After Syria, Vavilov drove down along the coast from Beirut to Palestine.
I had to wait for 2 months in Palestine for visas for Egypt and Abyssinia, a long time in such a small country; but it allowed me to travel in all directions over it and Trans¬Jordania.
In reading his views on conditions in the two British mandates, it is impossible not to be struck both by how little has changed and how much. It would, however, be inappropriate to delve too deeply here into his views of the politics, administration, development and all the rest of it. There are of course also trenchant observations on agriculture, which we will be getting to.
Consider, though, Vavilov’s note on crossing into Palestine:
Behind the border gates, the landscape was the same. The demarcation did not in any way coincide with any natural border: on both sides the same narrow belt of Mediterranean vegetation, the same kind of dry foothills with a shrub vegetation called ‘maquis’ together with which wild olive trees, wild figs, pea-shrubs (Caragana ) and wild almond trees could be seen.
Now consider this image:
Middle East, acquired by MIRES instrument, 14 February 2005, from European Space Agency. Click to enlarge.
See that diagonal line, roughly in the centre of the image? That is the border between Israel and Egypt. [1] The land is identical on both sides of that border. I wonder what Vavilov might have made of that?
Notes:
- I know there’s a much older view, maybe even before the border shifts after 1973, that is even clearer, but I cannot now find it. [↩]
