The Colonies of Law
Colonialism, Zionism and Law in Early Mandate Palestine

This book traces attempts to establish a non-religious system of Hebrew Courts in British-ruled Palestine.

Ronen Shamir (Author)

9780521631839, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 November 1999

232 pages, 5 tables
23.7 x 16.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.54 kg

' … an informative analysis of the historical geography of the increasingly planned and vociferous role the Religious Kibbutz Movement played in Zionist settlement. The author successfully shows how the idea of forming blocs of settlements was a major driving force for the Movement and that everyday farming and social problems lay beyond the ideology. This book thereby sets the stage for comprehending how religious settlements became a part of the overall Zionist kibbutz and settlement structure, gradually to be accompanied by a political power which cannot be ignored today.' Middle Eastern Studies

Treating law as an essential cultural component in a nation-building project, this book offers a socio-historical analysis of a community-based system of justice under colonial rule. It traces the attempts of Jewish jurists–nationalists to establish a non-religious system of Hebrew Courts in British-ruled Palestine. This book analyzes the secular, national and anti-colonial ideology of the Hebrew Law of Peace and shows that Jewish religious groups, secular lawyers and leading Zionist institutions undermined the Hebrew Law project. The book develops the concept of 'dual colonialism' to analyze the complex relations between Jewish settlers and British colonizers, and explores the reluctance of leading Zionists to allow a process of nation-building from below that would have allowed communities, rather than organized quasi-state institutions, to define the trajectory of Jewish nationalism.

1. Mandatory Palestine: the enigma of the missing colonial state
2. Whose tradition?: imageries of the past in Hebrew law
3. State law and communal justice
4. Celebrating authenticity and practising hybridity
5. Nationalism as a disciplinary regime
6. Lawyering the nation
7. Nation-building and the containment of legality
8. Dead law and statism: a suggested lesson.

Subject Areas: Law & society [LAQ], Cultural studies [JFC]