1917
1948
A01=Fredrik Meiton
african politics
arab
arabic
arabs
Author_Fredrik Meiton
british rule
Category=JP
Category=NHG
Category=THR
conflict
electric grid
electricity
electrification
engineering
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
eq_tech-engineering
european languages
hebrew
israel and palestine history
israeli
jewish statehood
jews
middle eastern history
palestinian
palestinian statelessness
pinhas rutenberg
political power
power system
setting the stage for conflict
zionist
Product details
- ISBN 9780520295896
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 08 Jan 2019
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Electricity is an integral part of everyday life—so integral that we rarely think of it as political. In Electrical Palestine, Fredrik Meiton illustrates how political power, just like electrical power, moves through physical materials whose properties govern its flow. At the dawn of the Arab-Israeli conflict, both kinds of power were circulated through the electric grid that was built by the Zionist engineer Pinhas Rutenberg in the period of British rule from 1917 to 1948. Drawing on new sources in Arabic, Hebrew, and several European languages, Electrical Palestine charts a story of rapid and uneven development that was greatly influenced by the electric grid and set the stage for the conflict between Arabs and Jews. Electrification, Meiton shows, was a critical element of Zionist state building. The outcome in 1948, therefore, of Jewish statehood and Palestinian statelessness was the result of a logic that was profoundly conditioned by the power system, a logic that has continued to shape the area until today.
Fredrik Meiton is Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire.
