Borders, race and natural disaster: the 1927 Palestine earthquake and the colonial distortion of the Levant

Lecturer
Dr Sarah Irving, University of Staffordshire

Title
Borders, race and natural disaster: the 1927 Palestine earthquake and the colonial distortion of the Levant

Abstract
The horrific events that have encompassed Palestine, Israel and now Lebanon over recent weeks and months make it easy to think of the borders dividing these territories as hard, irrevocable and dividing groups of people whose differences are inescapable. Those borders, though, are only a century old, and were imposed by British and French colonial power, backed by the League of Nations. This talk, drawing on my Leverhulme-funded study of the 1927 Jericho earthquake, considers how lessons from the overlapping disciplines of environmental and disaster studies and history of science can help us to deconstruct colonial narratives. Examining the ways in which people across what had been Ottoman Bilad al-Sham and then colonised Palestine, Transjordan and Lebanon experienced, understood and responded to the earthquake highlights the artificiality, contingency and porousness of state borders, and how colonial ideas about race and religion shaped disaster responses and the future of the region.

Information
The seminar will be held in English. 

Please register if you want to participate via Zoom. 

Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies