Conclusion

We have seen, then, that it is impossible to separate the establishment of a colonial Dead Sea industry in the 1930s from a longer historical context that stretches back at least a century earlier.

Throughout the nineteenth century, increasing numbers of Western travellers visited the Dead Sea, gradually establishing the lake as a site of future colonial development and providing the essential ‘canon of expertise’ upon which the engineers and technocrats of the British mandate were able to build. In some ways this process can be described in terms of the European fixation with empirical science and its applicability in the colonial world. In particular, the technological changes that occurred from around the mid-nineteenth century onwards enabled Westerners to imagine the lake’s transformation into a site of commercial productivity. In the writings of Western visitors to Palestine, this was frequently contrasted with a local approach to the natural environment that was held to be incapable of objectifying nature, mirroring Michael Adas’ assertion that it was Europeans’ newfound technological advantage in this period that shifted their sense of superiority from a moral basis to a material one.⁶⁴

Advancements in science, however, only tell part of the story. Although Palestine was being re-construed by some Western observers as a land of potentiality, it never lost its older, biblical associations. It is in the descriptions and projects drawn up for the Dead Sea that the construction of Palestine as a once ‘blessed’ but now ‘cursed’ land can be found at its strongest. The area had, according to common Western tropes, been neglected under centuries of Muslim rule, but it was now possible to envisage a revival under Christian and Jewish auspices. From Lynch’s focus on locating the sites of biblical events, to the Christian Zionism of Laurence Oliphant, to the ‘romantic nationalism’ of Zionists like Novomeysky, virtually all Western research at the Dead Sea was underpinned by the notion that this was a morally corrupted landscape that must be redeemed by Western influence.

This consistent marriage of empirical and spiritual values suggests that, in the eyes of those who travelled to the Dead Sea, there was no contradiction between the two urges. Rather, they were complementary forces driving the ‘rediscovery’ of the lake, in much the same way that recent scholarship argues more generally against treating science and religion in the nineteenth century as discrete, definable entities.⁶⁵ Running from Lynch to Novomeysky, a continuum of Western knowledge on the Dead Sea had been passed down, simultaneously projecting empirical detachment and emotional attachment. In 1946 the connections seemed to all converge when Novomeysky held what he termed ‘a christening ceremony’ for his company’s new passenger boat, the M.S. Lieutenant Lynch. This ritual, he triumphantly declared, marked ‘the centenary of the American explorer who in 1846 first provided these scenes with a scientific description’.⁶⁶

Notes

1 A more detailed discussion of the establishment of PPL and its importance to the British imperial economy can be found in Jacob Norris, Land of Progress: Palestine in the Age of Colonial Development, 1905-1948 (Oxford, 2013).

2 PPL Articles of Association, held in Israel State Archives (ISA), Jerusalem, Record Group (RG) ISA RG127/C/983/2.

3 Data taken from ‘The World Potash Industry and the Dead Sea’, 31 Aug., 1945, ISA RG18/C/ 978/17; and Minerals Yearbook, 1939, quoted in Earl of Lytton to Kingsley, 7 Aug., 1940, The National Archives (TNA), London, Inland Revenue (IR) 40/9803.

4 The idea of ‘colonial estates’ was championed by Joseph Chamberlain during his time as colonial secretary in the 1890s. See Alfred Milner, Life of Joseph Chamberlain (London, 1912), p. 220.

5 For examples of this view, see David Omissi, ‘Middle Eastern Strategy: The Mediterranean and Middle East in British Global Strategy 1935-39’, in Michael J. Cohen and Martin Kolinsky (eds), Britain and the Middle East in the 1930s: Security Problems, 1935-39 (Basingstoke, 1992), p.

15; and Martin Sicker, Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922 (Westport, 1999), p. 124.

6 For discussion of Britain’s rising involvement in the pre-First World War affairs of Palestine and Syria, see Rashid Khalidi, British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (London, 1980).

7 Many of these studies have focussed on British rule in South Asia. See, for example, Kavita Philip, Civilising Natures: Race, Resources and Modernity in Colonial South India (New Delhi, 2003); and Siegfried Huigen, Knowledge and Colonialism: Eighteenth-Century Travellers in South Africa (Leiden, 2009); and Deborah Sutton, Other Landscapes: Colonialism and the Predicament of Authority in Nineteenth-Century South India (Copenhagen, 2009).

8 See, for example, Richard Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the Improvement of the World (New Haven, 2000); and Siegfried Huigen, Knowledge and Colonialism.

9 See Jacob Norris, ‘Toxic Waters: Ibrahim Hazboun and the Struggle for a Dead Sea Concession', Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 45 (Spring, 2011), pp. 26-41.

10 Genesis, 19:24-25.

11 For the myth of monsters living in the Dead Sea, see Arie Nissenbaum, ‘The Dead Sea Monster', International Journal of Salt Lake Research, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1992), pp. 1-8.

12 See ‘Is the Dead Sea Dying? Levels Dropping at Alarming Rate', Science Daily, 5 March 2009, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090304091514.htm (accessed 30 March 2010).

13 See Tina M. Niemi, Zvi Ben-Avraham and Joel R. Gat (eds), The Dead Sea: The Lake and its Setting (Oxford, 1997), pp. 3-4.

14 One example of this is the alarming rate of shrinkage of the Dead Sea, receding by around 1 metre per year. Intensive use of Dead Sea water for the potash and bromine industries is partly to blame for this. See Shahrazad Abu Ghazleh, Jens Hartmann, Nils Jansen and Stephan Kempe, ‘Water Input Requirements of the Rapidly Shrinking Dead Sea', Naturwissenschaften, Vol. 96, No.

5 (May 2009), p. 639.

15 See Arie Nissenbaum, ‘Chemical Analyses of Dead Sea and Jordan River Water, 1778-1830', Israel Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 8 (1970), pp. 281-287.

16 For Lavoisier's execution, see Madison Smartt Bell, Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution (New York, 2005), pp. 151-182. Accounts of the increase in Western travellers to Palestine following Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and Syria include Yehoshua Ben- Arieh, The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Detroit, 1979); and Naomi Shepherd, The Jealous Intruders: The Western Rediscovery of Palestine (London, 1987).

17 Ulrich J. Seetzen, A Brief Account of the Countries Adjoining Lake Tiberias, the Jordan and the Dead Sea (London, 1810), p. 45.

18 Seetzen, A Brief Account, pp. 43-44.

19 These missions are documented in Haim Goren, ‘Nicolayson and Finn Describe the Expeditions and Deaths of Costigan and Molyneux', in the Hebrew journal Qatedrah le-toldot Eretz Yisra'el el we- yissubah, No. 85 (1997), pp. 65-94.

20 Seetzen, A Brief Account, p. v of Preface.

21 See ‘Notes' section at the end of Seetzen, A Brief Account.

22 William Francis Lynch, Narrative of the United States' Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (London, 1849), p. v of Preface.

23 Lynch, Narrative of the United States' Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea: A New and Condensed Edition (Philadelphia, 1858).

24 Edward P. Montague, Narrative of the Late Expedition to the Dead Sea: From a Diary by One of the Party (Philadelphia, 1849); Lynch, The Official Report of the US Expedition to Explore the Dead Sea and River Jordan (New York, 1852); and John S. Jenkins and Charles Wilkes, Voyage of the U.S. Exploring Squadron, Commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, of the United States Navy, in 1838,1839, 1840,1841, and 1842 (Auburn, 1856). See also Andrew Jampoler's historical study of the voyage, Sailors in the Holy Land: the 1848 American Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Search for Sodom and Gomorrah (Annapolis, 2005).

25 Lynch, Narrative (1849), p. 268.

26 For example, ibid., p. 269.

27 Ibid., p. 119; Montague, Narrative, p. viii of Preface.

28 Montague, Narrative, p. 225.

29 Lynch, Narrative (1849), p. 281.

30 Seetzen's dependence on finding a suitable guide is described in Seetzen, A Brief Account, p. 13. Lynch's crew was accompanied on much of its journey by the Sharif of Mecca-in-exile, Muhammed bin Abdulmuin, who Lynch met in Acre. See Lynch, Narrative (1849), p. 133. An example of the crew's livelihood being dependent on local assistance occurs when local fisherman save them from drowning upon their landing at Haifa. See ibid., p. 117.

31 See, for example, ibid., p. 338.

32 Ibid., p. 341. Seetzen discusses the fruit in A Brief Account, p. 45.

33 Montague, Narrative, pp. 17-18.

34 Lynch, Narrative (1849), p. 396.

35 This can be seen in the naming of birds such as ‘Tristram's Starling', which is native to the Dead Sea area.

36 Henry Baker Tristram, The Land of Moab: Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the Jordan (New York, 1873), pp. 5-6.

See TNA, Home Office (HO) 45/4946, Foreign Office memo to the Home Office, 23 Feb. 1852. TNA, Home Office (HO) 45/4946, Foreign Office memo to the Home Office, Allen to Viscount Palmerston, 15 Jul. 1853.

Ibid.

See, for example, William Allen, The Dead Sea, A New Route to India (London, 1855), pp. 315 and 324.

Ibid., pp. 299-303.

Ibid, p. 379.

Taken from Laurence Oliphant’s memoirs, 1879, cited in Margaret Oliphant, Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant, His Wfe (Edinburgh, 1892), p. 290.

Laurence Oliphant’s memoirs, 1879, cited in ibid.

The marginal status of Christian Zionism in English culture is discussed in Eitan Bar-Yosef, The Holy Land in English Culture, 1799--1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism (Oxford, 2005), pp. 185-193.

Dov Gavish, The Survey of Palestine Under the British Mandate, 1920--1948 (London, 2005), p.

10.

John Moscrop, Measuring Jerusalem: the Palestine Exploration Fund and British Interests in the Holy Land (London, 2000), pp. 142-150.

Gavish, The Survey of Palestine, pp. 11-12.

Moscrop, Measuring Jerusalem, pp. 167-174 and 209.

Gavish, The Survey of Palestine, pp. 79-80.

ISA RG127/C/984/20, Economic Research Institute, The Jewish Agency for Palestine, ‘The Dead Sea Comp: the Story of an Enterprise’.

Gavish, The Survey of Palestine, pp. 227-228.

See ISA RG127/C/ 978/15, ‘Palnews Bulletin’, 25 Apr. 1940, and prospecting maps of Dead Sea area provided by Novomeysky’s Palestine Mining Syndicate.

See Norris, Land of Progress, chap. 2.

See the first instalment of his memoirs: Moshe Novomeysky, My Siberian Life (London, 1956), pp. 157-158.

TNA FO 195/2199, Dickson to N.R. O’Conor, 15 Apr. 1905.

As described in the second instalment of his memoirs: Moshe Novomeysky, Given to Salt: The Struggle for the Dead Sea Concession (London, 1958), pp. 11 and 25.

Foremost among these experts was Dr Bobtelski, a German chemist with experience in the Stassfurt potash industry who Novomeysky brought to work on his experiments at the Dead Sea in 1924. Bobtelski went on to become Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. See Novomeysky, Given to Salt, p. 54. In 1927 and 1928 Novomeysky hired two further chemists who were highly esteemed in the European scientific community. These were Dr Schlom, who had worked extensively on fertilisers in South Africa, and Dr Kanevski, who had both been permitted extensive use of the facilities at the Hebrew University. Novomeysky, Given to Salt, pp. 54 and 183.

See Jehuda Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Zionist Leader (Oxford, 1985).

TNA CO 733/132/3, internal memo written by Mr Hazelton, 20 Jan. 1927.

TNA CO 733/132/3, internal memos written by Mr Clauson, 7 Jan. 1927; and Mr Lloyd, 2 Feb. 1927.

Sandra Sufian, Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920--1947 (Chicago, 2007), pp. 160-162. For the significance of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Jewish tradition, see J.A. Loader, A Tale of Two Cities: Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, Early Jewish and Early Christian Traditions (Kampen, 1990), pp. 75-116.

Novomeysky, Given to Salt, pp. 14 and 282.

Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, 1989).

See, for example, Peter Harrison, ‘“Science” and “Religion”: Constructing the Boundaries’, in Thomas Dixon, Geoffrey Cantor and Stephen Pumfrey (eds), Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 23-49. For discussion of this in the colonial context, see Sujit Sivasundaram, Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795--1850 (Cambridge, 2005).

Novomeysky, Given to Salt, p. 282.

Conclusion

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