In agricultural history, specialisation is usually considered as progress, turning peasants into market-orientated farmers and allowing them to escape from self-sufficiency. Recent developments in the field of productivist agriculture and the recent rise of alternative agriculture cast doubt on...

"The final decades of the Ottoman Empire and the period of the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon coincided with a critical period of transformation in agricultural technologies and administration. Chemical fertilizers and mechanized equipment inspired model farms while government officials and...