Landholding System Research Articles

Ambivalent company attitudes and how they shape conflict: Mining conflicts in Mexico’s ejidos

Latin American mining conflicts have gained considerable attention in recent years from scholars who have mainly focused on the role of community struggles. The role of the mining company has been largely overlooked and it is taken as an assumed actor with scripted reactions. This paper dissects the role of the mining company within mining conflicts to examine how the attitudes of company representatives can shape the dynamic of conflicts with community stakeholders, and in turn how communities can shape company attitudes. Taking the case studies of two gold mining conflicts in Mexico’s ejido community landholding system, it illustrates how companies position themselves with attitudinal tactics such as blame-shifting, self-victimization, neutralizing the debate and ambivalence. These attitudes have different effects on both of the two communities examined. Company attitudes ultimately serve to position themselves as the gatekeepers of the discourse surrounding the mining project, and those communities that are able to unite to question the extractive model are those that are less vulnerable to these ambivalent attitudes from mining companies.

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...

Quitrent Tenure and the Village System in the Former Ciskei Region of the Eastern Cape: Implications for Contemporary Land Reform of a Century of Social Change

Both quitrent tenure and the village model of settlement in the former Ciskei region of the Eastern Cape have been through a sequence of changes since their introduction and gradual entrenchment following the conquest of local African chiefdoms during the nineteenth century. Initially planned around mission stations west of the Kei River, in what became the Ciskei, quitrent was extended to some districts in the Transkei as well. Under the Glen Grey Act (1894), nuclear families were provided with indivisible individual plots, heritable only by the oldest male son. Over time, complex local politics and social dynamics evolved around this landholding system. This article examines developments over the years, especially following the 1936 Native Land and Trust Act, which brought the reserve areas of the Cape Province in line with those in other provinces. By the mid twentieth century most quitrent villages of the Ciskei were re-planned under countrywide ‘betterment’ planning, mainly because they were deemed to be heavily congested, ecologically vulnerable and difficult to administer. Their rehabilitation and re-planning created new residential plots, enabling the National Party government to foster a supposedly more egalitarian system by granting rights to hitherto landless families. The processes paralleled intense villagisation and the inception of ‘tribal authorities’ in the Ciskei, as it was brought under the homeland system in the apartheid years. How do we understand these wide-ranging historical processes that have shaped relationships to land in these villages? How have potential solutions to unequal land rights been articulated and negotiated at local level? What challenges have confronted post-1994 land reform policy in resolving uneven access to land within these settlements? These are the questions that this article explores.

Lineage and land reforms in Malawi: Do matrilineal and patrilineal landholding systems represent a problem for land reforms in Malawi?

Based on government statistics and interviews with villagers across Malawi this article argues that customary matrilineal and patrilineal land tenure systems serve to weaken security of land tenure for some family members as well as obstructing the creation of gender-neutral inheritance of lands. Data from the National Census of Agriculture and Livestock 2007and the 2008 Population and Housing Census are used to characterize marriage systems and landholding patterns of local communities. Marriage systems correspond to customary land-tenure patterns of matrilineal or patrilineal cultures. The differences between the two ways of land holding represent a challenge for land reforms aimed at unifying rules for land tenure and land devolution. Drawing on an analogy of the resilience of the patrilineal land holding system in Norway, we argue that it will be difficult to remove the preferential rights of lineage members directly. We recommend that, instead of creating a unified national system, existing land rights should be formally recognized and circumscribed by fair procedures. A well-designed landholding system should aim to ease the transitions of diverse customary tenure systems towards the requirements of a modern large-scale society.

From Sitamarhi to New Delhi Railway Station: The Agricultural Antecedents to Childhood Migration in North India

In India, large-scale rural to urban migrations are occurring in record numbers within the last twenty to thirty years. These migrations are inflating the populations of major urban centers such as Delhi and Mumbai. Within these streams of migrations, the number of youth leaving to cities is also dramatically increasing. At the same time, deep agricultural transformations are taking place in rural sectors, greatly altering the landscape, the opportunities available, and ultimately the livelihoods of its people. This paper aims to address the agricultural transformations occurring in India in relation to the migration of children from rural to urban centers. With a shifting, but uneven system of landholding, climatic changes, increasing mechanization and industrialization of agriculture, and new development projects, the agrarian system in rural India is rapidly changing. Using interviews from a variety of experts as well as urban and rural informants, I will draw connections between multiple transformations in agriculture with the increase of children running away to major cities, in turn acknowledging that within this complex system of movement, there are innumerable reasons for the migration of youth. In this manner, I make clear the interconnections between issues of agriculture and other socioeconomic, political, and historical factors. This research comes primarily from extended stays in Delhi in addition to rural villages in Bihar.

Small steps to emerge from the tunnel

Based on the experience and activities of the National Centre for Town Planning Studies of the National Council of Engineers (CNI), and AUDIS, the Disused Urban Areas Association, the author proposes some suggestions to emerge – with small steps – from the tunnel of the crisis. First of all, do what is necessary. Simplify the planning regulations and procedures. Measures to take in the short term and at no cost: town planning reform, taking up the Lupi-Mantini proposals previously discussed and shared in the last legislation by Commission VIII of the Chamber on the Territory and Environment; a new law on the landholding system, the proposal developed by CNA (National Confederation of Artisans and Small and Medium Enterprises), CNI, ANCE (Italian National Association of Construction Companies) and Tecnoborsa. Secondly, do what is useful: quality and innovation in urban redevelopment projects. The AUDIS Charter on urban regeneration; the Quality Protocol for Roma Capitale. Thirdly, something extra: targeted projects for start-ups. Social Housing. The city to be scrapped. The renewal of residential assets. The divestment of state-owned properties. The reuse of obsolete industrial buildings.

Erenachs, erenachships and church landholding in Gaelic Fermanagh, 1270-1609

This article sets out to fill in neglected gaps in our scholarly knowledge of the system of erenach and church landholding in Gaelic Ulster (1270-1609). In contrast to previous studies which have concentrated on the legal status of coarbs and erenachs, this study analyses at macro level the functioning of erenachships as economic units, and at a micro level the system as it operated in the medieval lordship of Fermanagh. The result has been to demonstrate that the enfranchisement of nativus septs as erenach septs on church-lands took place as a result of the twelfth-century Reform (1101-72). In the case of Fermanagh, outside of the initial transfer of lands from the monasteries to the erenach septs, most of the church-lands were acquired piecemeal over the course of centuries. Many of the erenach septs were furthermore of outside origin, but became accepted as nativus septs through longterm settlement.

Poverty and Progress in the Age of Improvement: Evidence from the Isle of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides

In 1851, the landlord of the Hebridean islands of South Uist and Barra evicted almost 3,000 people from their homes and transported them by means of assisted passage to Canada. This episode of clearance was prompted by a failure of the potato crop and a four-year-long famine, and exposed the dire state of poverty in which the inhabitants of the islands had been forced to live. This paper draws upon six seasons of fieldwork at Milton and Airigh Mhuillin, in the middle district of South Uist, and argues that historical archaeologists should do more to expose the causes and long-term consequences of poverty. The paper explores the imposition of agrarian capitalism in the Isle of South Uist from the late 18th century, and makes the case that a system of landholding and land use that privileged profit for landowners over the subsistence needs of the mass of the population created a fragile economy that was prone to shortages and completely unable to respond to the challenge of a prolonged famine.

Erenachs, erenachships and church landholding in Gaelic Fermanagh, 1270-1609

This article sets out to fill in neglected gaps in our scholarly knowledge of the system of erenach and church landholding in Gaelic Ulster (1270-1609). In contrast to previous studies which have concentrated on the legal status of coarbs and erenachs, this study analyses at macro level the functioning of erenachships as economic units, and at a micro level the system as it operated in the medieval lordship of Fermanagh. The result has been to demonstrate that the enfranchisement of nativas septs as erenach septs on church-lands took place as a result of the twelfth-century Reform (1101-72). In the case of Fermanagh, outside of the initial transfer of lands from the monasteries to the erenach septs, most of the church-lands were acquired piecemeal over the course of centuries. Many of the erenach septs were furthermore of outside origin, but became accepted as nativus septs through longterm settlement. Introduction In 1640 Tadhg O Rodaigh, a descendant of the coarb of Fenagh, won a legal battle in the House of Commons in London against the bishop of Ardagh, claiming wrongful dispossession on the part of the Church of Ireland of his family's hereditary lands at the beginning of the seventeenth century. However, the Irish Parliament was determined not to proceed with redress, owing to vested interests within the same body and the likely implications for the Plantation of Ulster. 1 Even before the Plantation of Ulster, the nature of Gaelic ecclesiastical landholding had both fascinated and been the subject of legal analysis on the part of English officials such as Sir John Davies, Attorney General ( 1 5691626), and George Montgomery, one-time bishop of Derry, Raphoe and * Author's e-mail: ciaran.oscea@ucd.ie doi: 10.3318/PRIAC.201 1.1 12.04 1 John Logan, 'Tadhg O'Roddy and the two surveys of County Leitrim', Breifne 4 (1971), 318-34: 322-3; Irish Parliament, House of Lords, Journals of the House of Lords of the kingdom of Ireland (8 vols, Dublin, 1783-1800), vol. 1, 172, 174, 176; see also the poem 'Maith thrath do thoigheacht a Thaidhg' by Ferghal Muinhnioch O Duibheannain, celebrating Tadhg O Rodaigh's success in England. Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ms. H.6.15 ( = 1419), 303-4. My thanks to Seosamh Mac Muiri of Trinity College Dublin for pointing out the existence of this poem. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 112C, 271-300 © 2011 Royal Irish Academy This content downloaded from 207.46.13.180 on Thu, 08 Sep 2016 06:23:42 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Building the Borderlands: A Transnational History of Irrigated Cotton along the Mexico-Texas Border (review)

20ogBook Reviews451 One of die work's strengths stems from the author's use of primary materials. For example, Gentry utilized the Adjutant General's Papers, Erath County Court House documents, local newspapers, naturalization records, and oral interviews. The inclusion of these resources not only serves the reader's interest, but they also add to die author's credibility. The book is well written and thoroughly researched. While the work provides readers widi an excellent account of Thurber's vivid history, it also serves as a significant addition to the historiography of Texas communities during the late nineteendi and early twentiedi centuries. Any historian interested in Texas history , urban studies, and business history would find diis book a valuable resource. Tidewater Community College, Chesapeake, VirginiaKevin M. Brady Building the Borderlands: A Transnational History ofIrrigated Cotton along the MexicoTexas Border, by Casey Walsh. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008. Pp. 246. Illustrations, photographs, maps, charts, bibliography, index. ISBN: 9781603440134, $47.50 cloth.) For eighty years, from 1880 to i960, cotton was a preeminent crop along the stretch of the Rio Grande that separates Texas and Mexico. The crop's expansion was attributable to the advances in irrigation technology that developed along a singularly different pattern on either side of the border. Casey Walsh explores the topic of cotton production as a metaphor to explain the development of the borderlands, drawing together land use, migration and, above all, transnational politics. The story is intriguing, traveling from one side of the river to the other, focusing primarily on the more complex ups and downs experienced on die Mexican side. In both areas the opportunity to bring prosperity to the growers (if not the harvesters) was precipitated by the problems confronted in the southeastern United States. The first of these, the Civil War and resultant end of slave labor was followed within a generation by the arrival of the boll weevil. Mexico, not dependent on slaves, but resorting to virtually serf labor in the river-blessed Laguna region where production was first centered, recognized the potential of new irrigation technology. The munificent Anderson Clayton Company was only too pleased to become involved, and large-scale irrigation projects augured well for production closer to the border. Besides this generous contribution, Mexico's cotton was dependent on two factors: global needs and the federal and state governments' whims. In Texas, although the world markets were certainly a determining factor, investment in the irrigation projects spurred by the 1 902 Reclamation Act was primarily in private hands. By the early years of the twentieth century, the Texas borderland already boasted a citrus and agricultural base alongside the cotton. In diese same years, Mexico was still striving to convert ranchland into suitably prepared acreage. Mexico was handicapped by the land-holding system, which despite later expropriation, limited the opportunity for wide-scale development. A further 452Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril impediment, the varied status of die workers' setdements, added complexity to attempts at coordinating production. Walsh discusses the ejidos, die colonos, die campesinos and their relative suitability for the work. Today, where once cotton covered diousands of hectares, sorghum and corn are now the dominant crops. Walsh suggests diat promoting these basic grains is part of Mexico's federal "national food system designed to support die rural sector and provide security in an increasingly volatile and politicized world market" (P- 175)· Building the Borderlands is divided into nine chapters, widi a certain amount of overlap, each encapsulated in a brief conclusion. This is indeed useful as the story is convoluted. Along with being an extremely detailed narrative history, between the lines the book is a saga of villainy and political treachery, with presidents , state governors, and project directors promising improved quality of life and dien retracting their pledges. This distasteful element is hard to ignore. Maps, charts, and an index complement the text and footnotes. The bibliography includes extensive direct and peripheral subject matter and full historical coverage. As a geographer, I wish for more informative maps and, having limited skill in Spanish, would welcome a glossary. Austin, TexasJane Manaster Jerry Bywaters, Ij>ne Star Printmaker: A Study ofHis Printing Notebook with a Catalogue ofHis Prints and a Checklist ofHis...

An Experimental Comparison of Negotiation Strategies for Siting NIMBY Facilities

The quality of the urban living environment is strongly related to the provision and planning or design of public facilities, of which NIMBY, not-in-my-back-yard, facilities are often resisted by residents. Therefore, selecting the location for NIMBY facilities has become more and more difficult and time consuming. In Taiwan in particular, when the tenure landholding system is adopted, along with financial difficulties, frequent mass protests take place in relation to environmental issues, and consequently lead to financial development issues for the country. Hence, the interaction between the government and the public becomes critical and urgent. O'Hare believes that NIMBY facilities can be seen as a prisoner's dilemma game in game theory, and Camerer also points out that public issues such as environmental concerns are also a type of prisoner's dilemma game. This research adopts an alternative methodology to that of Axelrod, in which a computer simulation was used to compare interactive strategies in prisoner's dilemma games. On the basis of a deductive analysis comparing different interactive strategies in prisoner's dilemma games, in this research an experiment was conducted to verify empirically the results of that analysis in the context of siting NIMBY facilities. The experiment has once again proven that tit-for-tat is indeed a comparatively more effective strategy than the others, not only for the player under consideration, but also for the society as a whole, with the assumption of symmetric information, and it can be used as a reference when political decisions are to be made from the government regarding NIMBY facilities.

Migration and the household: Urban living arrangements in late 19th- to early 20th-century Russia

Examining population census data for the late 19th and early 20th century, this article examines the impact of rural–urban migration during the first wave of Russia's industrialization on urban living arrangements. The author finds effects that echo the experience of other industrializing nations, notably the proliferation of board and lodging arrangements, and phenomena that are more peculiar to the Russian situation. Notably, the system of landholding and associated legal and fiscal constraints complicated migrants' separation from the village and put a premium on cyclical and return migration rather than outright urbanization. These conditions were conducive to the formation of collective non-family households of labour migrants, artely, which were an important mechanism for cutting living expenses and increasing the share of earnings remitted to the village and the family household back home.

Temple land in Chola and Pandyan inscriptions

The purpose of this dēvadāna study1 is twofold. In Chola and Pandyan inscriptions (tenth to thirteenth centuries) dēvadānas granted to Hindu temples are often designated as kudinīkki or kudinīngā in relation to the mode of their utilisation by the temple. In past studies, however, these two terms have been variously and wrongly interpreted by scholars. The first and main purpose of this study, therefore, is to ascertain the correct legal meaning of these terms, which stipulate the position of the new kudis and not that of the old kudis, as most past studies have assumed. Having done so, we shall be able to understand the historical implications of dēvadāna, especially kudinīngā-dēvadāna, appearing in inscriptions. As a second and subsidiary purpose, therefore, I shall try to relate this dēvadāna analysis to the broader issue of the social change which occurred during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries caused by changes in the landholding system and land revenue policy of the state. For this purpose I shall examine the pattern of dēvadāna appearing in Chola and Pandyan inscriptions. This pattern seems to reflect these changes.

The Black Death in Egypt and England

In this cross-regional comparative study, Stuart Borsch marshals medievaleconomic data to address why, following the Black Death, “Egypt’s centralizedand urban landholding system was unable to adapt to massive depopulation,while England’s localized and rural landholding system had fullyrecovered by the year 1500” (dust jacket). After making a quick dispatch ofantiquated theories and flawed research, he introduces new findings onmedieval Egypt’s sharp financial downturn in contrast to England’s economicstabilization and upswing.The author points out that both states were centralized monarchies withsimilar population levels and agrarian-based economies overseen by “bigstick” aristocracies. Egypt had a modicum of arable land along the Nile;England had large areas of pastoral land and far more arable soil (pp. 16-17).In addition, Egypt’s nonhereditary ruling Mamluk elite, imported Caucasianand Central Asian slave children (some of whom actually ruled), becameiron-handed absentee landholders: “A vast gulf separated the Mamlukwarrior-landholder from the Egyptian peasant. A barracks-trained TurkishorCircassian-speaking Mamluk and a village peasant were probably as ...

Customary landholding institutions and housing development in urban centres of Ghana: Case Studies of Kumasi and Wa

In Ghana, land is vested in families and chiefs in the traditional land sector. These corporate bodies, referred to as customary landholding institutions control over 90% of the total land area in the country. The institutions therefore govern access to land. Urban centres in Ghana are plagued with a plethora of problems and one of them is inadequate housing. The urban housing problem is partly attributed to the existence and operation of the institutions. The customary landholding system is perceived as communal landownership, which does not permit individual ownership. It is thus argued that the system does not provide incentives for investing in housing development. This paper reports on a study carried out to test the assertion that the system does not permit individual ownership using two urban centres as case studies. The analysis shows that the operation of the institutions permits individual landownership. The traditional landownership system cannot therefore be the cause of the urban housing problem based on the premise that it does not permit individual ownership of land rights.

The Legal Status of the Communal Land Holding System in Ethiopia: The Case of Pastoral Communities

The Legal Status of the Communal Land Holding System in Ethiopia: The Case of Pastoral Communities

Images of Akutō

HEY never confront people directly, but sneak about with their strange bamboo quivers on their backs. At their waist they carry long swords with unadorned hilts and scabbards, and in their hands they hold nothing but long shafted weapons made of sharpened sticks of bamboo or hard wood. They do not even wear breast plates or other kinds of armor. . . . They pay no attention to the laws of the bakufu, and the attempts of the shugo to suppress them have borne no fruit. In this way, their numbers have swelled with each passing day . . .” 1 With these words, Mineaiki 峰相記, a work evidently written in 1348 by a priest from Harima, described groups of local troublemakers whom the author referred to as akuto 悪党 (literally “evil bands”). 2 The term akuto appears in a variety of documents dating from the second half of the thirteenth century to the end of the fourteenth century, and the words of the author of Mineaiki have been much quoted by scholars investigating the decline of the shoen system of landholding and the social and political changes taking place in the countryside during this span of time. The image of akuto presented by Mineaiki is of groups of outlaws and fortune hunters roaming the countryside and making life difficult for absentee shoen proprietors in the capital. Arguably, however, the image is an incomplete one. Historians agree that it is not easy to grasp the nature of the various groups referred to in this and other sources as akuto. The quest for common traits linking these groups has proved difficult since they seem to vary considerably in social background, objectives, and activities. 3

Uncertainty and Institutional DesignProposals for Tenure Reform in South Africa

Summaries Emerging perspectives on institutions and uncertainty in natural resource management contexts include consideration of legal pluralism and multiple institutional domains, formal and informal structures and processes, and a focus on practice and process rather than rules. This article examines recent proposals for tenure reform in the former ‘homelands’ (or Bantustans) of South Africa in the light of the mixed experience of tenure reform in other African countries, in both the colonial and the post‐colonial periods. It explores the issue of whether or not it is possible to legislate land rights and design administrative systems that take into account the realities of African landholding systems as complex, variable, and inherently negotiable – and characterised by a degree of uncertainty. The most innovative elements of the proposals are those which provide for a range of arenas and institutional settings, with state support and resources, for processes of claiming, negotiating, bargaining and conflict resolution over the content of rights, the boundaries of jurisdictional areas, authority in land management systems, and the distribution of the benefits of land‐based livelihoods and development schemes.

How Can Land Tenure and Cadastral Reform Succeed? An Inter-Regional Comparison of Rural Reforms

ABSTRACT In a synthesis of studies in English, Spanish and French, cadastral reforms in Peru, Colombia, Albania, Hungary, Burkina Faso and Senegal were examined, confirming that rural reforms are successful only if they acknowledge the existence of traditional landholding systems. Comprehensive, well-intentioned measures that are pursued only partially—without commitment from governments to planning and full implementation, and without the necessary support services—generally do not succeed. The studied reforms were successful only in: consolidating and registering customary tenure, and in promoting the conservation of natural resources. They were neither successful in increasing security of tenure; promoting improvements to land; facilitating access to credit, nor creating a viable land market. Mixed results were obtained in reducing land disputes, increasing agricultural production, and reducing fragmented holdings.

NATURAL RESOURCE ENDOWMENT, THE STATE AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

This paper speculates that a linear causal chain runs from the natural resource endowment to the landholding system, the type of political state, the choice of development strategy and economic performance. It suggests that resource-deficient countries tend to have peasant-dominated landholding systems which foster autonomous political states and growth-promoting economic linkages. Such countries out-perform resource-rich ones which have more varied landholding patterns which emphasise conflicts over rents and foster factional political states and weaker economic linkages. The preoccupation with rents in resource-rich countries impedes beneficial land reform and creates inefficient industry in a counter-productive effort to create non-farm jobs. Resource-deficient countries cannot afford such inefficient transfers and pursue a development strategy which uses scarce resources more effectively. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.