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In the eighteenth century, an English traveler, Thomas Shaw, noted that Palestine was "lacking in people to till its fertile soil."The French count Constantine François Volney, an eighteenth-century historian, called Palestine "ruined" and "desolate," observing that "many parts" had "lost almost all their peasantry." Volney complained that this desolation was unexpected, for the Ottoman imperial records listed larger populations, which led to tax collection efforts' being frustrated. Of one area, Volney wrote: "Upwards of three thousand two hundred villages were reckoned, but, at present, the collector can scarcely find four hundred. Such of our merchants as have resided there twenty years have themselves seen the greater part of the environs...become depopulated. The traveller meets with nothing but houses in ruins, cisterns rendered useless, and fields abandoned. Those who cultivated them have fled."

Another English traveler, James Silk Buckingham, visited Jaffa in 1816 and wrote that it had "all the appearances of a poor village, and every part of it that we saw was of corresponding meanness." In Ramle, said Buckingham, "as throughout the greater part of Palestine, the ruined portion seemed more extensive than that which was inhabited." Twenty-two years later, the British nobleman Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, Lord Lindsay, declared that "all Judea, except the hills of Hebron and the vales immediately about Jerusalem, is desolate and barren."

In 1840, another traveler to Palestine praised the Syrians as a "fine spirited race of men," but whose "population is on the decline." He noted that the land between Hebron and Bethlehem was "now abandoned and desolate," marked by "dilapidated towns." Jerusalem was nothing more than "a large number of houses...in a dilapidated and ruinous state," with "the masses...without any regular employment."

In 1847, a U.S. Navy officer noted: "The population of Jaffa is now about 13,000, viz: Turks, 8000; Greeks, 2000; Armenians, 2000; Maronites, 700; and Jews, about 300." Significantly, he counted no Arabs there at all.

Still another traveling English clergyman, Henry Burgess Whitaker Churton, saw the desolation of Judea as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. In 1852, he published Thoughts on the Land of the Morning: A Record of Two Visits to Palestine. "Soon after leaving the Mount of Olives," Churton recounted, "the country becomes an entire desolation for eighteen miles of mountain, until we reached the plain of the Jordan. It is foretold (Ezekiel, vi. 14), and is remarkably fulfilled, that Judea should be more desolate than the desert itself. That plain itself is now, in great measure, bare as a desert..."

The following year, one of Churton's fellow clergymen, the Reverend Arthur G. H. Hollingsworth, published his own treatise, Remarks Upon the Present Condition and Future Prospects of the Jews in Palestine. Hollingsworth's observations are jarring to those who have uncritically accepted the idea that Palestine was always considered Arab land before the Jews arrived. According to Hollingsworth, the Arabs had no special affection for the land, and it was the Turks who claimed it:

The population of Palestine is composed of Arabs, who roam about the plains, or lurk in the mountain fastnesses as robbers and strangers, having no settled home, and without any fixed attachment to the land.

Hollingsworth found the Christians of the area to be little better off:

In many of the ruined cities and villages there exists also, a limited number of Christian families, uncivilized, and not knowing from what race they derive their origin. Poor, and without influence, they tremblingly hold their miserable possessions from year to year, without security, and without wealth, in a land which they confess is not their own. The Turks monopolize for themselves the spoils and power of conquerors. They claim the land, they levy the uncertain and oppressive taxes.

Even the Ottoman government, however, was not at home there:

No Christian is secure against insult, robbery, and ruin. The Ottoman government is weak and violent, rapacious and uncertain in its justice, tyrannical and capricious; their soldiery and merchants amount to a few thousands, in a country where millions were formerly happy and prosperous. The influence of such a government never extends beyond the shadow of their standards. They are always in the attitude of a hostile army, encamped in a land which is only held by forcible possession; like a garrison under arms, they retain the country by the law of the sword and not by inheritance. It is a sullen conquest and not a peaceable settlement.

Hollingsworth, like so many others, bore witness to the land's steady depopulation:

The Arab and Christian populations diminish every year. Poverty, distress, insecurity, robbery, and disease continue to weaken the inhabitants of this fine country.

He did notice, however, one group that was increasing in number.