Building Farmsteads in the Desert: Capitalism, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Rural Landscapes in Late Ottoman Period Transjordan

Abstract

In the second half of the nineteenth century, merchant settlers from Palestine crossed the Jordan River and moved east into the Balqa' region of the Transjordan. Under a new Ottoman land tenure system, these settlers acquired land and invested in large-scale agricultural production, and constructed a series of large farmstead complexes, transforming the cultural and physical landscape of Transjordan's rural countryside. Many Bedu tribes that had previously used the landscape mainly for pastureland were drawn into this new economy as laborers, and their pastures were turned into large farms.While the development of large farmsteads in Transjordan and the Middle East is part of the process of capitalist expansion into the rural countryside, the intersection of capitalist investment with the empire's changing administrative policies were part of a new colonial discourse; during the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state attempted to redefine its relationship to nomadic groups and embraced the ideologies of colonialism in its efforts to settle its Bedu subjects and turn pastureland into agricultural spaces.Archaeological approaches to changing settlement in late Ottoman period Transjordan, however, move beyond a view that global structures were simply imposed on tribal groups. Instead, Bedu use of landscapes -both hidden and visiblehelped them negotiate their everyday lived conditions, by creating their own challenges to the structures of state, capitalism and colonialism.

Parameters of a Postcolonial Sociology of the Ottoman Empire

“…Their studies reveal an increasing divide between the educated, ''civilized'' officials of the imperial center who attempt to study, discipline, and improve the ''colonial'' subjects in the periphery (Herzog & Motika, 2000;Provence, 2011). Scholars analyzing the Ottoman provinces of the Transjordan (Carroll, 2011), Yemen (Ku¨hn, 2007), Algeria (Shuval, 2000), and the Balkans (Spiridon, 2006) also empirically substantiate this new polarization between the Ottoman-Turkish officials and their colonial subjects. 13 All agree that the Ottoman ''colonial'' relationship was much more nuanced than its Western European counterpart: the local was not summarily ''other''ed, denigrated, and exploited; instead, it retained its agency and negotiated relations with the Ottoman capital, Western Europeans, and their local counterparts.…”

Groundwater-based agriculture in arid land : the case of Azraq Basin, Jordan

“…The Land Code issued in 1858, in parallel with the Civil Code (Mejelle), aimed at making a kind of land inventory for taxation purpose and increasing tax revenue, and exercising greater state control over the empire (Carroll, 2011;Islamoglu, 2000). The Code organized a system of taxation that would apply to every piece of land, either privately owned (milk) or part of a domain called miri (land under the custody of the Amiri, or prince), that included all arable fields, pasturing grounds and woodlands.…”