Spanish Imperial Vassalage and the Social Reproduction of Slavery in Colonial Cuba

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-285
Author(s):  
Karen Y. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Center Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract With the social reproduction of slavery in colonial Cuba as its center point, this essay draws on the recent historiographical acknowledgment of the way vassalage mediated the often starkly drawn social distinctions between whites and enslaved people within colonial Spanish America. Inside the region’s emergent, capitalist political economy, feudal vassalage continued to define each social sector’s rights and responsibilities vis-á-vis the Spanish Crown. The rights of enslaved vassals derived from their potential contributions to the Spanish monarchy’s imperial survival, in their capacity to populate the extensive empire with loyal Catholic subjects and potential military defenders. These concerns also justified the Spanish monarchial state’s ability to intervene between its slaveholding vassals and its enslaved vassals, by limiting private property rights over enslaved people and operating in ways that did not fully conform to capitalist profit motives. Awareness of such sovereign-vassal interdependencies challenges historians to broaden their understanding of the relationship between capitalism and slavery to include the remnants of feudal social-political forms, even into the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals PROPERTY AND THE RULE OF LAW

Legal Theory ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Framework

This paper offers a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the common law of property and the rule of law. The standard way of framing this relationship is within the terms of the form/substance debate within the literature on the rule of law: Does the rule of law include only formal and procedural aspects or does it also encompass and support substantive rights such as private property rights and civil liberties? By focusing on the nature of common-law reasoning, I wish to question the form/substance dichotomy that frames this debate and to show that the formal aspects of the rule of law are in fact principles widely adopted within the practice of common-law reasoning and as such play a large role in shaping the substantive content of common-law property rights. Understanding this has implications beyond the relationship between property law and the rule of law.

scholarly journals Pomiędzy relacyjnością a ambiwalentnością. Rozwój idei własności i wolności w warunkach politycznych samodzierżawia rosyjskiego w XIX wieku jako lejtmotyw w twórczości naukowej Richarda Pipesa

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-169
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Tarkowski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The article illustrates that property rights, including in particular property and the relationship between property rights and the category of freedom in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire, was one of the most important areas of scientific activity of Richard Pipes. For centuries, both the institution of freedom and property were highly politicised. Based on Richard Pipes’ findings, it can be concluded that the relationship between ownership and freedom manifested itself in the feature of relativity or ambivalence, depending on the time and individual parts of the Russian Empire. In the 19th century, the former mainly influenced the development of the monetary economy, while the latter strengthened the idea of samoderzhavyie in the political system. Richard Pipes noticed the sources of the antinomy between the idea of freedom and property in nineteenth-century Russia in the dynamically developing economic life and the “stillness” of the autocratic political power system. Following this concept, the article presents the doubts appearing among the St Petersburg ruling elite as well as provincial officials related to establishing the personal freedom of peasants in Russia, which finally took place in 1861. The system of tsarist autocracy in Russia, which was developing throughout history, noticed significant links between property and freedom. A good example of this process was the confiscation of land property. In this regard, the article mentions political premises, the impact of the phenomenon of “paradox and tragedy,ˮ as well as the socio-economic calculations carried out in the field of confiscating private property in the western governorates of the Russian Empire, after the January Uprising of 1863.

Property

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Barducci
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 6 will focus primarily on the political implications of Grotius’ theory of ‘limited’ property as they concerned the relationship between the sphere of individual rights, the social contract, and the prerogatives of civil power. From the debate on the abolition of tithes in the early 1640s to the controversy between Filmer and Locke in the 1680s, the debates on property rights revolved around how much individuals could impropriate from the commons stock and, accordingly, on the limits and prerogatives of civil power in regulating private property. Grotius’ theory of property, along with his analysis of the law of war, were also components of Dutch and English expansion overseas.

scholarly journals Justice, power and informal settlements: Understanding the juridical view of property rights in Central Asia

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balihar Sanghera
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
Migrant Groups

The article examines how judges and lawyers struggle to legitimise and normalise private property rights against attempts by poor and migrant groups to politicise housing and social needs in Central Asia. It discusses the juridical understanding of justice and equality in relation to property rights violations on the outskirts of major cities in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It argues that the juridical system is central in construing property rights and obligations, and in so doing social inequalities are legitimised and naturalised in a neoliberalising post-Soviet space. The article uses the concepts of ‘the moral economy’ and ‘the juridical field’ to examine how judges and lawyers justify and normalise their ways of interpreting and ordering the social world.

The limits of tolerance: Islam as counter-hegemony?

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 1751-1773 ◽  
Author(s):  
TONY EVANS
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Private Property ◽  
World Order ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Central Values ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Liberal Thought

AbstractFollowing recent acts of terrorism in many parts of the world, Islam has become an object of fear. While the threat of violence is undoubtedly an element that inspires this fear, Islam's counter-hegemonic threat is not limited to violence alone. Given its 1.2 billion following, Islam also offers a challenge to the central values that describe the dominant neo-liberal world order, particularly those values that legitimate the global political economy. Although tolerance is an important value in liberal thought, tolerance cannot be exercised where counter-hegemonic threats include challenges to the central tenets of liberalism. This article argues that the current fear of Islam is motivated by just such a challenge. By looking at four central concepts where liberal and Islamic thought diverge – reason and revelation, private property, rights and duties, and government and state – this article seeks to gain a more nuanced insight into current attitudes towards Islam and the fear of counter-hegemony.

Institutional change and economic development: concepts, theory and political economy

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMITAVA KRISHNA DUTT
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Development Theory

This article complements Ha-Joon Chang's critique, entitled ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History’, of the ‘dominant discourse’ on institutions and economic development which takes the view that getting the institutions right (by strengthening private property rights and market freedoms) is a prerequisite for development. It does so by commenting on the concepts of economic development and institutions, discussing the theory of how institutional change affects development, and examining the possibility and desirability of such institutional change as a prerequisite of development.

LYSANDER SPOONER: NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA'S LAST NATURAL RIGHTS THEORIST

2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Mack
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Herbert Spencer

AbstractThe main purpose of this essay is to articulate the ideas of the last powerful advocate of natural rights in nineteenth-century America. That last powerful advocate was the Massachusetts-born radical libertarian Lysander Spooner (1808-1887). Besides his powerful antebellum attacks on slavery, Spooner developed forceful arguments on behalf of a strongly individualistic conception of natural law and private property rights and against coercive moralism, coercive paternalism, and state authority and legislation. This essay focuses on the theoretical core of Spooner’s position which is his doctrine of natural rights—a doctrine that is primarily developed in Spooner’s The Law of Intellectual Property (1855), Natural Law (1882), and A Letter to Grover Cleveland (1886). I situate Spooner within the libertarian tradition in political thought by beginning this essay with an examination of two English writers whose radical writings (for the most part) preceded Spooner’s—Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869) and the early Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). I emphasis the strongly Lockean character of Spooner’s thought and support this contention in part by showing how much more Lockean Spooner was than either Hodgskin or the early Spencer.

Law and Agrarian Society in India: The Case of Bihar and the Nineteenth-Century Tenancy Debate

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Robb
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
Revenue Collection ◽  
State Involvement ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Personal Law

David Washbrook's original treatment of the question of law and society, to which the title of the present paper refers, has not yet stimulated the response which might have been expected. It is a wideranging study; only part of it will be taken up in this paper, namely its arguments about landed property rights in the nineteenth century. Washbrook states that in the first half of the century private property in land remained a ‘pure farce’ in India because of continued state involvement in the economy, excessive revenue demands, the persistence of personal law (as codified), and the weakness of the system of courts. He emphasizes the political implications of the co-option of dominant groups for revenue collection and other purposes of British administration. For the second half of the century, Washbrook proposes an improvement in the position of landed and powerful interests, as the law at last ‘beat back the frontier’ of personal law and disentangled private property rights from family and communal fetters.

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