Religion, science and power in the making of the Survey of Western Palestine -

Abstract

This thesis is dedicated to understanding the motives and consequences of a project led and funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund. The undertaking took place between the years 1871-1876 and came to be known as The Survey of Western Palestine. For years, the crew of the PEF wandered the territories of an undefined ‘Holy Land’ with the aim to elucidate everything and anything about it. In completing their research, the PEF assembled a Survey into nine volumes and a map scaled at one inch to the mile. The first three volumes formed a memoir on the topography, orography, hydrography and archeology of Palestine as divided into three geographical entities (1.) Galilee, (2.) Samaria and (3.) Judea. The rest of the volumes were categorized as (4.) Special papers on topography, archeology, manners and customs; (5.) Jerusalem; (6.) Fauna and Flora; (7.) Geology; (8.) Arabic and English name lists and (9.) a complete general index. In this thesis I argue that institutional and political infrastructures that predated the establishment of the PEF such as the British consulate, the Tanzimat and the Eastern question formed optimal conditions for the activities of the PEF in Palestine. I maintain that such processes forged important patterns of relationships, what I call structures, between the British and the ruling Ottoman Empire and its local inhabitants. These structures attested to Britain’s power over Ottoman Palestine and, in turn, were reasserted by the Survey. This line of reasoning helps me integrate the Survey within the historiography of colonization. The PEF’s project in Palestine was not purely scientific and void of ideological motives. Contrary to its alleged mission of objectively studying the Holy Land, I argue that in their final form, the tomes of the Survey effectively reinforced structures of imperial dominion. In the final analysis I attempt to demonstrate that the Survey, indeed, was instrumental for Britain’s administration of Palestine between the years 1918- 1936 an