ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the period of the formation of dock labour in Palestine between the two World Wars. While before First World War there was a significant growth of demand for dock work and of a stratum of dock workers, it was only following the British conquest of Palestine, in 1917-1918, that this growth turned into a significant 'take-off'of port activity. The chapter deals with the outbreak of World War II, when an independent occupational category of the dockers was in existence and various organisational structures among porters and stevedores had become well developed. It presents a historical approach that attempts to interweave social and political histories. Dock work was thus integrated in a larger set of social and national images which revered the productive and the constructor. The formation of dock labour in Palestine should be first contextualised in the political history of the region.
