Other Laboratories: The Great Revolt, Civil Resistance, and the Social History of Palestine

Abstract

This essay briefly examines a pattern of little-known local and general strikes staged by the Palestinian public during 1938, amid the Palestinian uprising known as the Great Revolt. While largely overshadowed by the armed struggle then underway, these nonviolent strikes illustrate the widespread character of Indigenous resistance to British colonial rule and of support for the rebellion. Palestine has often been described as a laboratory for repression; yet when we attend to Palestinian social history, we also see that it has been a laboratory of freedom struggle, popular resilience, and recurrent waves of activism and tactical experimentation.