Cambridge Archive Editions – förlag

Embedded in the question of land is a rich diversity of economic, social, legal and political relationships. This collection of governmental efforts to understand and control the variety of rights that governed access and management of land should be of wide interest. Some of these reports (for example, those authored by Sir John Hope-Simpson, Lewis French, and C. F. Strickland) are frequently cited in the extant literature, but exist only in government archives. Other reports (for example, those of the chief land adviser to the Palestine government, Sir Ernest Dowson) are less well known than they ought to be, both for their significance to the inter-war history of Palestine and, as importantly, to the comparative study of colonial administrations in the twentieth century. Reproducing these reports here in their original draft form, and where possible including marginalia and copy edits, sheds useful light on the contentious inner workings of the policy-making process in a colonial context.

These 4400 pages are the collected British government political and economic reports on the state of Israel from its creation in May 1948 to the end of the first premiership of David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion, regarded as the 'Father of Israel', held the post of Defence Minister as well as Prime Minister during the first 5 years of the Israeli state, throughout the War of Independence, the first wave of immigration, the implementation of mass settlement, development projects and the signing of a reparations agreement with Germany. This was one of the most important periods in the history of the Middle East and the Jewish people in particular. The documents are written by British civil servants working in Tel Aviv, Haifa or Jerusalem and show the difficulties faced by the new administration in its relations with its Arab neighbours, the US and UK governments and international bodies like the United Nations.

The greatest currently anticipated source of petroleum is said to be in the Caspian Sea off Baku, but the Caucasus region has been exploited for oil for centuries, as have other smaller, but key fields in Roumania. Now that so many former Soviet satellite states, Azerbaijan and Roumania included, are independent territories, there is global involvement and interest in their development. Through these documents the history of the industry and business itself is depicted, but the involvement of European and overseas companies and governments in this field will serve also as a lens through which to focus on political relations with Russia, her successor state the USSR, and annexed territories.