, the nationalist Palestinian version might be seen as an
alternative to the Eurocentric, or colonialist, view. On the contrary, however,
the emergence of nationalism in Palestine is an integral part of the
Westernization story. A side effect of modernization is the nationalization of
local traditional societies. It is written into the story of modernization that
a society will be nationalized under the influence of the Western modernizer,
only to rebel against the modernizer in the name of Western ideals such as the
right to independence and freedom.
Therefore, we can say that the hidden hand of the national narrative has
written the history of the land of Palestine/Israel or, more to the point, has
produced two conflicting historical narratives that quite conveniently fall into
the paradigm of modernization theory. Fortunately, for the Israelis, due to their
closer identification with the West, their national historiography has until
recently been more respected as academic research, more loyal to the ‘truth’
than to ideology. Palestinian researchers were less fortunate. Without a state of
their own, they lacked an appropriate academic infrastructure, and although
their works adhered to the same scholarly rules as in the West, they were
generally portrayed as mere propagandists. This academic evaluation has
recently been reversed, a swing of the pendulum that owes as much to politics
as to the transformation that has taken place in human sciences. Nevertheless,
the histories of the region have until very recently been telling either a pro-
Israeli or a pro-Palestinian story. The historians may have wished to be neutral
and objective, but they either belonged to, or identified strongly with, one of the
two parties in the conflict.
National historiographical writing, on both sides, has assumed that a history
of the land is synonymous with its history of nationalism. Nationalism, as
a concept, is seen as encompassing the lives of everyone in a given land; in
reality, it is a story of the few not the many, of men not women, of the wealthy
not the poor. In that sense, it has been much more than just taking sides. The
history of either the Palestinian national movement or Zionism has been
tantamount to the history of the land of Palestine and Israel. Nationalist
historiographers do not differentiate between land and nation; these are the
same and become an essence at the same historical time. The nation, like the
mother- or fatherland, is portrayed as an essentialist entity. Nationalist histor-
ians are not concerned with dates of birth but with dates of discoveries. The
question is not when a nation was born but rather when was it reborn. As Homi
Bhabha so felicitously put it: ‘Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the

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 Writing the History of One Land, Two Peoples 7

myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye’.3 So the
origins of nations and their lands can only be found in a distant or ancient past:
a nationalist convenience noticed and ridiculed by Benedict Anderson.4

I.3 Writing the History of One Land, Two Peoples

Even more encompassing, in the case of Palestine and Israel, is the history of
the intra-national conflict, which became the essence of the region’s history, the
history of Palestine and Israel. Can this history be reconstructed differently? In
this book, I attempt a new approach. I hope to do this without marginalizing the
importance of the West, political elites, nationalism and the intra-national
conflict or ignoring the importance of some of the main changes chronicled
by modernization theorists. These processes include developments such as the
industrialization, urbanization, hygienization, secularization, centralization
and politicization of what I call ‘non-Western’ societies, which came in contact
with the West.5
All these factors are included, but they are viewed more sceptically than in
the past. This new approach, therefore, does not question the actual occurrence
of the processes described previously but rejects the logic of the way moder-
nizationists construct the connections between them. Against the structural and
teleological pattern of change and development caused by contact with the
West, an alternative view finds a fragmented and fractured process of trans-
formation, in which local societies move with equal fervour ‘back’ (into the
past) or ‘forward’ (into Europe) along the line drawn by modernization theory.
Contact with a powerful ‘Other’ is as negative as a positive factor. It destabil-
izes and polarizes local society before nationalism tries to cement it back
together. Society is transformed, and the external impact produces kaleido-
scopic and modular instances of continuity and reform, unpredicted by theory
and not fitting any European historical example.
This is an approach that owes much to the lessons learned from case
studies in Asia and Africa in the 1960s and the 1970s. Thus, both inductively
and deductively, the a priori view of Palestine’s recent past is bound to be
more post-structuralist than before. But before I deter the reader with the
prospect of postmodernist jargon, I wish to add that this is not why I turned
to the critique on modernization and nationalism. I was more interested in
how a new approach introduces to the historical scene actors who were
absent, or totally marginalized, in the modernizationist approach. In attempt-
ing such an approach, this book argues that the history of these actors is no
less the history of the place than the history of nationalism, conflict, elites or
Westernization.
In this ‘de-modernized’ history, a new leading actor is the subaltern society,
which refers to the groups that as a rule live outside the realm of politics and

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 8 A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel

power and are willing to rely on the state and elites in some, but not all, aspects
of life. The narrative is clear; it begins with a society in Palestine as remote as
possible from politics in the late Ottoman period and ends with its condition in
the beginning of the 21st century. In between, it is invaded, seduced, and
moulded by elites, politics, ideology, nationalism, colonialism and Zionism.
New factors, such as mass media and state education, appear with time,
complicating the interaction even more. This society makes brief appearances
in books subscribing to modernization theory, where it is presented as the
‘masses’: pawns, passive beings to be judged by their obedience to some or
other elitist policy or decision. They are accorded in this book a very different
identity and pattern of behaviour. They are not one mass of people. They are
grouped according to choice in small social units, usually households. But, with
time, they prefer to define themselves via ethnicity, gender, occupation, class or
culture. They change at will but at times are forced to, not always to their
advantage. Their world is a mix of material necessity and spiritual solace.
Many of them are closely connected to the land where they live or chose to
settle on. They cling to the land or to their property not from a national
imperative to protect the mother-/fatherland, the entity, but for much more
mundane and at the same time humane reasons.
These local actors are leaders as well as ordinary members of the community.
They are Palestine’s women and children, peasants and workers, town dwellers
and farmers. They are defined according to their religious or ethnic origins as
Armenians, Druzes, Circassians or Mizrachi and Ashkenazi Jews, as well as to
their views on religion, whether secular, orthodox or fundamentalist. In writing
about them, definitions call for a balance between their own claims and the
author’s understanding of what groups them together. Feeding a family, staying
on the family land or attempting to make a new life on foreign soil can be
portrayed as patriotism or nationalism: for most people, it is an existentialist
and survivalist act.
The second new actor is the past in its garb of tradition and religion. As
conventional modern history has it, the past is an obstacle to the progress
brought by the West to Palestine. Its presence is the best explanation of why
parts of Palestine and Israel have not completed the process of modernization.
This negative intrusive past is widely present in Palestine or among the
Palestinians but less so in Israel. In Israel, it is a feature of life among Jews
from Arab countries but not from Western countries. It is a stronger factor
among women than among men, among peasants than among landowners and
among workers than among employers. In the conventional view, the history of
modern Palestine and Israel is the history of the disappearance of this past from
all disadvantaged groups waiting to realize a better future. Pessimists such as
the late Elie Kedourie believed that for many, that future was unattainable;
optimists such as the late Albert Hourani asserted it was just a matter of time.

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 Writing the History of One Land, Two Peoples 9

But a whole generation of historians of Palestine and Israel assumed that the
past, represented by tradition, religion and customs, had to disappear in order to
give way to the emergence of a modern, developed Palestine or Israel.
In this work, I wish to reintroduce the past and show that it was and still is
a vital factor in the lives of the people of Israel and Palestine. The past is not
always regressive, as the present is not always progressive. In Palestine, as
elsewhere in the Middle East, the past contained egalitarian patterns of behav-
iour that were lost in the present. Similarly, the encounter with the West did not
always improve women’s status or invariably reduce clan power. Rather, the
past proved adaptive and resilient, with the basic relationships within society
remaining what they had been, despite dramatic political changes brought by
colonialism, by Zionism and later by Palestinian nationalism.
That is why, in this history of Palestine and Israel, secularization is not
described as an inevitable consequence of the encounter with the West.
Religion is presented here as elastic: adapting successfully to a changing
technological and even political world. Tradition appears not as the last obs-
tacle to becoming ‘modern’ but as a defensive and adaptive mechanism of
those who found themselves caught within the turmoil of changing reality.
Religion and tradition became – remained – formidable forces affecting polit-
ics, society and culture.
When the past plays such a role, it also affects our understanding of change.
Change in this book is not linear and definitely not harmonious. At times, the
meeting with the West strengthened traditional modes of behaviour and broke
them at others. For some, change was fast, for others moderate and for the rest
barely existent. Perhaps even ‘change’, but definitely ‘continuity’, are terms we
ought to rethink. The postcolonialist critique and subaltern studies, which seek
alternative ways of reconstructing the past of the colonized and the natives,
have already suggested a reappraisal. They abhor the description ‘pawns of the
past’ and do not view Westernization as inevitable or positive. They look for
a new way of describing the local actors in the history of Asia and Africa as
human beings who, cautiously and painfully, carved a path in a world that had
been theirs before its invasion by others.
In national historiographies, the past is generally romanticized. The past that
nationalism tries to bring back into the story is a distant and magnificent past,
reinvented by national movements as the cradle or dawn of their existence to
claim a hold over the present. I have tried to dissociate myself from that kind of
historical reconstruction, first by giving the area a binational name and second
by not referring to an obscure, splendid past. The ‘ancient’ past, so important
for national movements, seems to be irrelevant to most of the people. I would
rather begin with the more recent, relevant, ‘ordinary’ human past, not the
version favoured by either the Palestinian or Israeli histories. Nor is the nation
described here as it would be in a nationalist chronicle, as something eternal. It

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 10 A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel

is a human invention, which appeared relatively recently to serve particular

purposes and benefited some but destroyed others. Above all, it was never the
essence of life that it pretended, and still pretends, to be. Life is determined by
physical factors, such as climate, the locust, economics and tradition, no less
than by nationalism.
Most of the histories of Palestine and Israel are histories of the conflict. But
life in Palestine and Israel is not determined by conflict alone. In this book, in
treating Israel and Palestine as one subject, I have to include an analysis of the
conflict, but by offering one history, I also refuse to view the conflict as the
essence of life in the land of Palestine. I understand that the subtitle of the book
may raise a few eyebrows. But readers familiar with the region will agree that
the people living there use the two names with the same conviction and
emotion. The history I am presenting is that of one land that became Israel
and Palestine, and my task is to examine the implications for the people of this
land with two names.
Naming the land was a political act in Ottoman Palestine at the end of the
nineteenth century. Before that, there had been no dispute over a name, and
whatever the land was called by its rulers, inhabitants or visitors was apparently
accepted as one option of many used for religious or administrative purposes.
What the land was called did not play an important role in the lives of those who
lived there.6 It was only with the arrival of Zionism and European colonialism,
on the one hand, and the emergence of Palestinian nationalism, on the other,
that the name assumed importance and meaning. Instead of merely describing
an area, the name came to represent a claim over it. And so, from the end of the
nineteenth century, different groups of people at different historical junctures,
when they had the will and the power to do so, named the land in a forceful act
aimed at creating a new reality. Such is the power of nationalism. By ‘bi-
nationalizing’ the history and even ‘de-nationalizing it’, I hope in this book to
loosen the firm grip of nationalism on historiography.
Furthermore, titles or names of places are not the only components of
a nationalist historiography. As an author living in the region, I am only too
well aware of the difficulty of reconstructing history outside one’s own
national ethos and myths. While one may wish to write a detached and
neutral history, one’s own sympathies and affiliations remain. The reader of
this book will find instances and descriptions that fit many of the claims of
one national narrative, the Palestinian one, but fewer of the Israeli one. This
is not because the writer is a Palestinian: I am not. My bias is apparent
despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the ‘truth’ when
reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and pre-
sumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the
colonized, not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied, not the
occupiers; and who sides with the workers, not the bosses. He feels for

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 Writing the History of One Land, Two Peoples 11

women in distress and has little admiration for men in command. He cannot
remain indifferent towards mistreated children or refrain from condemning
their elders. In short, mine is a subjective approach, often but not always
standing for the defeated over the victorious. At most historical junctures of
this history, the Palestinians were in an inferior position, and the Zionists and
later the Israelis had the upper hand. This book is not a national Palestinian
historiography, but it tries to show, at most junctures, the force, destruction,
coercion, abuse and other means of power used by Palestinians on
Palestinians, by Israelis on Israelis or jointly by Palestinians and Israelis on
other Palestinians and Israelis. As mentioned, this book assumes that national
identity was and is only one of many factors determining the interrelations
between the people of the land. It sees national identity as reductionist, as
ignorant of factors, such as social status, gender, political situation and
distribution of economic and technological means, that have affected
human life in Palestine and Israel. Therefore, the past appears in this story
also as a coercive tool employed by national movements to manipulate
people. As such, it is in the hands of a few who want their own selfish
actions made to look as though they were done only for the benefit of the
coerced.7
To sum up, I suggest that the history of modern Palestine/Israel should be
a history of both its subaltern society and its elite groups, of those wishing to
change and those happy with what they have, and of external as well as
internal dynamics of change. This history seeks to combine the narratives of
the exploiters with those of the exploited, the invaders with those of the
invaded and the oppressors with those of the oppressed. Its subject matter is
the people of Palestine and Israel and their departure points from known
patterns of life; departure points collectively referred to as the beginning of
the modern history of the land of Palestine and Israel. This means that
I cannot choose one specific departure point. Indeed, the second chapter of
this book proposes several beginnings, which represent significant changes
in the lives of people brought about by formidable processes such as
disintegrating empires, nationalism, colonialism and capitalism. Rather
than overshadow one another, these different beginnings illuminate the
possibilities open to historical research as well as the arbitrary hand given
to the historian as an expositor of a land’s history. As each of these begin-
nings represents a group of people, the book tries to remain faithful to their
chronicles by steering away from a history that turns into a case study of
either modernization or nationalism.
However, as we move to the British Mandate period and the post-1948 era,
we find that politics and nationalism are allowed to become what they cannot
truly be – the essence of life. This was particularly true for the period 1948–
1967. Politics invaded every echelon of society, hunting down those who

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 12 A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel

wished to ignore it and capturing even the free spirits of poets and novelists
who were now recruited to nationalism, the ideology of the day.
Moving on from 1948, the book focuses on how the different groups
constituting society in Israel and Palestine reacted to high politics. Each
event initiated or produced by the elites, be it a war or a peace agreement, is
described and examined against the claim usually made for it as being an
encompassing human event. We will see that wars did not affect everyone,
nor was their impact on everyone the same. Peace agreements fared much the
same. It was the economic and social policies that were often crucial to the lives
of those inhabiting the land. The ideological tide ebbs only towards the end,
with the emergence of ‘mini-societies’ throughout the land of Israel/Palestine
that challenged nationalism in the name of ethnicity, gender and human rights,
only to be cruelly washed away again, at the end of 2022, by politics and
national ideology.

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 1 Fin de Siècle (1856–1900)
Social tranquillity and Political Drama

1.1 The Rural Landscape and Its People

During the Crimean War, about half a million people lived in the land of
Palestine.1 They were Arabic-speaking. Most were Muslims, but about
60,000 were Christians of various denominations, and around 20,000 were
Jews. In addition, they had to tolerate the presence of 50,000 Ottoman soldiers
and officials as well as 10,000 Europeans. Their administrative life revolved
around the sanjaq, the Ottoman sub-province, of which Ottoman Palestine had
three: Nablus, Acre and Jerusalem. To some extent, these administrative divi-
sions corresponded to the topography. Palestine had four hilly regions: the
Jerusalem mountains, the Nablus mountains and two other areas: Hebron in the
Jerusalem district and Galilee in the Acre sub-province. Each geographical and
administrative area had a major town as its capital so that some of Palestine’s
most famous cities were foci of social and cultural life. Acre, Jerusalem,
Hebron and Nablus were among these important towns, as were the smaller
coastal towns of Haifa, Jaffa and Gaza.
Outside the official activities of the sanjaq, people lived an autonomous,
pastoral life with relative homogeneity of style and purpose. About 400,000
people inhabited the rural areas in small villages scattered mainly on the slopes
of the mountains or at the entrances to the small valleys between them.2 Visitors
were rare, although not unheard of. Intruders and thieves were also infrequent,
but that they were an integral part of life was recognized by the authorities, who
allowed the village men to possess arms. Not unexpectedly, these weapons
were sometimes used against greedy tax collectors or uninvited Ottoman
soldiers.
Life revolved around the family, and each family’s affairs were governed by
its clan (hamula). These clans varied in size, and some were divided into sub-
clans. A clan could extend over one or two villages, while a single village could
contain several clans. The clan determined the way of life unless outside forces
intervened. The most impressive feature of communal life was the Musha’a
system, a voluntary method of cultivation based on the rotation of collectively

13

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 14 Fin de Siècle (1856–1900): Social tranquillity and Political Drama

owned plots of land among villagers so that all would, in turn, have the benefit
of the more fertile parcels.3
Each Ottoman administrative sub-unit (nahiya) consisted of several villages.
Each sub-unit was controlled by a sheikh, the head of the strongest clan.
Although a kind of semi-feudal baron, a sheikh belonged to the poorest socio-
economic stratum in the land. First among equals, he represented his own clan
and others before the authorities and disseminated to his people the policies
from above.4 Unlike the urban notables, these destitute leaders were often in
a precarious position. They were judged according to their capabilities as tax
collectors, but no less important was their ability to reconcile conflicting clans
and clamp down on blood feuds. The problem was that while it was in their
interest to prevent local conflicts, such conflicts served the interests of the urban
notables or official clerks who either owned the villages or were responsible for
them administratively. However, many of the sheikhs fulfilled their roles
successfully. One of the best known, even notorious, was Mustafa Abu-Gosh.
Based in a village overlooking the Jaffa–Jerusalem road, he remained powerful
despite urban intrigues against him and the authorities’ dislike. By the end of
the nineteenth century, however, most of the rural leaders had fallen prey to
centralization efforts directed by the reformers in Istanbul.
In rural Palestine, good harvests and successful agricultural ventures signi-
fied happiness. Cotton was grown on the western plains and their higher
elevations, but most of the terraced hills of central Palestine were planted
with olive trees, suited to the climate and the soil. In the valleys, wheat, corn,
barley and sesame were grown. In some places, tobacco and watermelon
provided a source of living and were traded far beyond Palestine.
The least agreeable aspect of life was poor health, often the result of
inadequate housing.5 The traditional dwellings, although suited to the climate,
did not always provide protection. Poor construction made houses cold in
winter. In summer, people spent hot nights on rooftops, but their sleeping
quarters attracted vermin. Traditional customs and practices also encouraged
poor health. Marriage within the family or the clan was a widespread traditional
custom among both Muslims and Christians. This increased the prevalence of
hereditary diseases, still common in the 1970s in rural Palestinian areas.
Life and death were more strongly determined by health and nature than by
economics and politics. Poor health meant a high death rate, among children
and adults alike. Against that, religion and tradition were the prime defence
mechanisms. The terms ‘religion’ and ‘tradition’ are misleading here. Some of
these ‘defence mechanisms’ were ancient spiritual practices that had little to do
with the religious traditions accepted by the Islamic, Christian or Jewish
religious leaders. The spiritual world, the religious network and the customs
of habitation thus provided the basis for the cycle of life in Palestine.6 The
strong belief in the supernatural served as a buffer against the diseases and

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 The Rural Landscape and Its People 15

plagues that broke out at intervals and even against the follies of one’s neigh-
bours: casting the ‘evil eye’ was a common practice.
The accepted date for the emergence of a modernized Palestine has little
relevance to some aspects of the history of society and culture. The metaphys-
ical world was firmly connected to what Clifford Geertz called the ‘popular
interpretation’ of religion, an interpretation usually at variance with that pro-
vided by the religious authorities.7 In late Ottoman Palestine, as throughout the
region’s history, popular interpretations of the three monotheistic religions
survived and still survive today despite all attempts by their custodians to
crush them. At that period, while the peasants followed a cult of traditional
religious customs in which spiritualism played an important role, the establish-
ment was involved in intellectual exercises aimed at adapting religion to
a developing reality. Other senior clerics worked in the opposite direction,
adapting reality to a fundamental and inflexible interpretation of religious
texts.8
While the role of established religion in providing solace and guidance
should not be underrated, it was more a regulating force than an interpreting
entity. But the society was not a passive player in this interaction. Recent
research on Palestine in the period when the country became ‘modern’ has
revealed that the areas in which the religious elite communicated with the
population, such as the shari’a (religious law) court, were interactive and
dynamic. Not only did the population receive religious rulings (fatwas) from
the muftis, the clerical authorities on the law, but they also engaged in dialogue
with them on how to interpret the holy scriptures.9
This interaction is also informative about the affairs of non-Muslims and
women. For example, Jews and Christians preferred to seek rulings on land and
estate disputes in Muslim courts if they found their own structures
inadequate.10 But it is mainly in relation to women that we see how wrong
the conventional histories can be, especially in depicting their lives as passive.
Recent monographs have introduced case studies in which women took bold
stances in court, demanding the right to have some say in choosing a husband or
on their share in inheritance disputes.11
Taking women as a subject for research, one can see how ‘continuity’ and
‘change’ are not easy terms to grapple with. It is most difficult to see dramatic
changes in the lives of rural women in Palestine, although, to be fair, we know
very little about them before the seventeenth century. Women were only
registered in the population during the Tanzimat reforms, around the 1870s.
From that time onwards, the register was detailed enough to enable demo-
graphic historians to assess the number of men, women and children in a given
period in the land of Palestine.12
However, the quantified research does not dramatically challenge what can
be learnt from graphic representations and travellers’ accounts. Rural women

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Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
clearness. If we had an abstract term, separate from the concrete,
the troublesome association in question would have been less
indissoluble, and less deceptive. If we had such a word as Lineness,
or Linth, for example, we should have much more easily seen, that
our idea is the idea of the physical line; and that linth without a line,
as breadth without something broad, length without something long,
are just nothing at all.8
8 This conception of a geometrical line, as the abstract, of which a physical line is
the corresponding concrete, is scarcely satisfactory. An abstract name is the name
of an attribute, or property, of the things of which the concrete name is predicated.
It is, no doubt, the name of some part, some one or more, of the sensations
composing the concrete group, but not of those sensations simply and in
themselves; it is the name of those sensations regarded as belonging to some
group. Whiteness, the abstract name, is the name of the colour white, considered
as the colour of some physical object. Now I do not see that a geometrical line is
conceived as an attribute of a physical object. The attribute of objects which comes
nearest to the signification of a geometrical line, is their length: but length does not
need any name but its own; and the author does not seem to mean that a
geometrical line is the same thing as length. He seems to have fallen into the
mistake of confounding an abstract with an ideal. The line which is meant in all the
theorems of geometry I take to be as truly concrete as a physical line; it denotes an
object, but one purely imaginary; a supposititious object, agreeing in all else with a
physical line, but differing from it in having no breadth. The properties of this
imaginary line of course agree with those of a physical line, except so far as these
depend on, or are affected by, breadth. The lines, surfaces, and figures
contemplated by geometry are abstract, only in the improper sense of the term, in
which it is applied to whatever results from the mental process called Abstraction.
They ought to be called ideal. They are physical lines, surfaces, and figures,
idealized, that is, supposed hypothetically to be perfectly what they are only
imperfectly, and not to be at all what they are in a very slight, and for most
purposes wholly unimportant, degree.—Ed.

29 What are, then, the sensations, the ideas of which, in close

association, we mark by the word line?
 Though it appears to all men that they see position, length,
breadth, distance, figure; it is nevertheless true, that what appear, in
this manner, to be sensations of the eye, are Ideas, called up by
association. This is an important phenomenon, which throws much
light upon the darker involutions of human thought.

The sensations, whence are generated our ideas of synchronous

order, are from two sources; they are partly the sensations of touch,
and partly those of which we have spoken under the name of
muscular sensations, the feelings involved in muscular action.9
9 In attaining the ideas of synchronous order, which is another name for Space,
or the Extended World, sight is a leading instrumentality. It is by sight more than by
any other sense that we get somewhat beyond the strict limits of the law of the
successiveness of all our perceptions. Although we can distinctly see only a limited
spot at one instant, we can couple with this a vague perception of an adjoining
superficies. This is an important sign of co-existence, as contrasted with succession,
and enters with various other signs into the very complex notion of the author’s
synchronous order, otherwise called the Simultaneous or Co-existing in Space.—B.

30 A line, we have said, is an order of particles, contiguous one to

another, in the direction of a radius from one particle. Let us begin
from this one particle, and trace our sensations. One particle may be
an object of touch; it may be felt, as we call it, and nothing more; it
may, at the same time, give the sensation of resistance, which we
have already described as a feeling seated in the muscles, just as
sound is a feeling in the ear. Resistance, is force applied to force.
What we feel, is the act of the muscle. Without that, no resistance.
This state of consciousness is, in reality, what we mark by the name.
It is, at the same time, a state of consciousness not a little obscure;
because we habitually overlook many of the sensations of which it is
composed; because it is, in itself, very complex; and because it is
entangled with a number of extraneous associations.
 We have already remarked the habit we acquire of not attending to
the sensations which are seated in the muscles, of attending only to
the occasions of them, and the effects of them; that is, their
antecedents, and consequents; overlooking the intermediate
sensations. In marking, therefore, or assigning our names, it seems to
be rather the occasions and effects, the antecedents and
consequents, than the sensations themselves, which are named. The
word resistance is thus the name of a very complex 31 idea.10 It is the
name; first, of the feelings which we have when we say we feel
resistance; secondly, of the occasions, or antecedents, of those
feelings; and, thirdly, of their consequents. The feelings intermediate
between the antecedents and consequents, are themselves complex.
There are two kinds of sensations included in them; the sensation of
touch, and the muscular sensations; and there is something more.
When we move a muscle, we Will to move it. This state of
consciousness, the Will to move it, is part of the feeling of the motion.
What that state of consciousness, called the Will, is, we have not yet
explained. At present we speak of it merely as an element in the
compound. Of what elements it is itself compounded we shall see
hereafter. In the idea of resistance, then, there is the will to move the
muscles, the sensations in the muscles, the occasion or antecedent of
those feelings, and the effects or consequents of them. And there is
the common complexity attending all generical terms, that of their
including all possible varieties.
10 Still, when we apply an analysis to the complex facts indicated by the name,
we come to a simple as well as ultimate experience, which is correctly signified by
the name Resistance. The feeling of muscular energy expended is in all likelihood an
absolutely elementary feeling of the mind; and the form of this feeling that is least
complicated or mixed up with other sensibilities is what the word Resistance most
usually expresses, namely, the dead strain, that is energy without leading to
movement, or causing movement in such a slight degree as not to depart from the
essential peculiarity of expended force.—B.
 These things being explained, the learner will now be able to trace,
without error, the formation of one of the most important of all our
ideas, that of 32 resistance, or pressure. We touch one thing, butter,
for instance; it yields to the finger, after a slight pressure; that is, a
certain feeling of ours. The will to move the muscles, and the
sensations in the muscles, are both included in that feeling; but, for
shortness, we shall speak of them, through the present exposition,
under one name, as the feelings or sensations in the muscles. As we
call the butter yellow, on account of a feeling of sight; odorous, on
account of a feeling of smell; sapid, on account of a feeling of taste;
so we call it soft, on account of a feeling in our muscles. We touch a
stone, as we touched the butter, and it yields not, after the strongest
pressure we can apply. As we called the butter soft, on account of
one muscular feeling, we call the stone hard, on account of another.
The varieties of these feelings are innumerable. Only a small portion
of them have received names. The feeling upon pressure of butter, is
one thing; of honey, another; of water, another; of air, another; of
flesh, one thing; of bone, another. We mark them as we can, by the
terms soft, more soft, less soft; hard, more hard, less hard, and so
on. We have great occasion, however, for a word which shall include
all these different words. As we have “coloured” to include all the
names of sensations of sight; “touch” all the names of sensations of
touch, and so on; we invent the word “resisting,” which includes all
the words, soft, hard, and so on, by which any of the sensations of
pressure are denoted.

Such, then, are the feelings which we are capable of receiving from
the particle with which we may suppose a line of particles to
commence. These feelings, in passing along the line, we should
receive in 33 succession from each, if the tactual sense were
sufficiently fine to distinguish particles in contact from one another. It
has not, however, this perfection. Even sight cannot distinguish
minute intervals. If a red-hot coal is whirled rapidly round, though the
coal is present at only one part of the circle at each instant, the whole
is one continuous red. If the seven prismatic colours are made to pass
rapidly in order before the eye, they appear not distinct colours, but
one uniform white. In like manner, in passing from one to another, in
a line of particles, there is no feeling of interval; there is the feeling
we call continuity; that is, absence of interval.

The sensations, then, the ideas of which combined compose the

idea which we mark by the word line, may thus be traced. The tactual
feeling, and the feeling of resistance, derivable from every particle,
attend the finger in every part of its progress along the line. What is
there besides? To produce the progress of the finger, there is
muscular action; that is to say, there are the feelings combined in
muscular action. That we may exclude extraneous ideas as much as
possible, let us suppose, that, when a person first makes himself
acquainted with a line, he has the sense of touch, and the muscular
sensations, without any other sense. He has one state of feeling,
when the finger, which touches the line, is still; another, when it
moves. He has also one state of feeling from one degree of motion,
another from another. If he has one state of feeling from the finger
carried along, as far as it can extend, he has another feeling when it
is only carried half as far, and so on.

It is extremely difficult to speak of these feelings 34 precisely, or to

draw by language those who are not accustomed to the minute
analysis of their thoughts, to conceive them distinctly; because they
are among the feelings, as we have before remarked, which we have
acquired the habit of not attending to, or rather, have lost the power
of attending to.
 It is certain, however, that by sensation alone we become
acquainted with lines; that in every different contraction of the
muscles there is a difference of sensation; and that of the tactual
feeling, and the feelings of the contracted muscles, all the feelings
which constitute our knowledge of a line are composed.

As, after certain repetitions of a particular sensation of sight, a

particular sensation of smell, a particular sensation of sight, and so
on, received in a certain order, I give to the combined ideas of them,
the name rose, the name apple, the name fire, and the like; in the
same manner, after certain repetitions of particular tactual sensations,
and particular muscular sensations, received in a certain order, I give
to the combined ideas of them, the name Line. But when I have got
my idea of a line, I have also got my idea of extension. For what is
extension, but lines in every direction? physical lines, if real, tactual
extension; mathematical lines, if mathematical, that is, abstract,
extension.

It would be tedious to pursue the analysis of extension farther. And

I trust it is not necessary; because the application of the same
method to the remaining cases, appears completely obvious. Take
plane surface for example. It is composed of all the lines which can
be drawn in a particular plane; the idea of it, therefore, is derived
from the tactual feeling, and the feeling of resistance, combined with
the 35 muscular feelings involved in the motion of the finger in every
direction which it can receive on a plane.

Let us now take some of the words which, along with the
synchronous order, connote objects in pairs. The names of this sort
are not very numerous. High, and low, right, and left, hind, and fore,
are examples. These, it is obvious, are names of the principal
directions from the human body as a centre. The order of objects, the
most frequently interesting to human beings, is, of course, their order
with respect to their own bodies. What is over the head, gets the
name of high; what is below the feet, gets the name of low; and so
on. Of the pairs which are connoted by those words, the human body
is always one. The words, right, left, hind, fore, when they denote the
object so called, always connote the body in respect to which they are
right, left, hind, fore. We have already noticed the cases in which the
objects, thus named in pairs, have each a separate name, as father,
son; also those in which both have the same name, as sister, brother.
We have here another case, which deserves also to be particularly
marked, that in which only one of them has a name. The human
body, which is always one of the objects named, when we call things
right, left, hind, fore, and so on, has no corresponding relative name.
The reason is sufficiently obvious; this, being always one of the pair,
cannot, the other being named, be misunderstood.

For the complete understanding of these words, it does not appear

that any thing remains to be explained. If one line, proceeding from a
central particle, be understood, every line, which can proceed from it,
is also understood. If that central point be a part 36 of the human
body, it is plain that as the hand, passing along a line in a certain
direction from that centre, has certain muscular actions, passing along
in another direction, it has muscular actions somewhat different.
When we say muscular actions somewhat different, we say muscular
feelings somewhat different. Difference of feeling, when important,
needs difference of naming.

A particular case of association is here to be remarked; and it is one

which it is important for the learner to fix steadfastly in his memory.

We never perceive, what we call an object, except in the

synchronous order. Whatever other sensations we receive, the
sensations of the synchronous order, are always received along with
them. When we perceive a chair, a tree, a man, a house, they are
always situated so and so, with respect to other objects. As the
sensations of positions are thus always received with the other
sensations of an object, the idea of Position is so closely associated
with the idea of the object, that it is wholly impossible for us to have
the one idea without the other. It is one of the most remarkable cases
of indissoluble association; and is that feeling which men describe,
when they say that the idea of space forces itself upon their
understandings, and is necessary.11
11 Under the head, as before, of Relative Terms, we find here an analysis of the
important and intricate complex ideas of Extension and Position. It will be
convenient to defer any remarks on this analysis, until it can be considered in
conjunction with the author’s exposition of the closely allied subjects of Motion and
Space.—Ed.

37 2. We come now to the case of naming OBJECTS in pairs, on

account of the Successive Order.

We have had occasion to observe that there is nothing in which

human beings are so deeply interested, as the Successive Order of
objects. It is the successive order upon which all their happiness and
misery depends; and the synchronous order is interesting to them,
chiefly on account of its connection with the successive.

When we speak of objects, it is necessary to remember, that it is

sensations, not ideas, to which we are then directing our attention. All
our sensations, we say, are derived from objects; in other words,
object is the name we give to the antecedents of our sensations. And,
reciprocally, all our knowledge of objects is the sensations
themselves. We have the sensations, and that is all. A knowledge,
therefore, of the successive order of objects, is a knowledge of the
successive order of our sensations; of all the pleasures, and all the
pains, and all the feelings intermediate between pleasure and pain, of
which the body is susceptible.

Of successions, that is, the order of objects as antecedent and

consequent, some are constant, some not constant. Thus, a stone
dropped in the air always falls to the ground. This is a case of
constancy of sequence. Heavy clouds drop rain, but not always. This
is a case of casual sequence.12 Human life is 38 deeply interested in
ascertaining the constant sequences of all the objects from which
human sensations are derived. The great business of philosophy is to
find them out; and to record them, in the form most convenient for
acquiring the knowledge of them, and for applying it.
12 This is surely an improper use of the word Casual. Sequences cannot be
exhaustively divided into invariable and casual, or (as by the author a few pages
further on) into constant and fortuitous. Heavy clouds, though they do not always
drop rain, are not connected with it by mere accident, as the passing of a waggon
might be. They are connected with it through causation: they are one of the
conditions on which, when united, rain is invariably consequent, though it is not
invariably consequent on that single condition. This distinction is essential to any
system of Inductive Logic, in which it recurs at every step.—Ed.

In the successions of objects, it very often happens, that what

appear to us to be the immediate antecedent and consequent, are not
immediately successive, but are separated by several intermediate
successions. Thus, the falling of a spark on gunpowder, and the
explosion of the gunpowder, appear antecedent and consequent; but
several successions in reality intervene; various decompositions, and
compositions, in which, indeed, all the sequences cannot as yet be
traced. Most of the successions, which we are called upon to notice
and to name, are in the same situation. We fix upon two conspicuous
points in a chain of successions, and the intermediate ones are either
overlooked, or unknown.
 Thus, we name Doctor and Patient, the two extremities of a pretty
long succession of objects. The Doctor is not the immediate
antecedent of any change in the patient. He is the immediate
antecedent of a certain conception, of which the consequent is,
writing a prescription; the consequent of this, is the sending 39 it to
the apothecary; the consequent of that, is the apothecary’s reading it,
and so on; the whole composing a multitudinous train. Doctor and
Patient, therefore, are not only two paired names of two paired
objects, but names of all the successions between the one and the
other. Doctor and Patient, therefore, properly speaking, are to be
considered one name, though made up of two parts. Taken together,
they are the name of the complex idea of a considerable train of
sequences, of which a particular man is one extremity, a particular
man another; just as navigation is the single-worded name of the
complex idea of a very long train, of which the extremities are not
particularly marked. If you say, navigation from the Thames to the
Ganges, you have a many-worded name, by which the extremities of
this long train are particularly marked.

The relative terms, Father and Son, are obviously included in this
explanation. They are the two extremities of a train of great length
and intricacy, very imperfectly understood. They also, both together,
compose, as may easily be seen, but one name. Father is a word
which connotes Son, and whether Son is expressed or not, the
meaning of it is implied. In like manner Son connotes Father; and,
stripped of that connotation, is without a meaning. Taken together,
therefore, they are one name, the name of the complex idea of that
train of which father is the one extremity, son the other.13
 13 It seems hardly a proper expression to say that Physician and Patient, or
that Father and Son, are one name made up of two parts. When one of the parts
is a name of one person and the other part is the name of another, it is difficult to
see how the two together can be but one name. Father and Son are two names,
denoting different persons: but what the author had it in his mind to say, was that
they connote the same series of facts, which series, as the two persons are both
indispensable parts of it, gives names to them both, and is made the foundation or
fundamentum of an attribute ascribed to each.

With the exception of this questionable use of language, which the author had
recourse to because he had not left himself the precise word Connote, to express
what there is of real identity in the signification of the two names; the analysis
which follows of the various complicated cases of relation seems philosophically
unexceptionable. The complexity of a relation consists in the complex composition
of the series of facts or phenomena which the names connote, and which is the
fundamentum relationis. The names signify that the person or thing, of which they
are predicated, forms part of a group or succession of phenomena along with the
other person or thing which is its correlate: and the special nature of that group or
series, which may be of extreme complexity, constitutes the speciality of the
relation predicated.—Ed.

40 Brother and Brother are a pair of relative terms marking a still

more complex idea. Two brothers are two sons of the same Father;
taken together, they are, therefore, marks of all that Son, taken
twice, is capable of marking. Son, as we have just seen, always
implies Father; and, taken together, they are the name of a train.
The relatives, therefore, brother and brother, are the compound
name; two brothers, are the name of the train marked by the term,
Father and Son, taken twice, the prior extremity of the train being
the same in both cases, the latter different.

The above terms. Father and Son, Brother and 41 Brother, are
imposed on account of sequences which are passed. I do not at this
moment recollect any relative terms imposed on account of
sequences purely future. The terms, Buyer and Seller, are
sometimes, indeed, used in a sense wholly future; when they mean
persons having something to buy and something to sell: but they are
also used in a sense wholly passed, when they signify persons who
have effected purchase and sale. We have, however, many relative
terms on account of trains which are partly passed and partly future.
Thus, Lender and Borrower, are imposed partly on account of the
passed train included in the contract of lending and borrowing;
partly on account of the future train implied in the repayment of the
money. The words Debtor and Creditor are names of the same train,
partly passed and partly future.

The relative terms, Husband and Wife, are of the same class; the
name of a train partly passed, to wit, that implied in entering into
the nuptial contract; and partly future, to wit, all the events
expected to flow out of that contract. Master and Servant are
imposed, on account of a train partly passed and partly future; the
train of entering into the compact of master and servant, and the
train of acts which flow out of it. King and Subject are the name of a
train similarly divided; first, the train which led to the will of obeying
on the part of the people, the will of commanding on the part of the
king; secondly, the trains which grow out of these wills.

Owner and Property are relative terms, or terms which connote

one another. They also are imposed on account of a train partly
passed and partly future. The part which is passed is the train
implied in the 42 circumstances of the acquisition, whether
inheritance, gift, labour, or purchase. The part which is future is the
train implied in the use which the owner may make of the property.

Of the terms which denote objects in successive pairs, several are

very general. Thus we have antecedent and consequent, which are
applicable to any parts of any train. Prior and Posterior, are nearly of
the same import. First and Last, are applicable to the two extremities
of any train. Second, third, fourth, and so on, are applicable to the
contiguous parts of any train.

We have remarked, above, that successions of objects are to be

distinguished into two remarkable kinds; that of the successions
which are fortuitous, and that of the successions which are constant.
Names to mark the antecedent and consequent in all constant
successions, which are things of such importance to us, were found
of course indispensable. Cause and Effect, are the names we
employ. In all constant successions. Cause is the name of the
antecedent. Effect the name of the consequent. And, beside this, it
has been proved by philosophers,1* that these names denote
absolutely nothing.
1* Chiefly by Dr. Brown, of Edinburgh, in a work entitled “Inquiry into the
Relation of Cause and Effect;” one of the most valuable contributions to science
for which we are indebted to the last generation.—(Author’s Note.)

It is highly necessary to be apprized, that each of the two names.

Cause and Effect, has a double meaning. They are used, sometimes
in the concrete sense, sometimes in the abstract. By this ambiguity,
43 ideas are confounded, which it is of the greatest importance to
preserve distinct. When we say, the sun is the Cause of light, cause
is concrete; the meaning is, that the sun always causes light. When
we say that ice is the Effect of cold air, effect is concrete; the
meaning is, that ice is effected by cold air. “Cause,” in these cases, is
merely a short name for “causing object,” “Effect,” a short name for
“caused object.” In abstract discourse, on the other hand, Cause and
Effect are often used in the abstract sense, in which cases Cause
means the same thing as would be meant by causingness; Effect,
the same as would be meant by causedness. They are merely the
connotative or concrete terms, with the connotation dropped.

As the abstract terms have no meaning, except as they refer to

the concrete, it is in the concrete sense I shall always use the words
Cause and Effect, unless when I give notice to the contrary.

Other terms, pairing the parts of a train, take parts more or less
distant; first and last, take the most distant; father and son, take
parts at a considerable distance; cause and effect, on the other
hand, mean always the proximate parts. It does not, indeed,
happen, that we always apply them to the proximate parts; because
the intermediate sequences are often unknown, at other times
overlooked. They are always, however, applied to the parts regarded
as proximate. For we do not, strictly speaking, say, that any thing is
the cause of a thing, when it is only the cause of another thing,
which is the cause of that thing; still less, when there is a series of
causes and effects, before you arrive at that which you have marked
as the effect, because the ultimate one. In 44 all the inquiries of
philosophers into causes, it is the antecedent and consequent, really
proximate, which is the object of their pursuit.

We have observed, in the case of the relative terms, applied to

objects as successive, that the words, properly speaking, form but
one name,—that of the complex idea of a train of less or greater
length: thus, Doctor and Patient is a name; Father and Son is a
name; each denoting a train of which two individuals are the
principal parts. In like manner, the relative terms Cause and Effect,
taken together, are but one name, the name of a short train, that of
one antecedent and one consequent, regarded as proximate, and
constant.
 3. We have now shewn, in what manner the principal Relative
Terms are applied, when we have to speak of objects as having
order in Space, and when we have to speak of them as having order
in Time. We proceed to shew in what manner they are applied,
when we have to speak of objects as differing in Quantity, or
differing in Quality; and first, as differing in Quantity.

We apply the word Quantity, in a very general manner; to things,

which have the greatest diversity. Thus, we use the word quantity,
when we speak of extension; we use the word quantity, when we
speak of weight; we use it, when we speak of motion; we use it,
when we speak of heat; we use it, in short, on almost every
occasion, on which we can use the word degree. Of course, it
represents not one idea, but many ideas, some of which have the
greatest diversity.

The relative terms, which we co-apply with 45 quantity, are equal,

unequal, or some particular case included under these more general
terms; as, more heavy, less heavy; more strong, less strong; whole,
part; and so on.

When quantity is applied to extent, it may be extent either in one,

or more, or every direction; it may mean either quantity in line,
quantity in surface, or quantity in bulk. Accordingly, we can say,
equal, or unequal, lines; equal, or unequal, surfaces; equal, or
unequal, bulks.

Line is the simplest case; the explanation of it will, therefore,

facilitate the rest. We have already traced the sensations, which
constitute our knowledge of a line. We have seen that they are
certain sensations of touch, combined with the muscular sensations
involved in extending the arm.
 As the sensations, involved in extending the arm so far, are not
the same with those which are involved in extending it farther; and
as the having different sensations, and distinguishing them, are not
two things, but one and the same thing;—as often as I have those
two cases of sensation, I distinguish them from one another; and,
distinguishing them from one another, I require names to mark
them. The first I mark, by the word, short; the other, by the word,
long. As I call a line long, from extending my arm so far; that is,
from the sensations involved in extending it; I call it longer from
extending it farther. After experience of a number of lines, there are
some which I call long, long, long, one after another, to any amount;
others which I call longer, longer, longer; others which I call short,
short, short; and so on.

When we have perceived the sensations, on account 46 of which

we call lines long, longer, short, shorter, we can be at no loss for the
knowledge of those, on account of which we call them equal, and
unequal. It is to be observed, that in applying the words long,
longer, short, shorter, minute differences are not named. They
cannot be named. The names would be too numerous. A general
mark, however, may be invented, to shew when there is even a
minute difference, and when there is not. When there is not, we call
the two lines equal; when there is, we call them unequal.

We shall presently see, when we come to trace the ideas, which

the class of words, called numbers, are employed to mark, what
distinction of sensation it is which is marked by the words, one, and
two. In the mean time, it is easy to see, that the case of sensation,
when we trace one line, with the hand, and then another, is different
from the case of sensation when we trace one line only, or even the
same line twice; and this diversity needs marks to distinguish it. It is
true, that in tracing one line, and then another, and marking the
distinction, there is something more than sensation, there is also
memory. But to this ingredient in the compound, after the
explanation which has already been given of memory, it is not, at
present, necessary particularly to advert.

When it is seen, what are the sensations which are marked by the
terms longer and shorter, applied to a line, it will not be difficult to
see what are the sensations, which are marked by the terms, part,
and whole.

The terms, a part, and whole, imply division. Of course, the thing
precedes the name. Men divided, before they named the act, or the
consequences of the 47 act. In the act of division, or in the results of
it, no mystery has ever been understood to reside. It is of
importance to remark, that the word division, in its ordinary
acceptation, includes, and thence confounds, things which very
much need to be distinguished. It includes the will, which is the
antecedent of the act; the act itself; and the results of the act. At
present we may leave the will aside; it will be explained hereafter;
and, as it is not the act, but the antecedent of the act, the
consideration of it is not required, for the present purpose.

The act of dividing, like all the other acts of our body, consists in
the contraction and relaxation of certain muscles. These are known
to us, like every thing else, by the feelings. The act, as act, is the
feelings; and only when confounded with its results, is it conceived
to be any thing else. If it be said, that the contraction of the muscles
of my arm, is something more in me than feelings, because I see the
motion of my arm; it is to be observed, that this seeing, this
sensation of sight, is not the act, but one of its results; the feelings
of the act are the antecedent; this sensation of sight one of the
consequents.

In the act of dividing a line, as in the act, already analysed, of

tracing a line, there is a feeling of touch, and there is also a
muscular feeling. There may be more or less of cohesion in the parts
of the line; and thence, more or less of what we call muscular force,
required to disunite them. Of course, what we call more or less of
force, are only names for different states of feeling. The states of
feeling which we mark by the term, force, being antecedent, all the
rest 48 are consequents of this antecedent. The disunion of the parts
of one line is attended with a certain muscular feeling; I call the
feeling a small force. That of another line is attended with a
muscular feeling somewhat different; I call it a greater force; and so
on. This muscular feeling, however, has various accompaniments;
which are closely associated with the idea of the act, and with its
name. Thus there is the sight of the line, there is the sight of the
hands in the act of disruption, and there is the sight of the line after
it is divided. The term division, as we have mentioned before,
includes all; the muscular feeling, the sight of the line before
division, and the sight of it after. I need a pair of names for the line
before division, and the line after. I call the one whole, the other
parts. Like other relative terms, the one of these connotes the other;
whole has no meaning, but when associated with parts; parts have
no meaning, but when associated with whole. Taken together; that
is, whole and parts, used as one name; they mark a complex idea,
consisting of three principal parts; an undivided line, the act of
division, and the consequent of that antecedent, the line after
division.
 In the preceding exposition, it is actual division, the actual making
of parts, which has been spoken of. It is observable, however, that
the same language, by which we name actual division, and actual
parts, is applied to conceived division, and conceived parts. Thus we
talk of the parts of a line, when it is not divided, nor meant to be
divided. The exposition of this, however, is easy; and there is
obscurity only when the double use of the terms confounds the two
49 cases, the division which is actual, with that which is conceived.

The division of the line may consist of one act, or of more acts
than one. By the first act, it is divided into two parts; by the second
into three; by the third into four, and so on. The parts of a line are
so many lines. These may be equal, or unequal. But the sensations,
on account of which we denominate lines equal, or unequal, have
been already shewn; the equality, and inequality, therefore, of the
parts of a line, need no further explanation.

When the learner conceives distinctly the sensations on account of

which we apply the terms whole and parts to a line, he will not find
it difficult to understand, on what account we apply them to all the
modifications of extension; seeing that all these modifications are
lines combined.

Thus, a plane surface is a number of straight lines, in contact, in

the direction called a plane. It is of greater or less extent, according
as these lines are longer or shorter from a central point; it is of one
shape or another shape, according as the lines are of the same
length, or of different lengths. When they are all of one length, the
surface is called a circle. As they may be of different lengths in
endless variety, the surface may have an endless variety of shapes,
of which only a few have received names. The square is one of these
names, the triangle another, the parallelogram another, and so on.
 Bulk, which is the other great modification of extension, is lines
from a central point in every direction. This bulk is greater or less,
according as these lines are longer or shorter. The figure or shape of
this 50 bulk is different, according as the lines are of the same or
different lengths. If they are of the same length, the bulk is called
round, or, in one word, a sphere; sphere meaning exactly round
bulk. As the lines, when they differ in length, may differ in endless
ways; figures, or the shapes of bulk, are also endless, as our senses
abundantly testify. Of these but a small number have received
names. In this number are the cube, the cylinder, the cone. We
name some shapes by referring to known objects; thus we speak of
the shape of an egg, the shape of a pear, and so on.

It seems that nothing, therefore, is now wanting, to shew in what

manner the relative terms, expressive of Quantity, are applied to all
the modifications of extension.

After what has been said, it will not be difficult to ascertain the
sensations on account of which we apply the same relative terms to
cases of Weight.

Weight is the name of a particular species of pressure; pressure

towards the centre of the earth. Pressure, as we have already fully
seen, is the name we apply, when we have certain sensations in the
muscles, just as green is the name we apply when we have a certain
sensation in the eye. As green is the name of the sensation in the
eye, pressure is the name of the sensation in the muscles. Pressure
upwards, is one thing; pressure downwards, is another; pressure of
a body, when that body is urged by another body, is one thing;
pressure of a body, when it is not urged by another body, is a
different thing: pressure of a body in altering the position of its parts
is one thing; pressure, when there is no alteration of the position of
its parts, is another thing. Of this last sort is weight, 51 the pressure
downwards, or towards the centre of the earth, of a body not urged
by another body, and not altering the position of its parts.

In supporting in my hand a stone, I resist a certain pressure; in

other words, have certain muscular feelings, on account of which I
call the stone heavy. I support other stones, and in doing so have
muscular feelings, in one case similar, in another dissimilar. In the
case of similarity, I call two stones equal, meaning in weight; in the
case of dissimilarity, unequal; and so I apply all the other relative
terms by which quantity is expressed.

It seems unnecessary to carry this analysis into further detail. The

words equal, unequal: greater, less; applied to Motion, to Heat, and
other modifications of sensation, have a meaning, which in following
the course so fully exemplified it cannot be difficult to ascertain.

It seems still necessary that I should say something of the word

Quantus, from which the word Quantity is derived. Quantus is the
correlate of Tantus. Tantus, Quantus, are relative terms, applicable
to all the objects to which we apply the terms, Great, or Little; they
are applicable, therefore, to all the modifications of extension, of
weight, of heat; in short, to all modifications which we can mark as
degrees.

Of two lines, we call the one tantus, the other quantus. The
occasions on which we do so are, when the one is as long as the
other. Tantus, and Quantus, then, in this case, mean the same thing
as equal, equal. They will be found to have the same import as
equal, equal, when applied also to surface, and bulk; and so in all
other compatible cases.
 52 What then, it may be asked, is the use of them? If it should
appear that they were of no use, it would not be very surprising;
considering by whom languages have been made; and that
redundancy is frequent in them as well as defect. In the present
case, however, a use is not wanting.

It is necessary to observe the artifice, to which we are obliged to

have recourse, to name, and even to distinguish, the different
modifications, not of kind but of degree, included under the word
quantity. We are obliged to take some one object, with which we are
familiar, and to distinguish other objects, as differing or agreeing
with that object. Thus, we take some well-known line, the length of
the foot, or the length of the arm, and distinguish and name all
other lengths by that length; which can be divided or multiplied so
as to correspond with them. In like manner, we take some well-
known object as a standard weight, which we call, for example, a
pound, and distinguish and name all other weights, as parts or
multiples of that known weight.

Now it will be recognised, that, in applying the relative terms

equal, equal, or in calling two objects equal, no one of them is
marked as the standard. Both are taken on the same footing. The
one is equal to the other; and the other is equal to that. But when
we say that one thing is tantus, quantus another; or one so great, as
the other is great; the first is referred to the last, the tantus to the
quantus; the first is distinguished and named by the last. The
quantus is the standard.

It is this which gives its peculiar meaning to the word Quantity,

and has recommended it for that very 53 comprehensive and
generical acceptation, in which it is now received.
 Our word Quantity, is the Latin word Quantitas; and Quantitas is
the abstract of the concrete Quantus. We have no English words,
corresponding to Tantus, Quantus. We form an equivalent, by aid of
the relative conjunctions; we say, So Great, As Great. But these
concrete terms do not furnish abstracts; we do not say, As-
greatness; in the first place, because it is an awkward expression;
and in the next place, because the relative, “as,” is not steady in its
application, since we use “as great” not for quantus only, but
frequently also for tantus. As greatness, therefore, does not readily
suggest the idea of the abstract of Quantus.

On what account, then, is it we give to any thing the name

Quantus? As a standard by which to name another thing Tantus. The
thing called Quantus, is the previously known thing, the ascertained
amount, by which we can mark and define the other amount.
Leaving out the connotation of Quantus, which is some one
individual body, Quantitas merely denotes such and such an amount
of body. Quantitas, if it was kept to its original meaning, would still
connote Tantitas; just as paternity connotes filiality. But in the case
of Quantity, even this connotation is dropped; it is used not as a
relative abstract term, but an absolute abstract term; and is
employed as a generical name for any portion of extension, any
portion of weight, of heat, or any thing else, which can be measured
by a part of itself.14
14 After analysing Position and Extension under the head of Relative Terms, the
author now, under the same head, gives the analysis of Quantity and Quality. To
what he says on the subject of Quantity it does not appear necessary to add
anything. He seems to have correctly analysed the phenomenon down to a
primitive element, beyond which we have no power to investigate. As Likeness
and Unlikeness appeared to be properties of our simple feelings, which must be
postulated as ultimate, and which are inseparable from the feelings themselves, so
may this also be said of More and Less. As some of our feelings are like, some
unlike, so there is a mode of likeness or unlikeness which we call Degree: some
feelings otherwise like are unlike in degree, that is one is unlike another in
intensity, or one is unlike another in duration; in either case one is distinguished as
more, or greater, the other as less. And the fact of being more or less only means
that we feel them as more or less. The author says in this case, as he had said in
the other elementary cases of relation, that the more and the less being different
sensations, to trace them and to distinguish their difference are not two things but
one and the same thing. It matters not, since there the difference still is,
unsusceptible of further analysis. The author’s apparent simplification amounts
only to this, that differences of quantity, like all other differences of which we take
cognizance, are differences merely in our feelings; they exist only as they are felt.
But (as we have already said of resemblance, and of antecedence and
consequence) they must be postulated as elements. The distinction of more and
less is one of the ultimate conditions under which we have all our states of
consciousness.—Ed.

54 4. After tracing the sensations and ideas, which are marked

when we apply relative terms to objects, as agreeing or disagreeing
in quantity; we have now to trace the sensations and ideas, which
are marked, when we apply relative terms to objects, on account of
their agreeing or disagreeing in quality.

First of all, the learner must take note of what he 55 means by

Quality. We ascribe qualities to an object on account of our
sensations. We call an object green, on account of the sensation
green; hard, on account of the sensation hard; sounding, on account
of the sensation sounding. The names of all qualities of objects,
then, are names of sensations. Are they any thing else? Yes; they
are the names of our sensations, with connotation of a supposed
unknown cause of those sensations. As far, however, as our
knowledge goes, they are names of sensations, and nothing else.
The supposed cause is never known; the effects alone are known to
us.
 We ascribe qualities to objects, in two cases, which require to be
distinguished: on account of the sensations which we have from
them primarily; on account of those which we have from them
secondarily. The first we call their sensible qualities; as green, hot,
hard, sweet, scented, and so on: the second we more frequently call
their powers; as the power of the loadstone to draw iron, the power
of water to melt sugar. In this latter case, the sensations marked are
not those which are derived from the loadstone, or from water; but
those which are derived from the changes in the iron, and the sugar;
of which changes, we call the loadstone, and the water, the cause.
In the latter case, the train of antecedents and consequents is
longer than it is in the former. When I see an object green; there is
the object, the antecedent; and myself sentient of green, the
consequent. When I see a loadstone draw iron, there is the following
train; the loadstone, antecedent; iron drawn, first consequent;
myself seeing it drawn, second consequent. When I see water melt
sugar, there is the 56 antecedent water; sugar melting, first
consequent; myself seeing it, second consequent. What I call the
powers of an object, then, are its order in respect to certain of my
sensations, the order of antecedence, not proximate, but more or
less remote.

When I say that grass is green, I trace my sensation green, no

farther than to the grass. When I say, the sugar is melting, I trace
my sensations (for they are several) called sugar melting, first to the
sugar, and then to the water. My word green, therefore, is the
notation of a sensation, and connotation of an unknown cause; my
name melting, is the notation of a compound of sensations, and
connotation of two causes, an antecedent and a consequent: the
first, an unknown cause in the sugar; the second, the cause of that
unknown cause, namely, the water.
 In speaking of the qualities of an object, it is necessary to take
notice of an inaccuracy of language; which, not only, as Dr. Brown
has well observed, lies at the bottom of many philosophical errors,
but induces men to mistake the very business of the philosopher.

The term, “quality” or “qualities of an object,” seems to imply, that

the qualities are one thing, the object another. And this, in some
indistinct way, is, no doubt, the opinion of the great majority of
mankind. Yet, the absurdity of it strikes the understanding, the
moment it is mentioned. The qualities of an object are the whole of
the object. What is there beside the qualities? In fact, they are
convertible terms: the qualities are the object; and the object is the
qualities. But, then, what are the qualities? Why, sensations, with
the association of 57 the object as the cause. And what is the
association of the object as the cause? Why, the association of other
sensations as antecedent. What, for example, are the smell, and
colour, and other qualities of the rose? Is not each of the names of
these qualities, that of the smell, for example, a connotative name,
not only noting the sensation, of which it is properly the name, but
connoting all the sensations of colour, of consistence, of figure, of
position; to which, all combined by association, so as to form one
complex idea, we give the specific name, rose, the more general
name, vegetable, and the still more general name, object? When the
smell of a rose is perceived by me, or the idea suggested to me,
immediately all the other ideas included under the term rose, are
suggested along with it, and their indissoluble union presupposed.
But this belief of the previous indissoluble union of each of those
sensations with all the other sensations, is all which I really mean
when I refer each sensation to the rose as its cause.
 If the learner has fully apprehended the ideas here premised, it
will be easy for him to trace to the bottom the relative terms, which
we apply to objects on account of their agreeing or disagreeing in
Quality.

We say, that objects agree or disagree, on account of one quality,

or more than one quality, that is, on account of single sensations, or
combined sensations.

Let us first observe the case of one quality. We say, that a blade of
grass is like the leaf of an oak, meaning, that in the quality of colour
both are green; we say that the leaf of the rose tree, is unlike the
petal of the flower, meaning in colour. By these 58 words, we name
the objects in pairs; first, the pair of leaves, to each of which, we
give the name, like; secondly, the leaf and the petal, to each of
which, we give the name, unlike. We name the first two objects,
“like,” on account of the two sensations, green, and green, one of
each object; we name the next two objects unlike, on account of the
two sensations, green of the one, red of the other. What is done, or
rather what is felt, when we give the same, or a different name, to
each of two sensations, has been already so fully explained, that a
bare suggestion of what has been premised, is here all that will be
required.

We have two sensations. A, B. Having two sensations, and

knowing them to be two sensations, that is, not one sensation, is
having the sensations, and nothing more.

Why do I call one sequence of sensations, green, green; another

sequence, green, red? Clearly on account of the sensations. No other
explanation can be given of it, nor can be required. For the same
reason for which I called the sensations of the first sequence
individually, green, green, I call them both, like; and for the same
reason for which I called those of the second sequence, not green,
green, but green, red, I call them, unlike.

Let us next put the case of several sensations. We say, that one
rose is like another. We have only to take the sensations combined
under the name rose, one by one, to see that this, and the former,
case, are in reality the same. The two roses are like in colour, like in
smell, like in consistence, like in form, like in position. The likeness
of the two roses, is a likeness 59 not in one sensation, but in several.
But the likeness of two sensations of smell, is of the same nature as
the likeness of the two sensations of sight. When I call the smell,
therefore, of the two roses like, it is for the same reason as I call the
colour of them like, that is, the sensations. When I call the shape
and consistence, and position, like, it is for the same reason still; the
tactual and muscular sensations, whence the ideas are derived to
which these names are annexed. In this case, however, the reason is
by no means so clearly seen, first, because the sensations are
complex, and secondly, because they are of that class of sensations
which we habitually overlook.

The Latin words, Talis, Qualis, are applied to objects in the same
way, on one account, as Tantus, Quantus, on another; and the
explanation we gave of Tantus, Quantus, may be applied mutatis
mutandis, to the pair of relatives we have now named. Tantus,
Quantus, are names applied to objects on account of dimension.
Talis, Qualis, are names applied to objects on account of all other
sensations. We apply Tantus, Quantus, to a pair of objects when
they are equal; we apply Talis, Qualis, to a pair of objects, when
they are like.
 Talis, Qualis, however, express the likeness of two objects in a
manner somewhat different from the other pair of nearly equivalent
relatives, “Like,” and “Like.” When we call two objects Like, the one
is placed on the same footing as the other. No one of them is taken
as the standard. When we apply, Talis, Qualis, the case is different.
One of the objects is then the standard. The object Qualis, is that to
which the reference is made.

60 This being understood, the extensive meaning which came to

be given to the word Quality, may be easily explained. Quality is the
Latin Qualitas, and Qualitas is the abstract of Qualis. The meaning of
the abstract is the same with that of the concrete, the connotation
being dropped. When the word Qualis, is applied to an object, it
notes something about it in particular, but connotes the whole
object. The Qualitas of that object, is the something noted in
particular, the connotation being dropped. As Qualis is applied to
objects, sometimes on account of one thing belonging to them,
sometimes on account of another, Qualitas comes in turn to be
applied to every thing in them, requiring at any time a separate
notation. Qualitas, when first formed from Qualis, has the force of a
relative, and connotes the abstract of Talis; but in its frequent use, in
marking every thing in objects, which requires separate notation,
this connotation, also, comes to be dropped; and Quality is finally
used as an absolute term, the generical name of every thing in
objects, for which a separate notation is required.15
15 As in the case of Quantity, so in that of Quality, it is needless to add anything
to the author’s very sufficient elucidation. I merely make the usual reserves with
respect to the use of the word Connotation. The concrete names which predicate
qualities (for of abstract relative names the author is not yet speaking) are said by
him to be the names of our sensations; green, for instance, and red. But it is the
abstract names alone which are this: the names greenness, and redness. And
even the abstract names signify something more than only the sensations: they
are names of the sensations considered as derived from an object which produces
them. The concrete name is a name not of the sensation, but of the object, of
which alone it is predicable: we talk of green objects, but not of green sensations.
It however connotes the quality greenness, that is, it connotes that particular
sensation as produced by, or proceeding from, the object; as forming one of the
group of sensations which constitutes the object. This, however, is but a
difference, though a very important one, in terminology. It is strictly true, that the
real meaning of the word is the sensations; as, in all cases, the meaning of a
connotative word resides in the connotation (the attributes signified by it), though
it is the name of, or is predicable of, only the objects which it denotes.—Ed.

61 III. It was remarked at the beginning of this investigation of

relative terms or names applied in pairs, that we name in pairs—1,
single sensations or ideas; 2, the clusters we call objects; 3, the
complex ideas we form arbitrarily for our own purposes. Having
finished the consideration of the two former cases, we shall not find
occasion to speak much at length upon the last.

The clusters, formed by arbitrary association, receive names in

pairs, on two occasions; either,

1. When they consist of the same or different simple ideas; or,

2. When they succeed one another in a train.

1. The ideas which we put together arbitrarily are sometimes less,

sometimes more, complex, for the most part, they are exceedingly
complex.

Of the less complicated kinds, are such ideas as that of the

unicorn, which is a horse with one straight horn growing from the
middle of its forehead; the Cyclops, a gigantic man, with a single eye
in the middle of his forehead; a mermaid, of which the upper part is
a woman, the lower a fish; the Brobdignagian 62 and Lilliputian of
Swift, which are men of greatly reduced, or greatly enlarged
dimensions.

Of the more complicated kinds, are such ideas as those which are
marked by the word Science, by the word Trade, by the word Law,
by the word Religion, by the word Faith, by the words God and Devil,
by the word Value, by the words Virtue, Honour, Vice, Beauty,
Deformity, Space, Time, and so on.

Language has not many relative terms, applicable to ideas of this

class. We speak of pairs of them as like or unlike, same or different,
greater or less; and except when their order in time is to be noted,
we hardly apply to them any other marks in pairs.

We say the Cyclops in Homer, and the Brobdignagian of Swift, are

unlike. We do so precisely in the same way, as we say, the rose and
the lily are unlike; and the explanation which we have given of that
which is distinctively marked by those terms, when applied to
objects, is precisely applicable here. In the case of objects, that
which is named, is, clusters of ideas;16 in the present case, that
which is named, is clusters of ideas. That one cluster has been
formed in one way, another in another, makes no difference in
annexing marks to the clusters when they are formed.
16
Say rather, in the case of objects, what is named is clusters of sensations,
supplemented by possibilities of sensation. If an object is but a cluster of ideas,
what is there to distinguish it from a mere thought?—Ed.

There is as little difficulty in tracing what is marked by the

relatives, different, and same, when applied to ideas of this class.
We say, the unicorn is different 63 from the horse; because, to the
idea of the horse it adds that of a horn growing in the middle of the
forehead. In the case of very complex ideas, it is much more difficult
to say, with precision, what are the added and subtracted ideas, on
account of which, we apply the term, different; as when we say, the
courage of Ajax was different from that of Achilles; but it is not the
less certain, that it is wholly on account of ideas added and
subtracted, that we so denominate the courage of the two men.

Rather more explanation is needed, to shew what is peculiarly

marked by the relatives equal, unequal, greater, less, when applied
to the class of arbitrarily formed complex ideas.

We have already seen, that those terms are primarily applied to

what we call objects, on account of their extension; objects are
equal or unequal, greater or less, in extension.

We have also seen, that in marking the extension of different

objects, we are under the necessity of taking some known object as
a standard, and by that object naming others. Thus, we take the
foot, and say that other objects are two feet, three feet, or the half
or quarter of a foot, and so on.

Having become familiar with what we call degrees of extension,

we are led to employ the same mode of notation, when we come to
mark analogous differences in other cases of sensation. Thus, when
we perceive the weight of different heavy bodies; as the terms
equal, unequal, greater, less, are applied with convenience to certain
cases of extension, it appears they may be applied with equal
convenience, and even precision, to cases of weight. All other
sensations, 64 having distinguishable differences, may be marked in
the same way: thus sounds are more or less loud, and we speak of
equal, or unequal, less or greater loudness of sound; less or greater
sweetness in objects of the palate; less or greater resistance; less or
greater pain; less or greater pleasure.