Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain's Annexation of Lagos, 1861

1980 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 777-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony G. Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
African History ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Century Development

Britain's acquisiton of Lagos has already attracted considerable historical research, but it is examined here from a new perspective and with the help of unused sources. Three conclusions are drawn. First, the episode itself is reinterpreted to give prominence to changing property rights as both a cause and a consequence of annexation. Second, it is argued that the Lagos case can be placed in a broader framework of imperial expansion in which institutional change formed the centerpiece of a nineteenth-century development drive. Third, it is suggested that the study of African history might benefit from assigning higher priority to the analysis of property rights other than those embodied in slave-holding.

Land tenure and Inheritance in Classical Sparta

1986 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Hodkinson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
General State ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Perspective

‘The problem of Spartan land tenure is one of the most vexed in the obscure field of Spartan institutions.’ Walbank's remark is as true today as when it was written nearly thirty years ago. Controversy surrounding this subject has a long tradition going back to the nineteenth century and the last thirty years have witnessed no diminution in the level of disagreement, as is demonstrated by a comparison of the differing approaches in the recent works by Cartledge, Cozzoli, David and Marasco. Although another study runs the risk of merely adding one more hypothesis to the general state of uncertainty, a fundamental reassessment of the question is required, not least because of its significance for the historian's interpretation of the overall character of Spartiate society. Through the introduction of a new perspective it may be possible to advance our understanding of the subject.In Section I of this essay I shall attempt to review several influential scholarly theories and to examine their feasibility and the reliability of the evidence upon which they are based. Section II will begin to construct a more plausible alternative account which is based upon more trustworthy evidence. Finally, Section III will discuss a comparatively underemphasised aspect of the topic, the property rights of Spartiate women, which suggests a rather different interpretation of the character of land tenure and inheritance from those more usually adopted.

An Imperial Nation-State

2021 ◽  
pp. 941-963
Author(s):  
David Todd
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Nation State ◽  
French Empire ◽  
French Experience ◽  
Informal Empire ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Ideal

Rather than as a continuous process, French imperial expansion is better understood as a succession of four distinct empires: a Bourbon mercantilist empire until 1789, a messianic European empire in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, a global informal empire in the nineteenth century, and a republican territorial empire after 1880. In each of these empires, the ideal of assimilation, in its Catholic, Napoleonic, or republican variants, was much trumpeted by French empire-builders. But historical research has shown that, in practice, French imperial power chiefly relied on pragmatic collaboration with imperial subjects and auxiliaries. Successive waves of imperial expansion rarely resulted in extensive “Frenchification,” although universalist rhetoric often inadvertently contributed to the outbreak of violent and successful rebellions against imperial rule as in Haiti, Napoleonic Europe, or Algeria. Despite such moments of dislocation, the French experience illustrates well the potential and resilience of the nation-state as a powerbase for imperial expansion.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Ben Prestel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

The introduction shows that the historical parallels between cities in Europe and the Middle East during the nineteenth century are an underresearched topic in history, demonstrating that Eurocentric tendencies have led to a separation between historical studies on cities in these two regions. It shows how a comparison between Berlin and Cairo contributes to the study of potential parallels between cities in Europe and the Middle East. It is in this context that the history of emotions opens up a new perspective. While older comparative studies have focused on the origins of urban change, the introduction argues that a history of emotions shifts the focus towards the study of how contemporaries negotiated urban change. In this way, the history of emotions helps to overcome Eurocentric pitfalls and offers the possibility of a more global urban history, in which the histories of Berlin and Cairo begin to speak to each other.

The Politics of Chiefs and Commoners before the 1830s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raevin Jimenez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
State Level ◽  
Temporal Context ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
African History ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Level Analysis

The field of pre-1830 South African history has been subject to periodic interrogations into conventional narratives, sources, and methods. The so-called mfecane debates of the 1980s and 1990s marked a radical departure from characterizations of warfare in the interior, generally regarded in earlier decades as stemming solely or mostly from the Zulu king Shaka. Efforts to reframe violence led to more thorough considerations of political elites and statecraft from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century but also contributed to new approaches to ethnicity, dependency, and to some extent gender. A new wave of historiographical critique in the 2010s shows the work of revision to be ongoing. The article considers the debates around the wars of the late precolonial period, including unresolved strands of inquiry, and argues for a move away from state-level analysis toward social histories of women and non-elites. Though it focuses on the 1760s through the 1830s, the article also presents examples highlighting the importance of recovering deeper temporal context for the South African interior.

Staking out an inshore commons: Pound-netting in Gilded Age America

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15
Author(s):  
David Ress
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Fish Species ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Important Food ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Over Exploitation ◽  
Specific Part

Controversy over the expansion of pound netting in the largest US fisheries of the late nineteenth century marked an early conflict between those who considered fisheries a commons and those who sought to establish property rights in a fishery. Pound-netters physically staked out a specific part of the sea for their exclusive use, and their conception of their property rights resulted in significant overfishing of important food – and oil – fish species. Here, just as with the commons that many economists argue inevitably result in over-exploitation of a resource, regulation was rebuffed and the fisheries collapsed.

The Archives of Tropical Africa: A Reconnaissance

1960 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip D. Curtin
Keyword(s):  
Historical Research ◽  
African History ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Newly Independent States

As African governments have become richer of late, they have become more interested in their past, and the outside world has become more conscious that there is an African past worth investigating. Out of all these tendencies, colonial governments and newly-independent states alike have begun to put their government documents in order and to open them for historical research. This process of creating regular archives in tropical Africa has moved fast in the last decade, and it is time to begin assessing the consequences—in terms of documents now physically available, and with a view to their possible value as sources for African history.

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