This book examines the relationship between the emergence of Byzantine archaeology and British colonialism during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. Taking a single case study, the Negev Desert (now in southern Israel), this study explores how the development of Byzantine archaeology and historical enquiry in the region after 1800 provided the British government with a political and economic blueprint to secure its strategic interests over the Suez Canal. Several excavations of Byzantine sites during the British Mandate were utilised as an historic proof of concept for scientific programmes of 'desert greening', and to advocate for the displacement of Arab populations in favour of British economic development and town planning. Invariably, such contemporary concerns to secure British access to the Suez after 1869 shaped the interpretation of Byzantine history. Ideas of the Negev as a timeless 'frontier zone', which benefitted from the imposition of a central imperial government and increased economic immigration from a 'Hellenised' western Europe, gained a historical precedent in an imagined Byzantine past.

Provides the first study of the relationship between British colonialism and Byzantine Studies in Mandate Palestine Revisits the relationship of Byzantine Studies with postcolonial theory Challenges traditional interpretations of the Byzantine Negev

Autorentext

Daniel Reynolds is Associate Professor in Byzantine History at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Inhalt

Ch 1: Hold the Line: Byzantine Palestine and the postcolonial fray.- Ch 2: Drawing lines: Byzantium and the historicization of the Negev frontier.- Ch 3: Making deserts bloom: Britain, Byzantium, and agriculture in the Negev.- Ch 4: Conclusion: holding the line between past and present.