scholarly journals Economic Forms in Pre-Colonial Ghana

1970 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Hymer
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Economic Surplus ◽  
New Class ◽  
Low Degree ◽  
Land Tenure System ◽  
The Village

This paper uses a simple physiocratic model to examine forms of economic organization prevailing in Ghana before it was incorporated into the British Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. It is divided into three parts. The first analyzes the village subsistence economy and suggests that the egalitarian nature of the land-tenure system prevented the emergence of a land-owning class and the appropriation of an economic surplus. This led to an economic structure characterized by a low level of material production and a low degree of specialization and exchange. The second part analyzes forms of economic organization associated with long distance trade: that is, the very old northern trade with other parts of Africa, and the southern coastal trade with Europe which began in the fifteenth century. It argues that foreign trade not only expanded the consumption possibilities of the society, as predicted by the theory of international trade, but also introduced a new class structure and greater income inequality, since it allowed a small group to appropriate a surplus for its own use. The third part discusses the relevance of Pre-Colonial forms to twentieth century economic development.

Meret Shehena, ‘Brothers' Land’ S. F. Nadel's Land Tenure on the Eritrean Plateau Revisited

Africa ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjetil Tronvoll
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Male Adult ◽  
Adult Individual ◽  
The Core ◽  
Tenure System ◽  
Land Tenure System ◽  
The Common ◽  
Household Members ◽  
The Village

AbstractThis article revisits S.F. Nadel's study on land tenure in highland Eritrea from the mid‐1940s, and presents the current framework of the communal land tenure system of meret shehena. Under the meret shehena system, all land under the domain of the village is perceived as the common property of the village inhabitants. To restrict outsiders access to land, habitation rights (tisha) to the villages is guided by agnatic descent, and individuals obtain usufruct rights to land through residence in the village. The article proves that since Nadel's study almost sixty years ago, descent rules defining habitation rights have been changed, in order to restrict distant descendants returning to the village and claiming their land rights. Nevertheless, the overall workings of the system that redistributes all shehena land every seventh year to the village inhabitants, shows a remarkable resemblance to the observations made by Nadel. It appears that the customary operational guidelines of the system are virtually unaffected by wars and political turbulence during the last fifty years, following the core principle that each male adult individual with habitation rights (tisha) who marries and establishes a separate household, will be entitled to an equal share (gibri) of the village land, in order to secure the livelihood of all household members.

Syed Nawab Haider Naqvi, Mahmood Hasan Khan and M. Ghaffu Otaudhry (edt.). LaJld Reforms in Pakistan, A Historical Perspective. Islamabad: Pakistan Institute of Development Economics 1987. viii+216 pp.Price: Rs 220 (USS 35) for hardcover; Rs 140.00 (USS 20) for soft-cover.

1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-218
Author(s):  
Luther Tweeten
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
State Ownership ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Rural Pakistan ◽  
The Status ◽  
Land Tenure System ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
High Degree

The authors describe how Pakistan has grappled with land reform, surely one of the most intractable and divisive issues facing agriculture anywhere. The land-tenure system at independence in 1947 included a high degree of land ownership concentration, absentee landlordism, insecurity of tenant tenure, and excessive rent. Land reform since 1947 focused on imposition of ceilings on landholding, distribution of land to landless tenants and small owners, and readjustments of contracts to improve the position of the tenant. These reformist measures have removed some but by no means all of the undesirable characteristics of the system. The authors list as well as present a critique of the reports of five official committees and commissions on land reform. The reports highlight the conflicts and ideologies of the reformers. The predominant ideal of the land reformers is a system of peasant proprietorship although some reformers favoured other systems such as communal farming and state ownership of land, and still others favoured cash rents over share rents. More pragmatic reformers recognized that tenancy is likely to be with Pakistan for the foreseeable future and that the batai (sharecropping) arrangement is the most workable system. According to the editors, the batai system can work to the advantage of landlord and tenant if the ceilings on landholding can be sufficiently lowered (and enforced), the security of the tenant is ensured, and the tenant has recourse to the courts for adjudication of disputes with landlords. Many policy-makers in Pakistan have come to accept that position but intervention by the State to realize the ideal has been slow. The editors conclude that" ... the end result of these land reforms is that they have not succeeded in significantly changing the status quo in rural Pakistan" (p. 29).

scholarly journals Conservation Debates: People’s Perceptions and Values towards a Privately Protected Area in Southern Ecuador

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Verónica Iñiguez-Gallardo ◽  
Fabián Reyes-Bueno ◽  
Olga Peñaranda
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Southern Ecuador ◽  
Negative Perceptions ◽  
Land Tenure System

The perceptions and values that local communities have towards protected areas are of great value for the improvement of these territories’ management. Such perceptions and values are often absent in the conservation planning process, particularly in those privately protected areas that are established in areas where the land tenure system is based not only on ownership but also on customary uses. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data obtained through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and members of communities surrounding a privately protected area in southern Ecuador, we identify that the level of collaboration with the managers, the distance to the protected area, the percentage of untitled land, and the dependence on the resources (customary uses) are among the variables affecting these perceptions and values. Positive perceptions towards protected areas and naturalistic values are developed among those who collaborate with the protected area managers, whereas negative perceptions, and a mix of naturalistic and biospheric values are developed among those who have a sense of a lack of attention to social needs although supporting nature conservation at the same time. The evidence presented shows the importance of matching local peoples’ expectations with conservation goals during the establishment of a protected area.

COMBINING ORAL TRADITIONS AND BAYESIAN CHRONOLOGICAL MODELING TO UNDERSTAND VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT IN THE GULF OF PAPUA (PAPUA NEW GUINEA)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Chris Urwin ◽  
Quan Hua ◽  
Henry Arifeae
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gulf Of Papua ◽  
The Village

ABSTRACT When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two ancestral village sites in Orokolo Bay: Popo and Mirimua Mapoe. A Bayesian model composed of 35 14C assays from seven excavations, alongside the oral traditional accounts, demonstrates that people lived at Popo from 765–575 cal BP until 220–40 cal BP, at which time they moved southwards to Mirimua Mapoe. The village of Popo spanned ca. 34 ha and was composed of various estates, each occupied by a different tribe. Through time, the inhabitants of Popo transformed (e.g., expanded, contracted, and shifted) the village to manage social and ceremonial priorities, long-distance exchange opportunities and changing marine environments. Ours is a crucial case study of how oral traditional ways of understanding the past interrelate with the information generated by Bayesian 14C analyses. We conclude by reflecting on the limitations, strengths, and uncertainties inherent to these forms of chronological knowledge.

The What-Has-Been and the Now of a Communist Past in Malaya in the Films of Amir Muhammad

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Carlo Bonura
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Village People ◽  
Communist Past ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Malayan Emergency ◽  
The Village ◽  
Communism Today ◽  
Aesthetic Forms

This article considers two films by the Malaysian filmmaker Amir Muhammad, The Last Communist of 2006 and the Village People Radio Show of 2007. Both films are focused on the Malayan Emergency and the lives of a small group of Malayan communists. Through an engagement with Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller,” the analysis in this article examines the aesthetic forms that structure Amir’s films, namely nonlinear narratives, intertextuality, and the use of images and stories as comparative frames. This article argues that Amir’s films enable audiences to recognize how the truth of a communist past in Malaysia, both of its politics and suppression, inflects the present. The films provide an opening to recognize how the absence of communism today is the effect of the ideological clearing of all leftism that became the hallmark of the end of the British Empire in Malaysia. Communism is made meaningful in Amir’s films both as a lived experience and as a displacement that is absent from the postcolonial everyday.

scholarly journals The Bell Telephone Historical Collection and Late Nineteenth-Century Canadian Urban History: A Preliminary Report

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darrell A. Norris
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Return On Investment ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Quebec City ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Voice Transmission ◽  
Telephone Exchange ◽  
Central Canada ◽  
Late Nineteenth

In 1878, the first telephone exchange in the British Empire was put into service at Hamilton, Ontario. By 1891, the Bell Telephone Company of Canada had completed a long-distance network exceeding 6400 kilometres, including an unbroken link along Central Canada's "Main Street," between Quebec City and Windsor. The company's operations in 1891 embraced 22,000 subscribers and more than 200 exchanges. The spread of the long-distance network was halting at first, owing to the meagre capital resources of the company and the relatively poor return on investment given just a few thousand subscribers in the entire system. Also, much of the initial capital investment was quickly rendered obsolete, because of technical improvements in voice transmission over copper metallic circuits, which by the mid-1880s had begun to replace and augment existing long-distance links by iron wire. This research note discusses the development of the long-distance telephone network in Central Canada, its evolving pattern of telephone exchanges, the spread of telephone adoption, and the intensity with which the long-distance system was used in its formative phase. The research was completed under the auspices of the Historical Atlas of Canada/Atlas Historique du Canada.

scholarly journals Merchants and States: Private Trade and the Fall of Madras, 1746

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Søren Mentz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The State ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Economic Surplus ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Private Entrepreneurs ◽  
British State

Michael Pearson has argued that “rights for revenue” was an important element in the European way of organizing long-distance trade in the early modern period. The state provided indigenous merchant groups with commercial privileges and allowed them to influence political affairs. In return, the state received a part of the economic surplus. The East India Company and the British state shared such a relationship. However, as this article demonstrates, the East India Company was not an impersonal entity. It consisted of many layers of private entrepreneurs, who pursued their own private interests sheltered by the Company’s privileged position. One such group was the Company servants in Asia. The French conquest of Madras in 1746 and the following period of British sub-imperialism in India demonstrate that the state had traded off too many rights. Through the business papers of Willian Monson, a senior Company servant in Madras, the historian can describe the fall of Madras as a consequence of deteriorating relationships between private interests within the Company structure. Directors, shareholders, Company servants and private merchants in India fell out with each other. In this situation, the British state found it difficult to intervene.

scholarly journals The THE CONCEPT OF THE LAND REFORM IN CUSTOMARY LAW OF THE JAVANESE COMMUNITY

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-127
Author(s):  
Widhiana Hestining Puri
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Agrarian Reform ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Regulation Mechanism ◽  
Individual Property ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Community Regulation ◽  
The Village

THE CONCEPT OF THE LAND REFORM IN CUSTOMARY LAW OF THE JAVANESE COMMUNITY   Widhiana H. Puri Phd Student at Law Fakulty of Gadjah Mada University and Lecture in National Land Academy, Indonesia. Email [email protected] Research Highlights   Land reform is a state effort to overcome the imbalance of land tenure in the community (Wiradi, 2000 # 1). Customary law in the Javanese community recognizes the existence of a mechanism of welfare distribution through the ownership and joint use of land in community togetherness bonds based on territorial factors as well as the concept of land reform. The existence of customary land as pekulen land is land owned by the village whose use rights can be requested by the villagers with a rotating utilization mechanism among the villagers in need (Luthfi, 2010 # 2). The study found that indigenous peoples in Java had a welfare distribution mechanism that was the essence of land reform or agrarian reform through a mechanism of land communalization and distribution of its use carried out on a shared land / communal land of the village in rotation.     Research Objectives This research was conducted in order to understand the phenomena of the implementation of law that developed in the community. The existence of community law or so-called non state law, informal law, or customary law in Indonesia is very numerous. The reality of this law is that the majority is still far from the attention and order of a positive and formal state legal arrangement. The community regulation model is an effort to meet the needs of its legal ideals in the midst of limited state positive law arrangements that tend to be more static and less responsive (Puri, 2017 # 16). The community regulation mechanism is a manifestation of unity in the village community where the distribution of land use is carried out among community members who have a concept in line with the national agrarian policy of the country called land reform. The regulatory model initiated from the local level becomes the learning material for how the land regulation mechanism is not always top down, but can be bottom up based on customary law that is proven effective and in accordance with the characteristics of the local community.     Methodology This research was carried out through an empirical legal research model with research locations in villages in Pituruh Subdistrict, Purworejo Regency, Central Java Province. This research is a kind of analytical descriptive research that is directed to get an idea of ​​how the implementation of Javanese traditions in land management has a concept similar to land reform or agrarian reform. In order to analyze existing traditions, a socio-legal approach is carried out, namely a study of the law using the approach of law and social sciences in order to analyze it (Irianto, 2012 # 17). The legal approach referred to is not only to see aspects of norms that are built on the provisions of customary law alone but by looking at their relevance to the regulation of the positive law of the country as the territory of the enactment of the community regulation. This is to see the common thread and the interrelationship between the two and avoid the release of the phenomenon of legal pluralism that is within the scope of national law. So that the legal norms of the community can be assessed as the model of regulation that can be applied in other regions.     Results Javanese people in Indonesia have a land regulation mechanism that has a concept similar to that of land reform or agrarian reform by the state. The customary law of the Javanese community has a common bond based on territorial factors or similarity in the area of ​​residence (Taneko, 2002 # 11). Customary law communities with their customary rights can own and control land both in the concept of individual property rights and communal / communal property rights. The concept of shared property / communal rights illustrates the existence of ownership rights by all members of the community embodied in village control (Susanto, 1983 # 18). One form of joint ownership is the right of possession which can be controlled by community members with the permission of the village government to be used for the benefit of themselves and their families with a rotating mechanism. At present, land is experiencing strengthening and individualization, but the character of togetherness and social function of land is maintained through the distribution of utilization rights of speculative land which has the status of individual property rights, in village settings.     Findings Land reform or agrarian reform is a land policy that aims to overcome the imbalance of land tenure through the distribution of land to people in need. Land reform or agrarian reform can be extended not only to the concept of distribution of land ownership but also to the control and use of land. The limitations of the number of land parcels and the need for land can be overcome through a model of tenure and shared use of land based on the concept of joint property / communal rights over land.    

Obsidian in Southern Ecuador: The Carboncillo Source

2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis E. Ogburn
Keyword(s):  
Economic Organization ◽  
Geochemical Analysis ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Far North ◽  
The North ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Southern Ecuador ◽  
High Level ◽  
Northern Highlands

AbstractThe Carboncillo area in the southern highlands of Ecuador is identified as the only confirmed source of archaeological obsidian located in the country outside of the northern highlands and is the first identified in the large gap between the known Ecuadorian and Peruvian sources. With the identification of this source, it can no longer be assumed that all obsidian found in Ecuador came from sources in the northern highlands. Thus the Carboncillo source has significant implications for interpreting patterns of long-distance exchange in the Andes, especially in southern Ecuador and the far north of Peru. A geochemical analysis of the Carboncillo material shows that it can be easily distinguished from the obsidian from other Ecuadorian sources. A provenance study of archaeological obsidian samples from the southern highlands of Ecuador using x-ray fluorescence demonstrates that the Carboncillo obsidian was used at the Preceramic site of Chobshi Cave and at a number of late prehispanic sites in the Saraguro region. The results indicate a high level of sociopolitical and economic isolation in late prehistory, most likely tied to a preoccupation with warfare between neighboring groups, and provide additional evidence that the economic organization of the southern highlands differed markedly from that of the north during this time.

Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Balance Sheet ◽  
Oceanic Islands ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Physical Size ◽  
Strategic Competition ◽  
Scientific Exploration ◽  
Colonial Settlement

Islands are not just geographical units or physical facts; their importance and significance arise from the human activities associated with them. The maritime routes of sailing ships, victualling requirements of their sailors, and strategic demands of seaborne empires in the age of sail – as well as their intrinsic value as sources of rare commodities – meant that islands across the globe played prominent parts in imperial consolidation and expansion. This volume examines the ways in which islands (and groups of islands) contributed to the establishment, extension, and maintenance of the British Empire in the age of sail. Chapters explore the geographical, topographical, economic, and social diversity of the islands that comprised a large component of the British Empire in an era of rapid and significant expansion. Although many were isolated rocky outcrops, they acted as crucial nodal points, providing critical assistance for ships and men embarked on the long-distance voyages that characterized British overseas activities in the period. Intercontinental maritime trade, colonial settlement, and scientific exploration would have been impossible without these oceanic islands. They also acted as sites of strategic competition, contestation, and conflict for rival European powers keen to outstrip each other in developing and maintaining overseas markets, plantations, and settlements. The importance of islands outstripped their physical size, populations, or individual economic contribution to the imperial balance sheet. Standing at the centre of maritime routes of global connectivity, islands offer historians fresh perspectives on the intercontinental communication, commercial connections, and territorial expansion that characterized the British Empire.

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