Colonial Land Policies Research Articles

Sex, Race, and the Colonial Project

tions in early America has begun to place sexuality in the context of the larger imperialist project. Nation, race, and sexuality in the colonies intersected in ways that are now receiving the careful investigation they deserve. Both the legal regulations and the social repercussions of sexual relations, it is clear, were part of the colonizing process. Trade relations, colonial land policy, intercultural negotiations and conflict, along with changing demographic conditions, cultural attitudes, and colonial aims, influenced the promotion or prohibition of different kinds of intercultural sex. Not surprisingly, therefore, women, families, and the rules that sought to regulate their behavior often appear in historical analyses as tools of conquest. While this was often the case, scholars should not lose sight of agency and desire; the sexual behavior of individuals remains undertheorized compared to the analysis of the impact of sexual rules and sexualized representations of colonized women and colonizing men. If sexual relations crucially shaped the colonial enterprise, we still need to think through the shifting terrain of sexual contact very carefully. How did the interplay among desire, domination, dependency, and policy evolve? We can see how colonial policy toward European and Native American intermarriage changed over time, but how do we chart the experiences of intermarriage and interracial sex? For if there is no moment in which sex is not part of the colonial project, there is also no moment in which desire, domination, and dependency did not also shape the behavior of those involved, sometimes with unforeseen results. People are seldom fully compliant with rules regarding their intimate behavior, so how did native, colonial, and African American women and men shape their intimate relationships-and so also colonial policies? It is important to move beyond a discussion of sexual regulation as political strategy to explore how peoples' interactions continually pushed against government-imposed regulations. Sex and sexuality figured strongly in whites' concerns about race and the social hierarchy. With regard to the psychological meanings of inter-

Evolution of land policies and legislation in Malawi and Zimbabwe: implications for forestry development

This paper describes the effects of the colonial and post-colonial land policies and legislation on the management and utilisation of natural woodlands in Malawi and Zimbabwe. The two countries share similar patterns of land ownership; customary or tribal trust land designated by colonial governments for settlement and cultivation by the indigenous populations; private land mostly alienated from local communities for commercial farming and ranching, initially by white settlers and later officially sanctioned by post-colonial governments; and public land appropriated by government for purposes of establishing national parks and forest reserves. The private and public land tenure, did not only reduce the size of land available to indigenous communities for agricultural and non-agricultural activities, but also compromised the roles and power of traditional authorities in controlling and managing natural resources including miombo woodlands. The major factors, which appear to have contributed to rapid deforestation and land degradation, include increases in population pressure, poverty and failure by governments to urgently provide effective policy guidelines on land management and administration regarding the utilisation of forests and natural resources. The Zimbabwe Science News Volume 36 (1+ 2) 2002, pp. 18-27

Towards Comprehensive Land Tenure Systems and Land Reform in Namibia

ABSTRACTThe land problem in Namibia is the direct result of colonial land policies that created imbalances in property relations. The German occupation of the territory was followed by its declaration as a Protectorate and a Crown Colony. Thereafter, a series of statutes was used by the South African administration to classify the land into state land, private land and communal land, and to introduce new concepts of land tenure. This classification was based on the native-settler dichotomy, which made access to private land the exclusive right of white settlers. The communal lands were the creation of legislation, which, inter alia, deprived the indigenous people of their allodial rights. Individual rights over communal land took the form of rights of usufruct, with limited security of tenure. On the eve of Namibia's independence, therefore, most private land was owned by whites. The majority of the indigenous people, with the exception of those few who held so-called PTOs in the urban centres, held rights of usufruct over the communal lands. The Independence Constitution recognises this classification and the various systems of colonial land tenure. It has been argued that this is inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution, which aims to correct the injustices of the past. Unless this underlying contradiction is resolved, the new land reform legislation enacted since independence will not result in radical land reform.

Policing Society: the ‘Rational’ Practice of British Colonial Land Administration in the New Territories of Hong Kong c. 1900

Abstract This paper examines the formulation and practice of British colonial land policy in the New Territories of Hong Kong shortly after the signing of the lease. Far from having put into operation a set of legal codes and administrative practices which mirrored indigenous custom hence rationally preserving the nature of traditional social organization, as has been put forth repeatedly in the scholarly literature, the machinery of rational administration introduced subtle changes into the system and petrified the social order in a way which came to be confused for native tradition. These events reflect the intrusion of a larger normalizing process and the hegemony of a new kind of moral regulation foreign to the existing order.

Editor's introduction forests, peasants, and state: Values and policy

The transformation of forests to agriculture is a dominant theme in human history, previously associated with progress, increasingly associated with local and global danger. A workshop at the Smithsonian Institution brought together scholars interested in one very large and fragile deltaic forest system of international importance: the Sundarbans. We found that land-hungry peasants are not quite the villain of the piece, as often portrayed; destruction and deterioration of the forest reflected pre-colonial dynamics of community and state formation, colonial land and forest policy, international economics, and failure to solve international commons dilemmas. Preservation of the remaining Sundarbans depends on profound shifts in values concerning nature as well as changes in political structure and national economic pressures. Conventional wisdom in the form of the “tragedy of the commons” in explaining environmental degradation stands in need of revision.

D'un mode de produire à l'autre : un siècle d'élevage bovin mélanésien en Nouvelle-Calédonie

Although the history of cattle-raising by Melanesians in New Caledonia is made of a succession of various formulas — ail of which still currently in existence — , thèse do not proceed from an evolutionary line that would stretch back to the establishment of the first rearing practices, more than a century ago. The outset of each of these various formulas, as well as their subsequent developments, are enmeshed in the peculiar set of structural relationship shaping up the New Caledonian social System along with its Melanesian component at that very period. Melanesians who are invested with specific social assets geared to the dominant conditions of the period are henceforth able to get new or additional opportunities to practice cattle-rearing. In that context, changing conditions in cattle-raising among Melanesians are largely framed within the administrative control over land, within or outside reservation lands, a situation inherited from the colonial land policies enacted up by the turn of this century.

Land Reform in Kiaochow, China: From 1898 to 1914 the Menace of Disastrous Land Speculation was Averted by Taxation

Abstract. Mistaken land policies in overseas possessions of the German Empire resulted in disastrous land peculation. The small German Land Reform League vainly petitioned the Chancellor for a rational colonial land policy. Von Wissman, East African Governor, stopped the selling of crown lands, ordering their leasing. The speculators and the press denounced him. But the League supported him and the Colonial Office distributed its periodical to leading officials. The articles reached the Navy Department and high officers were won to the cause of land reform. When Admiral von Diederichs occupied Kiaochow in 1898, he was determined, as was his superior. Admiral von Tirpitz, to prevent land speculation. The Kiaochow Land and Tax Statute, in force from 1898 to 1914, achieved their goal. Inspired by Henry George, it was written by Wilhelm Schrameier, a young colonial officer who became Imperial Commissioner.

The Genesis of Colonial Land Policy in Swaziland

Abstract An analysis of the evolution of colonial land policy in Swaziland between 1903 and 1914 should focus on the interplay between the actions of the Colonial State and the emergent economic structures of the couniry. Several different schemes for the spatial separation of land rights between indig:mous and exogenous interests were considered by the Colonial State during this period and judged according to a set of pre-determined criteria. The criteria themselves were a product of the role of the Colonial State in providing the optimal social, political and spatial conditions for capital accumulation in Swaziland. The land partition of 1907 is consequently to he seen as the primary spatial expression of the subordination of the indigenous structures of production to the proceses of capital accumulation within the country.

South Carolina Colonial Land Policies.

South Carolina Colonial Land Policies.

Robert K. Ackerman. <italic>South Carolina Colonial Land Policies</italic>. (Tricentennial Studies, number 9.) Columbia: University of South Carolina Press for South Carolina Tricentennial Commission. 1977. Pp. 133. $14.95 and Maurice A. Crouse. <italic>The Public Treasury of Colonial South Carolina</italic>. (Tricentennial Studies, number 10.) Columbia: University of South Carolina Press for South Carolina Tricentennial Commission. 1977. Pp. xiii, 142. $14.95

Robert K. Ackerman. South Carolina Colonial Land Policies. (Tricentennial Studies, number 9.) Columbia: University of South Carolina Press for South Carolina Tricentennial Commission. 1977. Pp. 133. $14.95 and Maurice A. Crouse. The Public Treasury of Colonial South Carolina. (Tricentennial Studies, number 10.) Columbia: University of South Carolina Press for South Carolina Tricentennial Commission. 1977. Pp. xiii, 142. $14.95 Get access Ackerman Robert K.. South Carolina Colonial Land Policies. (Tricentennial Studies, number 9.) Columbia: University of South Carolina Press for South Carolina Tricentennial Commission. 1977. Pp. 133. $14.95. Crouse Maurice A.. The Public Treasury of Colonial South Carolina. (Tricentennial Studies, number 10.) Columbia: University of South Carolina Press for South Carolina Tricentennial Commission. 1977. Pp. xiii, 142. $14.95. John J. McCusker John J. McCusker University of Maryland, College Park Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 83, Issue 2, April 1978, Pages 512–513, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/83.2.512 Published: 01 April 1978

The Third Earl Grey and the Maintenance of an Imperial Policy on the Sale of Crown Lands in Ceylon, c. 1832–1852

Among the cardinal weaknesses of existing studies on British land policy in Ceylon is the almost total neglect of any reference to the theoretical foundations of this policy, and the tendency to study the situation in Ceylon in isolation instead of against the background and within the wider context of a colonial land policy. These weaknesses are all the more glaring for the years from c. 1830 to 1855 when a common land policy was gradually but systematically imposed throughout the British Empire, and an institutional apparatus controlling land policy and emigration was built up. The basis of the land policy of these years was an adherence to some of the fundamental principles of the theories of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.

Land Law and Custom in the Colonies

TWENTY Years ago discussions of Colonial land legislation and policy were focused on the question of the alienation of land to non-natives, particularly in Africa, and the adequacy of the provision made to safeguard the rights and interest of native peoples. The importance of securing to them areas of land sufficient for their existing and estimated future needs was considered so urgent that this was the subject of a special clause in the agreements placing African territories under mandate; and the question whether native populations had, in fact, been injured by the grant of land to settlers was a matter of bitter controversy in some British Dependencies. Land Law and Custom in the Colonies By Dr. C. K. Meek Pp. xxvi + 338. (London, New York and Toronto Oxford University Press, 1946.) 21s. net.