Colonialism and Cultivation: The Politics of Teaching Agriculture in the Mandate for Palestine

Agriculture was the key economic sector of the Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate’s Jewish and Arab populations, as well as its colonial administrators touted increasing agricultural productivity as indispensable for a variety of political reasons, ranging from expanding the country’s absorptive capacity to justify more Jewish immigration, to preventing urbanization and rebellion. Moreover, each group emphasized education as one of the most important ways of improving agriculture, and the status of cultivators overall. British and Jewish narratives of development even linked the ability to modernize agriculture with the right to rule. Both Jewish and Arab schools’ curricula included theoretical and practical agriculture. However, a combination of practical and political considerations undermined the intended effects of agricultural teaching. This paper uses syllabi, official reports, personnel files and journals in order to explore the politicization of educational policies as well as their unintended consequences, focusing on issues of nationalism, loyalty and political economy. British colonial agricultural education seldom tended towards improving agricultural productivity. However, it offered an avenue of social mobility, specifically for the Arab population of the Mandate. Rather than creating modern farmers, agricultural schooling produced politicized teachers and bureaucrats.