The Palestinian national movement gestated in the early decades of the twentieth century, but it was born in the Great Revolt of 1936-39, a period of sustained Arab protest against British policy in the Palestine mandate. In The Crime of Nationalism, Matthew Kraig Kelly makes the unique case that the key to understanding the Great Revolt lies in what he calls the crimino-national domain-the overlap between the criminological and the nationalist dimensions of British imperial discourse, and the primary terrain upon which the war of 1936-39 was fought. Kelly's analysis amounts to a new history of one of the major anticolonial insurgencies of the interwar period and a critical moment in the lead-up to Israel's founding. The Crime of Nationalism offers crucial lessons for the scholarly understanding of nationalism and insurgency more broadly.

About the Author
Matthew Kraig Kelly is Dean's Lecturer in Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews
"Kelly is to be congratulated for a scholarly study that is sure to provoke further debate about the Arab revolt of the 1930s, a pivotal insurgency that demands more scrutiny and about which too little has been written." * Middle East Journal *
"Kelly's analysis of the 'Great Revolt' of 1936-39, an Arab rebellion against British colonial policy in the Palestine mandate, emphasises the importance of what he characterises as the 'overlap between the criminological and nationalist dimensions of British imperial discourse', or the ways in which acts of violence on both sides were represented and interpreted." * Survival: Global Politics and Strategy *
"Kelly's book is a must-read because the crimino-national logic he describes is still in force. It has lost some of its idioms but the lethal potency of its discursive coordinates remain operative. While Kelly's interpretive analytical prism shows that the reality was otherwise, thearchival documents written mostly by colonial administrators and Zionist campaigners bear the imprint of a demonizing narrative that continues to reproduce itself in multiple ways and still haunts the Palestinian national movement. * Journal of Palestine Studies *
"Histories of imperialism and nationalism ... will all benefit greatly from this work." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780520291492
Author Matthew Kraig Kelly
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 363g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 18mm