Permanent URL: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/episodes/aerial-images-of-palestine/
Title: Coloniality and Communications: Aerial Images of Palestine (Episode 9)
Creator: Burçe Çelik; Sebastian James Rose
Contributors: Sena Başöz (video production, editing)
Data Provider: Loughborough University
Provider: Coloniality and Communications
Type: Video
Format: Video (MP4)
Is Shown At: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/episodes/aerial-images-of-palestine/
Date: 2025
Language: English
Description: This episode features Sebastian James Rose and Burçe Çelik discussing depictions of Palestine by the British through a painting and a map. The first image discussed is an oil painting by Sydney William Carline, titled Study of the Sea of Galilee: Aeroplanes Attacking Turkish Boats, produced in 1919. The second image discussed is an engraved map by Robert Creighton, titled Holy Land: A New Historical Map of Palestine with Part of Egypt & Arabia, published in 1838. Focusing on visual depictions of Palestine reveals how the Holy Land was understood visually from the early nineteenth century and later ruled through aerial technologies and perspectives in the interwar period. Under the British Mandate, the aircraft became a symbol of British civilisational strength and progression in contrast to oriental stagnation and barren landscapes.
Subject: Aerial photography, Palestine, British Mandate, Colonial mapping, Visual media, Air power, Territorial control, Imperial surveillance
Spatial Coverage: Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine
Temporal Coverage: 1918–1932
Rights: CC BY-NC 4.0
Rights Holder: Loughborough University
Is Part Of: Coloniality and Communications – Episodes
Source Institutions: Imperial War Museum; British Library
Project Context:
Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century is an AHRC funded project run by Prof. Burçe Çelik (P.I.), Dr. Sebastian James Rose (Research Associate) at Loughborough University and artist Sena Başöz.
Coloniality and Communications unveils the historical role and legacy of British telecommunications in the making of colonial spatiality in Mesopotamia and the Middle East in the early 20th century. The project aims to advance decolonial research on media and communications through the epistemological force of regional and geopolitical history. By providing historical research on the past of colonial communications, this project aims to shift Westcentric conceptions, theoretical frameworks and received histories on media and communications.
Focusing on the interplay of communications and state building in Mesopotamia and Iraq from 1918 to 1932, the project challenges and questions existing paradigms in communication studies and the history of technology by asking: How were communications repurposed by the local people as forms of resistance? What roles did communications networks play in the making of colonial and national space? How did communications infrastructures, technologies and networks produce and reproduce colonial violence and control?
This video was produced as part of the research project Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century.
Learn more at the project website: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/
Related content can be accessed at https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/episodes/