Embedded in the question of land is a rich diversity of economic, social, legal and political relationships. This collection of governmental efforts to understand and control the variety of rights that governed access and management of land should be of wide interest. Some of these reports (for example, those authored by Sir John Hope-Simpson, Lewis French, and C. F. Strickland) are frequently cited in the extant literature, but exist only in government archives. Other reports (for example, those of the chief land adviser to the Palestine government, Sir Ernest Dowson) are less well known than they ought to be, both for their significance to the inter-war history of Palestine and, as importantly, to the comparative study of colonial administrations in the twentieth century. Reproducing these reports here in their original draft form, and where possible including marginalia and copy edits, sheds useful light on the contentious inner workings of the policy-making process in a colonial context.
