Men of Capital

Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"Men of Capital is a remarkable achievement. Sherene Seikaly introduces us to the class of Palestinian capitalists, a group too often overlooked in histories of Palestine and Israel, and brilliantly puts them into the context of their time, exploring their group consciousness, hopes, and aspirations. Examining their failures to break through the iron ceiling of Britain's colonial commitment to the Zionist project, Seikaly offers a powerful critique of the strait-jacket of settler colonialism."—Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University Sherene Seikaly's Men of Capital redraws the class map of British Mandate Palestine and expands ongoing efforts to rethink the Nahda. This work clearly demonstrates how the schemes used to rationalize governance under the pressures of revolt and war ultimately betray the incoherence, ineffectiveness, and racism of British rule."—Joel Beinin, Stanford University "Men of Capital is a breathtaking study of the complex work of making 'economy' in pre-1948 Palestine, filled with unforgettable characters striving for economic renewal in commerce and in the home. Sherene Seikaly reveals a Palestine being remade, bit by bit, into distinctly 'Jewish' versus 'Arab' worlds, and gives us entirely new ways of thinking about Israel/Palestine and colonialism—all wrapped up in an unstoppable read."—Julia Elyachar, University of California, Irvine" "Sherene Seikaly's critical history of Palestinian economic agents and thinkers is an exemplary instance of new approaches to political economy. Eschewing both nostalgic mourning and nationalist frames, Men of Capital will inform and instruct debates about the regional roots of economic practices and the institutional infrastructure of economic imaginaries across twentieth century Middle Eastern studies."—Manu Goswami, New York University "[T]his book is an interesting contribution to the growing literature on Palestine and the Palestinian Arabs under the Mandate, especially in highlighting the entrepreneur class of "Men of Capital" and socio-cultural aspects of the growing bourgeoisie, and should be read as such by its students."—Itamar Radai, Review of Middle East Studies

• Introduction: The Politics of Basic Needs1. Men of Capital: Making Money, Making Nation2. Women of Thrift: Domesticity and Home Economics3. A Nutritional Economy: The Calorie, Development, and War4. A Public Good: Palestinian Businessmen and World War II5. The Vegetable Racket: Scarcity and the Cost of LivingConclusion: Postwar Austerity and the Discipline of Detail