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Papers by Charles Anderson

Research paper thumbnail of When Palestinians Became Human Shields: Counterinsurgency, Racialization, and the Great Revolt (1936–1939)

Research paper thumbnail of The Suppression of the Great Revolt and the Destruction of Everyday Life in Palestine

Jerusalem Quarterly, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of State Formation from Below and the Great Revolt in Palestine

Journal of Palestine Studies, 2017

The Great Revolt (1936-39) represented the most fervent and sustained Palestinian challenge to Br... more The Great Revolt (1936-39) represented the most fervent and sustained Palestinian challenge to British and Zionist colonialisms during the thirty years of British rule in Palestine. Although its ultimate defeat has led to negative appraisals of its historical significance, the uprising was in its day the largest mass mobilization in Palestinian history and, at its apex, threatened to overturn the British regime. The rebellion was characterized by considerable organizational ingenuity as Palestinians created novel institutions that embodied their drive for popular sovereignty and an end to colonial domination. This article principally examines two such sets of institutions, the national and popular committees of 1936, and the rebel court system from 1937-39. In doing so, it argues that much like revolutionary peasant-based movements elsewhere in the colonial world, insurgent forces in Palestine embarked on a process of state formation from below. This process aimed to sap the colonial regime of its authority and weaken its capacities while augmenting those of the rebels by integrating broad segments of the population into insurgent frameworks. It further contends that it is the dynamic of state formation from below, and the popular character and leadership of the rebel movement, that lent the revolt its resilience and enabled it to push the colonial state to the wall.

Research paper thumbnail of British Mandate and the Crisis of Palestinian Landlessness 1929–1936

Middle Eastern Studies, 2018

Research paper thumbnail of "Youth" in Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd ed

Research paper thumbnail of Will the Real Palestinian Peasantry Please Sit Down? Towards a New History of British Rule in Palestine, 1917-1936

This paper surveys the history of peasant and rural resistance to colonial rule, policies, and la... more This paper surveys the history of peasant and rural resistance to colonial rule, policies, and law in British Palestine before 1936. Although the Arab countryside and its inhabitants have often received minimal or dismissive treatment in much of the scholarly literature, the study argues that rural Arab struggles against political, social and economic dispossession were integral to the history of British Palestine. Peasant agency and unrest broadly shaped relations between the Arab population and the colonial state and played an important part in forging the rebellious course of the Palestinian national movement in the 1930s. Animated by the struggle to stay on the land and to reject their political and economic marginalisation, peasants and Bedouin resisted the colonial order and its agenda of supporting the Zionist project in both quotidian and spectacular fashions. At the everyday scale, they flouted or blunted British attempts to 'reform' the land regime, while more episodically they rose up in armed or violent insurrections. The British regime responded to the latter through collective punishment, which especially after 1929 came to increasingly characterise its approach to rural discontent and to the Palestinians writ large. As socioeconomic conditions worsened for the rural Arab majority during the first two decades of British rule , the restive current that developed in the countryside helped to radicalise the Palestinian national movement while also bringing to the fore class tensions within Arab society. This set of relations culminated in the major peasant-led uprising known as the Great Revolt (1936-39) and the ensuing military suppression of Palestinian society and its independence movement.

Research paper thumbnail of Youth, the "Arab Spring," and Social Movements

Review of Middle East Studies, 2013

Dissertation by Charles Anderson

Research paper thumbnail of From Petition to Confrontation: the Palestinian National Movement and the Rise of Mass Politics, 1929-1939

Reviews by Charles Anderson

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Mitter, A History of Money In Palestine

Research paper thumbnail of SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE: POPULATION, TERRITORY, AND POWER

Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine is a disquieting tour through myriad forms of survei... more Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine is a disquieting tour through myriad forms of surveillance directed at the Palestinians from the Mandate era to the present. Biometric monitoring, divided and racialized law, policing by both Israeli and Palestinian coercive apparatuses, and practices of cartographic fragmentation and enclosure that disrupt everyday time and movement are just some of the most prominent features of Palestine's peculiar landscape. In view of the sui generis character of recent Palestinian experience, new analytic terms and concepts have been forged to diagnose and describe its particularities: thus we have politicide (Baruch Kimmerling), spaciocide (Sari Hanafi), and " matrix of control " (Jeff Halper), alongside iterations of the older term " apartheid state. " Likewise, it has become commonplace for scholars to deploy theoretical constructs from Michel Foucault (chiefly the idea of biopolitics) and/or Giorgio Agamben (state of exception)—as do almost all nineteen chapters of Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine. As one of the editors, David Lyon, has argued, surveillance inscribed at the level of society is not merely a tool for resolving security dilemmas;

Research paper thumbnail of Review of De Vries, Diamonds and War: State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine

experiential and affective, this mode of argument respects the multiplicity of nondominant narrat... more experiential and affective, this mode of argument respects the multiplicity of nondominant narratives precisely by refusing to abandon the larger conceptual frame. On the margins but not marginal, these migrant stories call into question our larger narratives about empire, statecraft, and the region as a whole.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Matthews, "Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation"

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Research paper thumbnail of When Palestinians Became Human Shields: Counterinsurgency, Racialization, and the Great Revolt (1936–1939)

Research paper thumbnail of The Suppression of the Great Revolt and the Destruction of Everyday Life in Palestine

Jerusalem Quarterly, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of State Formation from Below and the Great Revolt in Palestine

Journal of Palestine Studies, 2017

The Great Revolt (1936-39) represented the most fervent and sustained Palestinian challenge to Br... more The Great Revolt (1936-39) represented the most fervent and sustained Palestinian challenge to British and Zionist colonialisms during the thirty years of British rule in Palestine. Although its ultimate defeat has led to negative appraisals of its historical significance, the uprising was in its day the largest mass mobilization in Palestinian history and, at its apex, threatened to overturn the British regime. The rebellion was characterized by considerable organizational ingenuity as Palestinians created novel institutions that embodied their drive for popular sovereignty and an end to colonial domination. This article principally examines two such sets of institutions, the national and popular committees of 1936, and the rebel court system from 1937-39. In doing so, it argues that much like revolutionary peasant-based movements elsewhere in the colonial world, insurgent forces in Palestine embarked on a process of state formation from below. This process aimed to sap the colonial regime of its authority and weaken its capacities while augmenting those of the rebels by integrating broad segments of the population into insurgent frameworks. It further contends that it is the dynamic of state formation from below, and the popular character and leadership of the rebel movement, that lent the revolt its resilience and enabled it to push the colonial state to the wall.

Research paper thumbnail of British Mandate and the Crisis of Palestinian Landlessness 1929–1936

Middle Eastern Studies, 2018

Research paper thumbnail of "Youth" in Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd ed

Research paper thumbnail of Will the Real Palestinian Peasantry Please Sit Down? Towards a New History of British Rule in Palestine, 1917-1936

This paper surveys the history of peasant and rural resistance to colonial rule, policies, and la... more This paper surveys the history of peasant and rural resistance to colonial rule, policies, and law in British Palestine before 1936. Although the Arab countryside and its inhabitants have often received minimal or dismissive treatment in much of the scholarly literature, the study argues that rural Arab struggles against political, social and economic dispossession were integral to the history of British Palestine. Peasant agency and unrest broadly shaped relations between the Arab population and the colonial state and played an important part in forging the rebellious course of the Palestinian national movement in the 1930s. Animated by the struggle to stay on the land and to reject their political and economic marginalisation, peasants and Bedouin resisted the colonial order and its agenda of supporting the Zionist project in both quotidian and spectacular fashions. At the everyday scale, they flouted or blunted British attempts to 'reform' the land regime, while more episodically they rose up in armed or violent insurrections. The British regime responded to the latter through collective punishment, which especially after 1929 came to increasingly characterise its approach to rural discontent and to the Palestinians writ large. As socioeconomic conditions worsened for the rural Arab majority during the first two decades of British rule , the restive current that developed in the countryside helped to radicalise the Palestinian national movement while also bringing to the fore class tensions within Arab society. This set of relations culminated in the major peasant-led uprising known as the Great Revolt (1936-39) and the ensuing military suppression of Palestinian society and its independence movement.

Research paper thumbnail of Youth, the "Arab Spring," and Social Movements

Review of Middle East Studies, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of From Petition to Confrontation: the Palestinian National Movement and the Rise of Mass Politics, 1929-1939

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Mitter, A History of Money In Palestine

Research paper thumbnail of SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE: POPULATION, TERRITORY, AND POWER

Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine is a disquieting tour through myriad forms of survei... more Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine is a disquieting tour through myriad forms of surveillance directed at the Palestinians from the Mandate era to the present. Biometric monitoring, divided and racialized law, policing by both Israeli and Palestinian coercive apparatuses, and practices of cartographic fragmentation and enclosure that disrupt everyday time and movement are just some of the most prominent features of Palestine's peculiar landscape. In view of the sui generis character of recent Palestinian experience, new analytic terms and concepts have been forged to diagnose and describe its particularities: thus we have politicide (Baruch Kimmerling), spaciocide (Sari Hanafi), and " matrix of control " (Jeff Halper), alongside iterations of the older term " apartheid state. " Likewise, it has become commonplace for scholars to deploy theoretical constructs from Michel Foucault (chiefly the idea of biopolitics) and/or Giorgio Agamben (state of exception)—as do almost all nineteen chapters of Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine. As one of the editors, David Lyon, has argued, surveillance inscribed at the level of society is not merely a tool for resolving security dilemmas;

Research paper thumbnail of Review of De Vries, Diamonds and War: State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine

experiential and affective, this mode of argument respects the multiplicity of nondominant narrat... more experiential and affective, this mode of argument respects the multiplicity of nondominant narratives precisely by refusing to abandon the larger conceptual frame. On the margins but not marginal, these migrant stories call into question our larger narratives about empire, statecraft, and the region as a whole.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Matthews, "Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation"

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.