ABSTRACT
This chapter examines British perceptions of nomadism during the Mandate. Drawing on British tribal discourse and land practices in southern Palestine, it shows how British views of the Bedouin enforced the exteriority of nomadism to national and state formations, and how this exteriority informed official debates over broader colonial doctrines, such as desert pacification and tribal assimilation. The chapter also discusses the introduction in Mandate Palestine of new legal taxonomies linking national rights to land settlement and ownership, and the way these taxonomies were woven into the fabric of colonial administration and governance of the Bedouin population. It looks at how British tribal legacy in southern Palestine, rooted in English legal theories of land rights and ownership, helped reinforce the time-honored opposition between nomadism and nationhood in British colonial discourse. The chapter is concluded with a comparative perspective situating British tribal policies in Mandate Palestine against the backdrop of French colonial policies in Algeria and British own policies in India, thus understanding British colonial discourse in Palestine within the broader context of European colonialism.
