During the first decade of British rule in Palestine, the changes that occurred among local peasantry were phenomenal in political and economic terms. Though the economic and social changes certainly pre-date the establishment of the British mandate, the new political atmosphere created a situation whereby the politics of the local elites (with whom the British interacted) were superimposed on the entire population. Setting up their political capital in Jerusalem, the classic historiography of the period centers around the political relationship the British colonial government had with the local elites, ignoring the vibrant role in political resistance of the local urban peasantry. Using Jerusalem as the backdrop, this paper will confront that colonial and elitist reading of the city as a means to suggest a more complicated understanding of political agency among the peasantry as urban actors in the Jerusalem region. Though often not seen as a primary commercial center in the larger region, the incorporation of the peasants of the villages surrounding Jerusalem into the expanding economic and social life of the city during the first few decades of the century dramatically changed the political life of the city and the local imagination of its ever-growing boundaries. Ironically, the new system installed by the British, in particular the various measures of security and governance created by the colonial government – and the consequent plethora of police, commercial and personal records created by this system – provides the opportunity to read the comings and goings of regular urbanized Palestinian peasants. Readings these records show that as the projects to expand the construction of neighborhoods in the “new city” evolved, these peasants from the surrounding villages achieved a growing sense of economic power through the new economy that fed this expansion. Rich in resources for a growing city, peasants in the villages quickly became primary economic actors. As their relationship to the economy expanded, so did their influence on the popular political scene in the city. This paper will argue that a closer reading of the lives of these urban peasants can help us understand not only the political resistance that led to the 1936-1939 revolt, but also provides us with a new way of reading “the urban” in Palestine. Beyond the well-known history of elitism in the city lies the story of these urban peasants who actively opposed the political agenda of the colonial-installed leadership.