Abstract

This article explores nationalism and consumption in British-mandate Palestine using a history-from-below approach. It focuses on Arab and Jewish peddlers who regularly crossed national, cultural, and geographic borders in order to conduct petty trade with customers. Colonial and nationalist actors worked hard to curb the ubiquitous presence of such peddlers for various reasons. First, British colonial officials regarded urban hawking as unhygienic, noisy, and not modern. Second, many Zionist actors deemed Jewish-Arab trade threatening to the Zionist principle of ‘Hebrew consumption’. Zionist leaders also expressed concern about the presence of Jewish peddlers whom they viewed as the antithesis of the idealized, Hebrew-speaking Zionist ‘New Jew’. Third, Palestinian Arab nationalists policed Arab peddlers who violated the six-month national strike in 1936 by continuing to hawk their goods. In short, in the eyes of various nationalist actors, these peddlers displayed ‘national indifference’ that needed to be controlled. By studying how nationalist actors policed everyday, small-scale peddler-consumer exchanges, we are able to understand how a ‘culture of nationalism’ arose in mandatory Palestine.

中文翻译：

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小贩和巴勒斯坦民族冷漠警务，1920-1948年

摘要

本文采用从下至上的历史方法，探讨了英国授权巴勒斯坦的民族主义和消费。它侧重于经常跨越国家，文化和地理边界以便与客户进行小额贸易的阿拉伯和犹太小贩。出于各种原因，殖民主义者和民族主义者努力遏制这种小贩的普遍存在。首先，英国殖民地官员认为城市小贩是不卫生，嘈杂且不现代的。其次，许多犹太复国主义行为者认为犹太人与阿拉伯人的贸易威胁着犹太复国主义的“希伯来消费”原则。犹太复国主义领导人还对犹太小贩的存在表示关切，他们认为犹太小贩是理想的，讲希伯来语的犹太复国主义者“新犹太人”的对立面。第三，巴勒斯坦阿拉伯民族主义者对阿拉伯小贩进行了惩罚，他们继续贩卖自己的商品，从而违反了1936年的六个月全国大罢工。简而言之，在各种民族主义者的眼中，这些小贩表现出需要控制的“民族冷漠”。通过研究民族主义行为者每天如何监管小规模的小贩-消费者交流，我们可以了解强制性巴勒斯坦是如何产生“民族主义文化”的。