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First edition, a scarce complete set, comprising over 300 pages of analysis and hundreds of data tables. We have traced no other sets in commerce or auction records. "The census of 1931 was the second census taken since the occupation of Palestine by the British in 1917, but the first, in 1922, had been much more limited in scope. Like the French census of Lebanon taken the previous year, the first census of Palestine had followed a logic of sectarian enumeration and was almost entirely concerned with the ratio of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in this newly acquired territory. Thus, as one contemporary observer put it, the census of 1931 offered 'for the first time a real conspectus of the population of Palestine'. As it turned out, it was the last, as plans for a third in 1936 were shelved following the outbreak of the Arab revolt" (Sandal-Wilson, p. 84). Besides the all-important question of religion, the census also examined linguistic distributions, infirmities and disabilities, occupations and organized industry, and the nomadic population. The census was co-ordinated by Assistant Chief Secretary Eric Mills (1892-1961), a veteran Middle East civil servant and a major figure in the interwar negotiations concerning local participation in the governance of the mandate. In the opinion of Isaiah Berlin, Mills was a "clever, disillusioned, cynical person, who. has deep contempt for the whole Zionist Organization" (Letters, p. 101). Mills "admitted the difficulty of the task assigned to him. 'Anyone contemplating for the first time the complicated and highly delicate mechanism of census operations,' he wrote, 'is bound to be afflicted with a sense of timidity in setting up and controlling the necessary machinery in a country completely lacking in experience of this kind'" (Sandal-Wilson, p. 84). Subsequent investigations into the population of Palestine never achieved the thoroughness of Mills's 1931 efforts. The 1946 Survey of Palestine, for instance, was based on estimates and sampling, rather than household-to-household data collection. Khalidi & Khadduri, 593. Isaiah Berlin, Letters, 1928-1946, Volume I, 2004; Chris Sandal-Wilson, Mandatory Madness: Colonial Psychiatry and Mental Illness in British Mandate Palestine, 2023. 2 vols, large quarto. Part I with sketch map of Palestine, 43 diagrams (4 folding), folding copy of Palestine Census household schedule tipped to final leaf, perhaps as issued; Part II with over 500 pp. of tables. Original green card wrappers, blue or red cloth backstrips, spine labels printed in black or red, front covers lettered in black. Losses and wear to spine labels, light rubbing, wrappers sunned, contents clean: a very good set.
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