Land Hunger Research Articles

Studies in Litigation Against the Church in Nigeria: The Case of Basilica of Grace, Abbi

This study captures in vivid perspectives, the legal battles that the Church has come to face in recent times in Nigeria over land. For this case-study that is focused on the Basilica of Grace, Abbi in Ndokwa West Local Government Area of Delta State Nigeria, attempt shall be made to concentrate on the legal struggles the Church began to face in recent times arising from land hunger and the emergence of the commercializing influence of capitalism on the Church in Nigeria. The Church in Nigeria has become hugely wealthy that attack on it has become quite fashionable with the hope and aim that in the calculated process of litigating with the Church over land, the Church may cave into settlement with the disputants and in the process, the disputants may ‘hack into the finances of the Church’ and ‘chop out a large chunk-of-cash from the tilt of the Church’ in order for the Church to have peace. This study which adopts the doctrinal method interrogates the circumstances that led the Basilica of Grace, Abbi (under the Registered Trustees of Diocese of Ndokwa Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion) into a pernicious legal battle with Femi Ojuyenum and six others representing Ogwezzi-Amacha family of Umu-Onyugba Street of Abbi. The study traces the origin of the grant of the land to the Church, the ceding of a part to the State for School as a Missionary Society and the pseudo reversionary claim of the Ogwezzi-Amacha family and the conveyance of same to unscrupulous ‘money bags’ in Abbi community who have taken turns to transfer the land in millions from one ‘Barron’ to another to the discomfiture of the Church at Abbi. It further interrogates the legal processes and pleadings of the parties through the trial court to the various appellate courts in details and captures the socio-legal influences driving the litigation. The study finds that those who dabbled into the litigation with the Basilica of Grace did so for selfish interest and in a calculated desire to upturn the grant made by the early fathers of Abbi community to the Christian Missionary Society on the spurious claims that those forefathers who made the grant in relative antiquity were merely overwhelmed by European civilizing influence and uninformed of the ancient and current value of land. The study found further that the litigation was being fought in the face of a customary arbitration against the antagonists of the Church. The study therefore suggests and recommends that the claims and attacks against the grant and the Church should be repudiated and dropped by the defendants to ‘allow sleeping dog lie’.

Cerulean: Variations on Lines of Durrell

Cerulean: Variations on Lines of Durrell Diana Lueptow (bio) Yearning takes a starboard tack inadequate to one’s vision of the past— swinging with easy hunger for land. Each island is a speech to memory.On charts they fall like lace;the time is morning, therefore soft. On charts they fall like lace. Sometimesany isle is Greek. Bulkhead to brace against.Warm breezes of muscle memory. Hugging shore, could leap ashore—women rest on blue wind,and like repairing mirrors holding up a window left open to the cold—kindnesses scouring rooms clean.On charts they fall like lace, the boat stands in to the island happiness is, you sing as if sailing to Delos— which was, Callimachus said, a poem in the sea. Mother, daughter watch for the curve; the swing of the next one, bay’s first white Victorians,lawns long to the water—repeats in her mind. [End Page 13] On the sacred island dying was prohibited. Last bluest walloping rim of water.Callimachus singles out with praise, that Delos lies like a poem in the sea, loved bycurrents, lapped with blue lines, numinous, birth isle.Longing storms the waves of sky that land moves under. And like repairing mirrors holding upsmall towns and trees—remote and clean as temples— to the lovely air, island floats on island, only memory after all. Rounding north northeast harbor town and lawns swing into view. [End Page 14] Diana Lueptow diana lueptow has always lived in the Great Lakes Midwest, where she has sailed Erie and rowed Cuyahoga. Author of Little Nest (Kent State University Press, 2015), in 2022 she received her second Individual Excellence award from the Ohio Arts Council. Quoted lines: from “Delos,” Lawrence Durrell, and “Hymn IV: to Delos,” Callimachus, trans. Stanley Lombardo and Diane Raynor. Copyright © 2023 Diana Lueptow

From Democracy to Dictatorship: Historiographic Problems of the Sociopolitical Development of Germany in 1918—1933

The article attempts to analyze one of the most difficult historiographical problems of the recent history of Germany — the transition of the first German democracy to the National Socialist dictatorship. Its necessity is dictated by the fact that in recent years new assessments and judgments of historians have appeared in historiography, which significantly supplemented traditional approaches. The authors of the article are of the opinion that due to the relatively late political unification of Germany and the preservation of medieval monarchical traditions and structures of domination, the subjects of modernization changes that began at the turn of the 19—20th centuries were social groups, associations, unions, political movements and parties. The war unleashed by the German monarchy and its subsequent tragedy clearly showed the reverse side of national unity under the influence of the euphoria of the “spirit of 1914”. The confusion and fears of the uncertainty of the future that followed the defeat in the war again forced the nation to unite, however, no longer on the basis of a common conviction that war was inevitable, as a means of overcoming land hunger, but in connection with the vision of political prospects and the intention to achieve them through parliamentary compromise. However, the fragile foundations of the first German democracy were again shaken by the upheavals of two world economic crises in the early and late 1920s. The fear of social and economic disasters was exacerbated by the lack of discussion about Germany's guilt in starting the war, which contributed to the emergence of a completely different belief in the form of a legend about the innocence of the Germans (“the stab-in-the-back myth”). Its dangerous potential, legitimizing the mass consciousness, could at any moment undermine the foundations of the fragile German democracy. The conviction that the defeat of Germany could be explained by circumstances not of a military nature, but of a domestic political nature, became part of the so-called “conservative revolution”, which arose as an opposition to the Weimar Republic and contributed to the radicalization of the right forces along with the subsequent rise of National Socialism.

“Compound Dispossession” in Southern Ontario: Converging Trajectories of Colonial Dispossession and Inter-Indigenous Conflict, 1886–1900

Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, two First Nations groups—the Chippewa of the Thames and the Six Nations of the Grand River—attempted to evict two other First Nations groups—the Munsee of the Thames and the Mississauga of the Credit—from the Thames and Grand River reserves in southern Ontario. These land disputes were successfully resolved by the turn of the twentieth century and no evictions did take place, but the 20 years of conflict are revealing of the complexities, contingencies, and evolutions of dispossession in Canada over the nineteenth century. This article presents a narrative of these attempted evictions and proposes the concept of “compound dispossession” as a means of grappling with these complexities. It is argued that compound dispossession not only captures the snowballing complications of historical dispossessions over time, but also captures the imbrication of multiple disparate trajectories of dispossession as the pressures of settler land hunger and encroachments on Indigenous sovereignty in the late nineteenth century bore down on four neighbouring First Nations groups simultaneously. Rather than interpreting these conflicts through a binary of assimilation/resistance, compound dispossession suggests the pervasiveness of dispossession as a discourse and the agency of dispossession as an adaptation to the unfolding settler-colonial paradigm.

A Reflection on the Nexus between South African Land Reform Struggles and the Unresolved National Question

The post-apartheid South African government continues to struggle with its transformation posture, including the quest to redress the racially based land inequalities that have plagued the country since its colonial past. The Covid-19 pandemic, the 2015 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements, and the July 2021 #FreeZuma violence have highlighted both the fragility and the resilience of South African political institutions. Since the formation of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a left-leaning and militant political party, in 2013, the South African land question has become more vociferously contested within government purview and in the public domain. Unresolved land issues have exposed the failure of the state to resolve one of its most sensitive national questions. We interrogate the land conflict and locate it within the broader national questions that have continued to haunt post-apartheid South Africa. Indeed, the South African land question must be understood holistically, and not solely as an agrarian question. Although the ANC-led government has implemented a land reform scheme under four pillars—land restitution, land redistribution, tenure security, and land development—there are still compelling cases of land hunger and conflict, as well as widespread confusion about the proposed land expropriation without compensation. Despite the rhetoric by government officials, we hold that the land debacle is a manifestation of a failing national question, state fragility, and an incomplete decolonisation process wherein the so-called “political power” held by the majority has not transformed into economic power and the effective redistribution of land to meet the targets of successive administrations.

Landed Nation: Land Reform and Ethnic Diversity in the Interwar Polish Parliament

AbstractThis article investigates the ethnic entanglements of the land reform debate in the first Polish Diet (1919–1922). Against the backdrop of global comparative studies, interwar Poland, haunted by land hunger, rural poverty, and high concentration of land ownership, is an odd case. Despite conditions conducive to far-reaching land reforms, that is, a high level of inter-elite conflict and semiautocratic order, the Polish reform was very moderate, if not disappointing. Unpacking the series of moves in the debate and the sequence of hairbreadth voting on its shape, I ask why, despite broad acceptance of the reform across the political spectrum, it could not attract enough support to be swiftly executed. The ethnic composition of the country triggered controversies concerning German farmers and peasants of the ethnically diversified eastern borderlands. Major political parties shared tacit Polish nationalism, but the history of political alignments made the nationalist politicians susceptible to the lobbying of the landed elite and estranged them from peasant parties. The land holdings of nobles were considered a bulwark of the nation, which effectively blocked the alternative idea of integrating the ethnic minorities via land ownership.

Land Hunger in Omo Forest Reserve, Area J4, Ogun State Prospects: Of Creating Harmony among Land Users

The study verified the extent of land hunger in Omo Forest Reserve, area J4, Ogun State, with a view to creating harmony among land users. Five villages/communities (Osoko, Aberu, Fowowa, Bashiru and Oloji) in Omo Forest Reserve, area J4, Ijebu East, Ogun State were selected for the study due to the level of their involvement in farming activities. Data was obtained using two set of structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression at α = 0.05. A high level of land hunger was proven and its main causes (population increase and area of forest reservation) were identified. Good governance in the affairs of the reserve, followed by the empowerment of the people to have a say in the management of the forest reserve and a holistic land use policy, with odd ratios of 3.85, 2.73 and 2.37, respectively would highly influence the reduction of conflict between farmers and foresters in Omo Forest Reserve (J4). 
 Keywords: conflict, harmonisation, land hunger, forest reservation and land use.

Land Reform and Belonging in South Africa: A Place-making Perspective

ABSTRACTPolitical debate around South African land reform peaks in the run up to the national elections. 2019 was no exception. Escalating urban ‘land grabs’ in 2017 had already increased emotion, tension and political urgency on the issue. However, the debate again carried surprisingly little weight at the polls. It was overshadowed by the burning issues of jobs, housing, crime, corruption and service delivery. We offer some insights into the racial and cultural topography of the attachment to land in South Africa, and how historical processes of settlement affect the nature of land hunger and demand in South Africa today through a place-making lens. The article is based on our own experiences, research and observations in rural and urban and urban areas, along with two recent studies of urban and rural land hunger we jointly undertook in 2017 and 2018. In retrospect it seems that, despite the perversely unequal nature of the South African spatial economy, there is an uncanny stability to local settlement patterns. Despite urbanisation, the homelands remain favoured spaces for African homemaking, while white South Africans cling to the coastline as a preferred place of investment. The debate about the productive use of land for development, we argue, should not be abstracted from an appreciation of the complex way in which land is inhabited, used and valued.

Agrarian legislation of interwar Poland: specificities of its implementation in Eastern Galicia

Reforming the legal framework of the agrarian legislation of the Second Polish Republic lied in the need to improve socio-economic changes in the system of agrarian land-use. An important basis for this process was supposed to be the creation of a proper legal framework, which, by ensuring the inviolability of private land ownership, created opportunities for the formation and strengthening of farms and would contribute to the elimination of landlessness and land hunger. The implementation of the laws of 1919 and 1920 in the agricultural sector was extremely slow, which forced to seek new ways and approaches to its reforming. In view of the difficult political situation in the eastern and southeastern provinces, taking into account the demands of political forces for reforming land relations in the interest of the peasants, the Sejm adopted a new law on the “Implementation of Agrarian Reform”, which came into force in December 1925. This legislative act determined the basic parameters of agrarian sector reforming up to 1939. Although Poland’s agrarian legislation largely protected the interests of large landowners, it at the same time contributed to the creation of new farms, improved the mechanism of legal registration of land rights, which strengthened civilized market relations in the economic sector. Separate legislative acts (1923, 1928, 1932 years) normalized the elimination of strip cropping and strip farming (comasation), which slowed the development of intensive agriculture; regulated leasing relations in the agricultural sector, which contributed to its transition to market conditions of functioning; allowed land reclamation works with the aim of optimizing the use of soil potential. State agrarian legislation and government policy had exacerbated national and social contradictions in society. Warsaw’s intention to change the quantitative relation of the Ukrainian and Polish populations in favor of the latter through the resettlement of colonists from the Polish ethnic territory to western Ukrainian lands, which were supposed to create strong households and become an important social and political support of the authorities, had failed.

Local alliances in rural urbanization: Land transfer in contemporary China

The relocation of peasants to high-rise buildings is the latest strategy deployed to feed the insatiable hunger for land in China. To free up more land for construction, Chinese peasants are encouraged to abandon their traditional homes and move into newly built high-rise modern apartments. A central feature of this distinctive form of rural urbanization is the transferability of land development rights across the rural–urban divide. Like most policy initiatives in Chinese economic reforms, variations and improvisation in implementation are found across local administrations. Such local disparities carry major implications for rural governance. This article compares and evaluates the experience of local governments in Chongqing and Nantong. Local governments in these two localities face both opportunities and constraints in integrated urban–rural development, a situation which has contributed to contrasting relocation patterns, and consequently variations in intergovernmental relationships at local levels. Enjoying the privilege of experimenting with the ‘land bill’ (地票) system, local governments in Chongqing have more leeway to stake their claims and are thus in a better position to maintain their authority. In the Nantong case, however, the more hands-on approach of the prefecture deprives lower administrative levels of flexibility to pursue their interests. This contrast in the policy process leads to different patterns of collaboration between levels of government at the grass roots in the two localities, which may also have a long-term impact on the exercise of authority at the community level.

The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History by Richard Lyman Bushman

Reviewed by: The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History by Richard Lyman Bushman Sally Mcmurry (bio) The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History richard lyman bushman New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018 400 pp. In this ambitious book, a distinguished historian sets out to characterize the "American farmer in the eighteenth century." This is a worthy goal since of course during the colonial and early national periods the population overwhelmingly lived and worked on farms. The book begins with a broad introduction to what Bushman calls "Farm Thought." This part consists of two chapters, "The Farm Idea" and "How Documents Think." This is a very effective and imaginative strategy for setting up a framework for such a large undertaking. The author immediately establishes the book's main theme, that the "farm idea" everywhere in British North America focused on sustenance and continuation for the family. Family continuity and prosperity were achieved through both self-provisioning and market activity; these two enterprises, Bushman stresses, were not incompatible at all. In fact, "the market was not their [farmers'] enemy; it was a necessary component of their domestic economy" (x). The determination to achieve a comfortable livelihood and to establish sons on farmland drove every farming family's activities. Bushman considers the extirpation of Native Americans in light of these motivations; he finds that "the displacement of one population by another was not melodrama but tragedy" (20). He also shows clearly how profoundly unequal was the colonial farm family; patriarchal power over women and children was far-reaching [End Page 556] and mostly accepted. In the second chapter of this part, Bushman lays out how such documents as deeds, promissory notes, and wills (among others) reveal ideas, cultural systems, and human purposes. "Courts made farms into texts," the author astutely observes (24). A second two-chapter part offers a broad overview of North America from 1600 to 1800, considering "The Creation of Sectional Systems" and explaining how "A Population Explosion Ignites Conflict" in the late eighteenth century. The chapter on sectional systems places considerable weight on geography (long frost-free seasons) as a factor in the South's reliance on slave labor. Some readers will regard this explanation as skating a bit too close to geographic determinism. The chapter on late colonial crises is more successful, as it takes a broad view of population pressure and land hunger and their political ramifications throughout the colonies. This breadth allows for us to see local conflicts as particular expressions of a much larger-scale phenomenon. The main body of the book consists of three more parts, which move simultaneously forward in time and from one place to another (Connecticut, 1640–1760; Pennsylvania, 1760–76; Virginia, 1776–1800). Though this approach simplifies a daunting task, it also shifts focus in a way that makes it difficult to comprehend the full extent of chronological change in each of the places, even allowing for the previous part's overview. In the part on Connecticut, the author uses close reading of diaries and ledgers to show how the exchange economy worked and how farming people passed on their knowledge to the next generation. Pennsylvania offers an opportunity to consider the mid-Atlantic "wheat culture," and to outline farmers' relationship to the independence struggle. A final chapter traces Abraham Lincoln's ancestors' movements to show how geographic mobility rose over time. These chapters show a masterful command of scholarship and ability to synthesize. The same is true for the next part on Virginia; it uses the well-known figures of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as entrees to themes of social stratification, slavery, and the persistence in America of the "farm idea" while British agriculturalists (like Arthur Young) were more fully embracing capitalism. A final part looks forward to the nineteenth century with an overview of "American Agriculture, 1800–1862." Even in this era of rapid change, Bushman perceptively writes, "the improvement in markets did not lessen [End Page 557] the commitment to family self-provisioning" (278). The Homestead Act (1862) marked government sanction for the "farm idea" while the simultaneous establishment of the US Department of Agriculture and...

The benefits of an agrarian reform model in Indonesia

Almost Indonesian farmers are small scale farming that its number is continuously increasing. Because of land hunger, some farmers cultivate vacant lands illegally, such as unproductive lands of plantation estates and forest lands. For solving the illegal occupation, the government has applied agrarian reforms consisting of land redistribution and empowering farmer scheme. Study areas consist of 9 selected pilot project locations applied in Java and Sumatra islands. The data of location distributions, area sizes, land backgrounds, asset reforms, and access reforms were compiled and analyzed descriptively. Locations 1 to 7 in Java Island consist of agricultural lands, except location 7 was housing. These land objects were under conflict between occupants and land owners. Location 8 and 9 were in Lampung Province, the case of local farmers’ utilized unproductive state lands. Due to helping poor people, this agrarian model answers the debate between access to land and access to income. Both sides must be combined in scheme of asset reform and access reform. Secondly, agrarian reform solves land conflicts particularly land occupation and increases welfare of landless people. Finally, agrarian reform will be successful if it’s supported with for poor political atmosphere.

Ecological wisdom: Reclaiming the cultural landscape of the Okanagan Valley

The bucolic Okanagan Valley, located on traditional territory of the Syilx/Okanagan Peoples in British Columbia (Canada), is a region in transition, the outcome of climatic and hydrological changes related to global warming and over a century of development-driven land use management practices. Land use decisions and public policy continue to be driven by an unfettered hunger for land, not necessarily in the long-term interest of delivering sustainable or socially equitable development models, while ongoing planting of new vineyards represents one of the most severe threats to biodiversity within the Valley. Respect for Indigenous expert knowledge–Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom (TEKW) – and maintaining their values in the land, is a land use topic often excluded from settler expansionism development practices and policies. This prospectus paper calls for a shared vision, developed in partnership with local expertise, to ensure a productive and experientially rich cultural landscape that protects the long-term viability of the region. Establishing a comprehensive policy framework for the natural and built environment grounded in the concept of investing in ‘place’ is proposed as a potential step forward in developing sustainable and adaptive communities to secure the well-being of the Valley. TEKW provides a base from which to connect ideas about cultural landscape, beauty, experience, and environmental policy, to support the conservation and sustainable management of natural capital for the benefit of future generations.

"We Will Show the Country": Bringing History to Life

"We Will Show the Country": Bringing History to Life

Reflections on land policy and the independence settlement in Kenya

ABSTRACTThis essay reflects on a personal participation in policy-making in relation to Kenya, almost 50 years ago. The policies that the British colonial authorities pursued in respect of the transfer of land to black Kenyans were crucial in the design of the decolonisation framework which managed the transition from colonial to self-rule. The outcome of the land policy was the creation of a black middle class of prosperous farmers, the preservation of the position of white farming, a transition to capitalism and the creation of a black capitalist class eagerly embraced by Kenyatta and his successors, but not solving the problems of land hunger and accompanying rural poverty which continue today.

Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans by Donald R. Hickey

Reviewed by: Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans by Donald R. Hickey Kathryn H. Braund Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans. By Donald R. Hickey. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. 168pages. $19.95. ISBN: 978-1-4214-1704-2. If you read only one book about the Battle of New Orleans, this concise account by the leading historian of the War of 812 would be a good selection. Hickey’s beautifully written narrative is a synthesis of [End Page 169] the latest research on the battle and the war leading to it. It is nicely illustrated and contains excellent maps. Hickey begins with an overview of the causes of the War of 1812. He views the United States as a “reluctant belligerent” (6) compelled by honor to “vindicate the nation’s rights and independence” (8). Those who focus on land hunger and animosity towards Native Americans might place greater emphasis on those factors, but Hickey does discuss the Northwest Indian War of 1811, which he notes ultimately “blended into” the larger war (13). Laying the background for early American disasters in the war, he focuses on the lack of planning and inadequate funding for the military as well as the supply issues which plagued American operations. His introductory chapters on the background and course of the war provide adequate coverage of main events. In chapter two, attention turns to Andrew Jackson’s early life and career. Chapter three provides a balanced summary of the Creek War. Hickey notes that the conflict began as a response to American demands for accommodation by the Creek National Council following raids and murders of frontier settlers by Red Stick Creeks. He traces the course of the war, from civil conflict to war involving the United States. Hickey then covers the larger war as it developed along the Gulf Coast. The final chapter covers the action in New Orleans, “the biggest and bloodiest single engagement” of the war (112). He traces the trajectory of battle and the importance of artillery in securing Jackson’s victory. The lopsided casualty figures may be attributed to artillery, but the senior scholar also examines Jackson’s generalship, singling out Jackson’s common sense, intuition, and ability to see the “big picture” in both the Creek War and New Orleans campaigns as key elements of his success. He follows up with an account of the Fort Bowyer campaign and events around Mobile. One of the most interesting aspects of this work is the “Epilogue,” in which Professor Hickey examines historical memory and the legacy of the war and the Battle of New Orleans. Noting that Indians were the biggest losers, he also examines the biggest winner: Andrew [End Page 170] Jackson, exploring the myths and symbols associated with Jackson’s victory and whether or not the Battle of New Orleans, which took place after the peace treaty had been finalized, actually mattered. The book should appeal to anyone with an interest in American history. This succinct and very balanced account of the war, the battle, and the general will be useful for teachers, students, and anyone who needs a refresher course on why the War of 1812 was not only important but inherently interesting. Kathryn H. Braund Auburn University Copyright © 2016 Alabama Historical Association

The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America by James L. Huston

Reviewed by: The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America by James L. Huston Jenny Barker Devine (bio) The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America. By James L. Huston. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015. Pp. vii, 345. $47.50 cloth) Most historians agree that the emergence of free-labor principles in the 1850s and regional divisions along economic lines fueled sectional antagonism leading to the Civil War. Narratives crafted by historians Eugene D. Genovese, Eric Foner, and others have described how an urban, industrial North outpaced an antiquated, agrarian South. Historian James L. Huston takes this interpretation to task in The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America, by arguing that the sectional crisis was actually rooted in rural America, where concepts of land use and ownership created very different societies in the North and South. Southern planters emulated the landed, leisured British aristocracy, seeking large holdings that relied on a subjugated (enslaved) labor force. Northern family farms, on the other hand, required small parcels of land, a family workforce, and the services [End Page 250] of independent, small-town merchants and artisans. These systems created vastly different societies that each hoped to replicate in the West, giving rise to tensions over slavery and landownership. Huston’s highly readable narrative opens by explaining the evolution of the British landholding system and the eventual triumph of the landed estate in the wake of the English Civil War. The gentry created a social system that eschewed manual labor and upheld leisure as an ideal. As leaders, they believed their time was best spent on education, politics, the arts, and the “mastery” of commanding subordinates (p.11). Their hunger for land compromised a dwindling yeomanry and middle class that adhered to Puritan doctrines of achieving moderate, sustainable livelihoods. Huston’s transnational approach takes a much longer view of landownership and explains how British colonizers transferred this conflict to North America. In the colonies, however, an abundance of land and resources, as well as the introduction of African slavery, allowed for family farms and plantations to flourish simultaneously in different regions. In constructing his argument, Huston pays careful attention to settlement patterns, geography, and climate, taking into consideration the suitability of the North to grains and livestock and the South to commercial crops such as cotton and tobacco. Ultimately, though, Huston argues that landholding patterns are a “man-made determination,” and here is where readers will want to focus their attention (p. 131). Recounting decades of historiography, he argues that southern planters “ruined the chances of the small farmers to obtain land,” and he provides persuasive evidence through a quantitative comparison of land use within congressional districts (p. 131). He takes this argument a step further by adamantly asserting that the sectional crisis was purely a dispute over landownership and that the growth of industry should be removed from the equation entirely. After all, the politicians who crafted the endless compromises related to slavery and westward expansion, including David Wilmot and Stephen A. Douglas, represented rural districts. Huston goes so far as to say: “the obsession of historians with urbanization and industrialization has [End Page 251] had a warping influence on the understanding of American history prior to 1880” (pp. 212–13). Huston neglected to take into account the growing literature on yeoman farmers in the South, as well as the growth of commercial agriculture, mining, cattle, and timber industries in rural areas that fueled the growth of urban industrialization. This complicates the story because, in many ways, the lines between industry and agriculture are not as distinctive as Huston portrays them. Nonetheless, The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer demonstrates that the causes of the American Civil War are far from resolved. Huston’s call to reconsider the rural nature of the sectional crisis introduces new life into an old debate and his conclusions warrant further investigation at the federal, state, and local levels. Jenny Barker Devine JENNY BARKER DEVINE teaches history at Illinois College in...

Discontinuous Narrative, Ojibwe Sovereignty, and the <em>Wiindigoo</em> Logic of Settler Colonialism: Louise Erdrich's Marn Wolde

The dominant consensus among interpretations of Louise Erdrich's novel The Plague of Doves (2008) represents Marn Wolde as a victim figure, abused by her husband Billy Peace (Hudson 47-52, Strehle 119, Valentino 131-2, Roemer 122-3, 129). This characterization of Marn emerges coherently when the novel is read continuously and linearly, and especially when Marn's story is interpreted independently of other narrations within the novel and in isolation from its earlier form as “Satan: Hijacker of a Planet,” first published in The Atlantic (August 1997). A rather different profile of this narrator-character emerges when Marn is read discontinuously, across the narrations offered by five distinct narrators, across Erdrich's wider oeuvre, and across her extraordinarily wide range of intertextual allusions to Ojibwe stories, the Bible, the midrashim, the Kabbalah, and Paradise Lost. The tension between covert symbolic convergence and overt narrative discontinuity, I argue, is key to the demand that her writing be interpreted in ever-widening contexts, in order to reveal the possessive logic of settler sovereignty, on the one hand, and to constitute Ojibwe sovereignty, on the other. Framed by Marn's traumatic story of domestic, sexual, and spiritual abuse at the hands of her husband, it is easy to forget that the narrative she tells is the story of how she came to murder her husband and walk away with sole possession of their money and land. The fragmented and unreliable nature of her narration reveals the ways in which she rationalizes her entitlement to kill in order to possess; that is, the ways in which her discourse exemplifies the possessive logic of settler sovereignty. At the same time, the very unreliability of her narration opens discursive opportunities which reveal the repressed meaning of her actions as a traumatic repetition of the historic lynching with which the novel begins. Settler land hunger, symbolized here and elsewhere in Erdrich's writing in Ojibwe terms as a wiindigoo psychosis, emerges in the interstices of Marn's narration to disrupt the logic of settler entitlement to indigenous land.

The True Image: Gravestone Art and the Culture of Scotch Irish Settlers in the Pennsylvania and Carolina Backcountry

The result is a window into the social worlds in which the bighams lived and worked. he traces their movement down the Great Wagon road along with a stream of Scotch-irish settlers from Pennsylvania to South carolina driven by the hunger for land and complicated pulls of kin- ship, religion, and politics. he treats the reader to accounts of marriage customs and the "great day" on the first Sunday after a marriage, to point out the ties that bound Scotch-irish set- tlers together as communities as well as con- gregations. outside of church, the settlers gath- ered at the militia muster and the convening of the county court, venues that Patterson sagely interprets as old institutions transformed into instruments of a new American society. return- ing to the bigham workshop in relation to nearby Scotch-irish stonecutters in chapter 3, Patterson views their work as reflections, and perhaps agents, of social change because stones broadcast a move from the mourning of old World bodies to the future-oriented remem- brance of their memories.

Economic Potential Of <i>Moringa Oleifera</i> As A Commercial Tree Species And Its Suitability For Forest Management Intervention In Taungya Farming System

This paper examined economic potentials of Moringa oleifera as commercial tree specie and its suitability for forest management intervention in Taungya farming system with a view to reviewing the objective in the Nigeria case study. Ibadan is the capital city of Oyo state, Nigeria and the second largest city in Africa. Results/ inferences drawn were primary data generated from FRIN research annual report and was used to rather establish quantitative relationships in an effort to provide a comparative account on the performance of Moringa oleifera in native and introduced ranges. Secondary data from two (2) research papers reporting rigorous scientific data on arable crop productivity in agroforestry combinations systems from Southwest (i.e. introduced range) and Kano state representing northern region (i.e. native range) of Nigeria were revaluated and analyzed. Findings suggest that growing and processing moringa leaves would require an illustrated guidebook that should contain the emphasis on cultivation; harvesting and transportation; processing the leaves; packaging and storage; and using Moringa leaves for nutrition. The standards, together with a code of good practices and an inspection guide, should be adhered to guaranty the good sanitary and nutritional status of the product especially for moringa leaf powder while emphasizes the need for more clinical studies to obtain acceptance of Moringa as a nutritional food supplement among the international scientific community. While prospects of farm forestry/ taungya potential to develop the Moringa oleifera processing and increase value addition to improve welfare of society is gradually assuming a significant position due to high land to man ratio factor. It is recommended that taungya-combined production of forestry and moringa tree /agricultural crops on forest lands be advocated. The taungya system always exhibited certain basic attributes and required some preconditions for its adoption. The preconditions, such as land hunger and low standard of living of the population, are clearly socioeconomic in nature. There is little economic validation of the farming systems described herein. Socioeconomic considerations should however be of high priority on any further research agenda. Evaluation of social acceptability of these practices by farmers should be a major consideration in the process of technology generation. Although numerous studies have been conducted on the Moringa oleifera (Miracle Tree), few address the social role of the resource, and its contribution to the reduction of the rural poverty. Therefore, a cursory look on the leading edge perspectives, science and application in terms of economic potentials of Moringa oleifera as a commercial tree species generally is encouraged for further research studies in Nigeria.Keywords: Moringa oleifera; Economic production; farm forestry; taungya; Sub-Sahara Africa