Twenty-Six Centuries of Agrarian Reform
Twenty-Six Centuries of Agrarian Reform

Author: Elias H. Tuma

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0520312120

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Have land reform movements ever managed to redistribute wealth, to encourage economic development, to improve standards of living, to ensure political stability? This book answers in the negative. Drawing upon land reform movements over twenty-six centuries of history, Tuma develops a hypothesis about land tenure reform that should enable other scholars to evaluate the success of past reform movements and to see the trends of present and future ones more clearly. In the first part of the study, a general definition of land tenure reform is advanced. Starting with the ordinary meaning of reform as "a redistribution of land to benefit the small farmer or landless agricultural worker," this definition is modified so as to take into account various forms of tenure of title to land, patterns of cultivation, terms of holding, and scale of operation. The middle section of the book presents a comparative study of different types of land reform movements. Eight major "case histories" are considered--the Greek reforms of Solon and Pisistratus in the sixth century B.C.; the Roman reforms of the Gracchi in the second century B.C.; the English tenure changes covering the commutations of the Middle Ages, and the enclosures of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries; the reforms accompanying the French Revolution; the three Russian reforms: the emancipation of 1861, the Stolypin reforms of 1906 - 1911, and the Soviet reform beginning in 1917; the Mexican reform after the 1910 revolution; the Japanese reform after the Second World War; and the Egyptian reform starting in 1952. In sum, the book relates the land reform movements of past centuries to those now in progress in underdeveloped countries. It argues that the land reforms of the last two decades have dealt with symptoms rather than causes, have affected only a small percentage of either the population or the cultivable area, and warns that even if high concentrations of the land-holdings are broken down, reconcentration is likely to recur unless strong preventive measures are taken. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

Land Wars
Land Wars

Author: Brian J. DeMare

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781503609518

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Land Wars: The Story of China's Agrarian Revolution explores how Mao's narrative of rural revolution became a reality, at great human cost.

Fields of Revolution
Fields of Revolution

Author: Carmen Soliz

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0822988100

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Fields of Revolution examines the second largest case of peasant land redistribution in Latin America and agrarian reform—arguably the most important policy to arise out of Bolivia’s 1952 revolution. Competing understandings of agrarian reform shaped ideas of property, productivity, welfare, and justice. Peasants embraced the nationalist slogan of “land for those who work it” and rehabilitated national union structures. Indigenous communities proclaimed instead “land to its original owners” and sought to link the ruling party discourse on nationalism with their own long-standing demands for restitution. Landowners, for their part, embraced the principle of “land for those who improve it” to protect at least portions of their former properties from expropriation. Carmen Soliz combines analysis of governmental policies and national discourse with everyday local actors’ struggles and interactions with the state to draw out the deep connections between land and people as a material reality and as the object of political contention in the period surrounding the revolution.

Power over Property
Power over Property

Author: Matthew Noellert

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0472127101

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Following the end of World War II in 1945, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spent the next three decades carrying out agrarian reform among nearly one-third of the world’s peasants. This book presents a new perspective on the first step of this reform, when the CCP helped redistribute over 40 million hectares of land to over three hundred million impoverished peasants in the nationwide land reform movement. This land reform, the founding myth of the People’s Republic of China (1949–present) and one of the largest redistributions of wealth and power in history, embodies the idea that an equal distribution of property will lead to social and political equality. Power Over Property argues that in practice, however, the opposite occurred: the redistribution of political power led to a more equal distribution of property. China’s land reform was accomplished not only through the state’s power to define the distribution of resources, but also through village communities prioritizing political entitlements above property rights. Through the systematic analysis of never-before studied micro-level data on practices of land reform in over five hundred villages, Power Over Property demonstrates how land reform primarily involved the removal of former power holders, the mobilization of mass political participation, and the creation of a new social-political hierarchy. Only after accomplishing all of this was it possible to redistribute land. This redistribution, moreover, was determined by political relations to a new structure of power, not just economic relations to the means of production. The experience of China’s land reform complicates our understanding of the relations between economic, social, and political equality. On the one hand, social equality in China was achieved through political, not economic means. On the other hand, the fundamental solution was a more effective hierarchy of fair entitlements, not equal rights. This book ultimately suggests that focusing on economic equality alone may obscure more important social and political dynamics in the development of the modern world.

Land Reform in China and North Vietnam
Land Reform in China and North Vietnam

Author: Edwin E. Moïse

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-03-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0807874450

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This first book to consider land reform in both countries show that reform, as the Communists have conducted it, can be justified in China and North Vietnam for both economic reasons and ideological imperatives. Moise argues that the violence associated with land reform was as much a function of the social inequities that preceded reform as it was of the reform policy itself and explains the difficulties the Communist leaders encountered in developing a successful program. Originally published in 1983. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Reform and Rebellion in Weak States
Reform and Rebellion in Weak States

Author: Evgeny Finkel

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-06-11

Total Pages: 89

ISBN-13: 1108847498

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Throughout history, reform has provoked rebellion - not just by the losers from reform, but also among its intended beneficiaries. Finkel and Gehlbach emphasize that, especially in weak states, reform often must be implemented by local actors with a stake in the status quo. In this setting, the promise of reform represents an implicit contract against which subsequent implementation is measured: when implementation falls short of this promise, citizens are aggrieved and more likely to rebel. Finkel and Gehlbach explore this argument in the context of Russia's emancipation of the serfs in 1861 - a fundamental reform of Russian state and society that paradoxically encouraged unrest among the peasants who were its prime beneficiaries. They further examine the empirical reach of their theory through narrative analyses of the Tanzimat reforms of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, land reform in ancient Rome, the abolition of feudalism during the French Revolution, and land reform in contemporary Latin America.

Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862
Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862

Author: Jamie L. Bronstein

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780804734516

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By exploring in detail land reform movements in Britain and the United States, this book transcends traditional labor history and conceptions of class to deepen our understanding of the social, political, and economic history of both countries in the nineteenth century. Although divided by their diverse experiences of industrialization, and living in countries with different amounts of available land, many working people in both Britain and the United States dreamed of free or inexpensive land to release them from the grim conditions of the 1840’s: depressing, overcrowded cities, low wages or unemployment, and stifling lives. Focusing on the Chartist Land Company, the Potters’ Joint-Stock Emigration Society, and the American National Reform movement, this study analyses the ideas that motivated workers to turn to land reform, the creation of working-class land reform cultures and identities among both men and women, and the international communication that enabled the formation of a transatlantic movement. Though there were similarities in the ideas behind the land reform movements, in their organizational strategies, and in their relationships with other reform movements in the two countries, the author’s examination of their grassroots constituencies reveals key differences. In the United States, land reformers included small proprietors as well as artisans and factory workers. In Britain, by contrast, at least a quarter of Chartist Land Company participants lived in cotton-manufacturing towns, strongholds of unpropertied workers and radical activity. When the land reform movements came into contact with the organs of the press and government, the differences in membership became crucial. The Chartist Land Company was repressed by a government alarmed at the prospect of workers’ autonomy, and the Potters’ Joint-Stock Emigration Society died the natural death of straitened finances, but the American land reform movement experienced some measure of success—so much so that during the revolution in American political parties during the 1850’s, land reform, once a radical issue, became a mainstream plank in the Republican platform

Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980
Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980

Author: Eric J. Hooglund

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2014-07-03

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1477300120

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Carried out by the government of the shah between 1962 and 1971, the Iranian land reform was one of the most ambitious such undertakings in modern Middle Eastern history. Yet, beneath apparent statistical success, the actual accomplishments of the program, in terms of positive benefits for the peasantry, were negligible. Later, the resulting widespread discontent of thousands of Iranian villagers would contribute to the shah's downfall. In the first major study of the effects of this widely publicized program, Eric Hooglund's analysis demonstrates that the primary motives behind the land reform were political. Attempting to supplant the near-absolute authority of the landlord class over the countryside, the central government hoped to extend its own authority throughout rural Iran. While the Pahlavi government accomplished this goal, its failure to implement effective structural reform proved to be a long-term liability. Hooglund, who conducted field research in rural Iran throughout the 1970s and who witnessed the unfolding of the revolution from a small village, provides a careful description of the development of the land reform and of its effects on the main groups involved: landlords, peasants, local officials, merchants, and brokers. He shows how the continuing poverty in the countryside forced the migration of thousands of peasants to the cities, resulting in serious shortages of agricultural workers and an oversupply of unskilled urban labor. When the shah's government was faced with mass opposition in the cities in 1978, not only did a disillusioned rural population fail to support the regime, but thousands of villagers participated in the protests that hastened the collapse of the monarchy.