New under the Sun

New under the Sun explores Zionist perceptions of—and responses to—Palestine’s climate. From the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 1890s to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Netta Cohen traces the production of climactic knowledge through a rich archive that draws from medicine and botany, technology and economics, and architecture and planning. As Cohen convincingly argues, this knowledge was not only shaped by Jewish settlers’ Eurocentric views but was also indebted to colonial practices and institutions. Zionists’ claims to the land were often based on the construction of Jewish settlers as natives, even while this was complicated by their alienated responses to Palestine’s climate. New under the Sun offers a highly original environmental lens on the ways in which Zionism’s spatial ambitions and racial fantasies transformed the lives of humans and nonhumans in Palestine.
 

Netta Cohen is Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church College, University of Oxford. 

Contents

List of Illustrations 
List of Abbreviations 
Acknowledgments 

Introduction: The Colonial History of Climate Investigation in Palestine 

1. Knowing Climate 
Climate Research in Undesired Geographies 
Climate Investigation in Palestine 
Working Methods in Climate Investigation 

2. Climate and the Jewish European Body 
Climate, Race and the ‘Origin’ of the Jewish People 
Tropical Medicine: A Healthy Land Makes a Healthy People 
Medical Climatology and the Future of Jews in Palestine

3. Warm Palestinian Climate—Cool Jewish Spaces 
“The Refrigerating Industries” 
The Garden Cities of Yesterday 
How to say “Climate” in Arabic? Jewish Residential Spaces, 1910s–1920s 
Local Heat—International Style 
Climate, Roofs, and Building Materials 

4. Climate and the Study of Plants 
Forestation Against Desiccation 
Acclimatization of Foreign Plants: Sources of Inspiration 
Irrigation Technologies 
Fruit Plantations: A Case Study in Zionist Acclimatization 

Conclusions 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index