Land Revolution Research Articles

Violence, Patronage Politics and Farm Ownership in Zimbabwean Land Reform

Abstract This article explores the “violence–politics of patronage” nexus of land redistribution and ownership after land reform in Zimbabwe. Foregrounding an analysis of the violence on farms, which has been explored by many scholars in other dimensions, the article presents hard evidence of what happened on these farms post the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. Deploying Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this article interrogates the sociocultural and political linkages of violence, patronage and farm ownership to illuminate the dark realities of land distribution after “jambanja” (farm invasions). The violent behaviour around resettled lands is a manifestation of a well-entrenched patronage system in which those whose political views diverge from the “hegemonic power” lose their land through unscrupulous acts. The violence of the jambanja era, initially targeted at white farmers within the context of a “nativist land revolution”, continues to manifest itself in communities, albeit differently. It is, as the French thinker, Jacques Mallet du Pan, said of the French Revolution, “the revolution devouring its own children”.

Uses of the concept of “class” in the Chinese communist revolution: a study of the land reform undertaken in the Chinese Soviet area led by Mao Zedong

ABSTRACT The period between 1927 and 1934 witnessed a waxing and waning of the Chinese Soviet revolution; one aspect of it was the social engineering campaigns, such as the Land Reform carried out in the Chinese Soviet Area. In it, the concept of class, originally an imported ideological and theoretical concept from pure Marxism, was applied to China’s local society. Correspondingly, the Chinese Soviet regime changed its approach to the Land Revolution (tudi geming), i.e. from “targeting local landlords and appropriating their wealth” to a set of procedures and routines centered on “holding mass meetings and designating class labels.” Established literature on the Land Revolution generally treats “class” as a certain criterion or a kind of objective social reality, based on which researchers tend to judge certain land reform policies as having been on a spectrum from “too radical” to “too conservative.” However, they largely ignore the details of the process through which a “class” concept was grafted onto China’s local society – both rural and urban. By taking stock of and analyzing historical records regarding the land revolution and class categorization in the Central Soviet Area, this article examines how “the class” evolved from such a purely theoretical concept to specific policies. By so doing, it drives home the importance of structural factors that are critical to our understanding of the internal logic of the Chinese Communist revolution.

Genesis and undertaker of ‘quantification of social class’: On the technocrats in the early stage of the Chinese Communist Party's land revolution

The Land Survey Movement ( chatian yundong) led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1933 incorporated, for the first time, quantified measurements into land reform. This became an established practice in the newly liberated areas after 1946 as well as in the nationwide land reform after the 1949 Liberation. The existing research on land reform has paid little attention to this important quantification method used to define rural social classes. Even those who did pay attention were mostly interested in the policy side of the practice. This study focuses on the architect of this quantification method – Wang Guanlan. Through historical archives, memoirs, and journal articles and documents, Wang's personal background, his education, and his involvement in the communist revolution are thoroughly examined to reach an accurate understanding of the person and the practice he was responsible for. In so doing, we gain some insights into the ‘technocrats’ in the CPC during that period and their pragmatism, the way in which the CPC turned a theoretical and ideological concept of ‘class’ into an applicable measurement to define rural classes, and the limitations associated with such a practice.

The Confiscation carried out in the Name of Imperialism and Land revolution, as depicted in “Maekryeong” my Myeongik Choi

The Confiscation carried out in the Name of Imperialism and Land revolution, as depicted in “Maekryeong” my Myeongik Choi

Understanding the pressure on agriculture land as a safeguard for food security in Malaysia

The utmost and continuing challenge facing the agriculture world is to produce enough food to feed the growing world population. Food security is inextricably linked to a community’s access to land. Without land, there is no opportunity to improve agricultural practices, produce enough food and generate incomes. What worries more is that at present our country has to rely on the supply of imported food. Providing there are no crises or disasters in the Asia region then we can rest assure of the supply. That is the reason why the pressure put on agricultural land should be the main concern of all responsible parties, as it is the heart of our national domestic food production. Eventually, securing for food security is the only one dimension in protecting agricultural land. Agricultural land or sometimes referred to as ‘rural amenities’ is important as it provides scenic, wildlife, recreation and open space that gives benefits to society. Thus, this paper endeavors to comprehend the state of food security by analyzing the factors that lead to the pressure put on the agriculture land particularly in relation to the agricultural land revolution.

The Land Revolution in China from an academic history perspective: Changes of topics and paradigms

The Land Revolution is considered to be the most important factor that led the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to the completion of its military mobilization and the final revolutionary victory in China. It is also a hot research subject with regards to the revolution in modern China from the standpoint of many disciplines, including law, economics, political science, history, sociology and anthropology. This article presents a critical review of the studies on the issues relating to the CCP’s Land Revolution that focuses on three facets of the research in this area: problematique, theoretical paradigms and specific topics. The review uses a new framework to look at four traditional lines of research: studies of China’s revolutionary history in America since the 1950s, studies of the history of the Chinese Communist Party since the founding of New China, studies of Chinese social and economic history since the 1930s, and studies of oral histories since the 1990s. Based on a careful review of the current literature related to the issues involved in the CCP’s Land Revolution, the article is critical in clarifying the problematique process of the Land Revolution from the angle of academic developmental history in order to learn what internal roadmaps and developmental paths operated within academia, explore the problems and limitations of various research traditions and theoretical perspectives, and lay the foundation for future research on the Land Revolution.

Comparative Study on Moderate Scale Management of Agricultural Land in China and Japan

Abstract: The safety of Chinese agricultural land resources has already influenced the whole world’s food security. “Food Security” has become a vital issue affecting social stability. However, the current condition of Chinese agricultural land is not good. Therefore, agricultural land revolution, moderate scale management of agricultural land, and improvement of land utilization efficiency is urgently needed in China to protect the basic life line of human beings. There are lots of common places as well as unique features between Japan after World War II and China after the reform and open policy in rural land management. By analyzing these familiarities and differences, focusing on the process of Japan's revolution, and learning from Japan's successful experience in agricultural land moderate scale management, this paper wishes to be of some help in improving Chinese agricultural land moderate scale management. Key words: Agricultural land in China and Japan; Moderate Scale; Circulation; Management; Comparative study

“The Lands with Which We Shall Struggle”: Land Reclamation, Revolution, and Development in Mexico’s Lake Texcoco Basin, 1910 – 1950

Abstract Lake Texcoco, located on the eastern edge of Mexico City, had dried significantly during the nineteenth century, a process furthered by the Great Drainage Canal, completed in 1900. Although city boosters praised the canal for having eliminated Texcoco’s floods, dust storms arising from the briny lands began to torment the city. Intermittently from 1912 to 1950, the Mexican government carried out an ambitious drainage and fertilization project to curtail the dust storms and create an agricultural oasis. The government’s vision of a verdant and productive Texcoco bed generated widespread disputes between the state and local campesinos as well as among the urban elite. The postrevolutionary agrarian reform eventually enabled campesinos to negotiate with land reclamation authorities and turn what had been a project exclusive of the local poor into an example of agrarian justice. As engineers struggled to fertilize the briny lands at a reasonable cost, many urban planners proposed lake conservation and afforestation over drainage and farming to secure urban prosperity. But the agricultural vision remained dominant. In the 1950s and ’60s, however, urbanization, the political shift away from campesino production, and the prohibitive costs of farming the reclaimed land opened the door for a conservationist plan to resolve the incessant Texcoco problem. The study of Texcoco reclamation requires the integration of rural and urban history, two fields rarely in dialogue. Intraelite debates over the role of nature in urban growth and campesino protest shaped the evolution of this ambitious public works project. State-led development was therefore not imposed from above but negotiated, contested, and transformed from below by myriad social groups residing in the city and the countryside.

Re-Interpreting Modern Iran: Tribe and State in the Twentieth Century

For the nationalist elite of early Pahlavi Iran, the regime's military successes over tribal opposition, whether real or imagined, were welcomed and celebrated. These successes were interpreted as confirmation of their views of tribal power as hostile to modernity, archaic and outmoded, and of Riza Shah as the deliverer of Iran's national salvation. This conceptualization of the “tribal problem” had appeared in tandem with and as a product of modernist ideology in the late nineteenth century, acquired the backing of state power with the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty, and endured until the revolution of 1979. It communicated itself, in diluted form, to Western scholarship, which has been largely content to depict Riza Shah's tribal policies as regrettably brutal, but an unavoidable stage in Iran's progress and “modernization.” Yet this version of tribe–state relations is clearly an ideological construct rather than an historical analysis. The account which follows begins a re-evaluation of tribal politics in modern Iran, focusing especially on the Riza Shah decades when these politics were a site of intense conflict and where the nationalist template was most starkly delineated, and concludes by tracing and re-examining the evolution of the tribe–state dynamic in the decades of land reform and revolution.

Introduction to Part III

Wen Rui's Land Revolution in the Chinese Soviet is the finest study available in English, perhaps in any language, on the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the peasantry first forged in the furnace of land revolution and guerrilla war in the years 1927-35. The author works closely and critically with local and regional documentation, elucidating the land policy debates and struggles in the Central Soviet.

Yan'an Communism Reconsidered

The essential facts are clear. Twice defeated, routed from the revolutionary base areas they had constructed in the course of nearly a decade of guerrilla warfare and land revolution, on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Communist Party and its besieged army were essentially confined to a poor and peripheral area of the Northwest, having narrowly escaped extermination in the course of the Long March. Less than a decade later, Japanese armies in China had been fought to a standstill. By the time of their 1945 surrender, Mao's party-army held sway over almost 100 million people mainly in North, Northeast, and North Central China. In the course of the anti-Japanese resistance, the Communists forged a broad coalition of forces that administered and coordinated activities in widely dispersed rural base areas in China's interior. The base areas provided the springboard for nationwide victory in the subsequent civil war that ended in Guomindang defeat and establishment of the People's Republic. These facts are clear, yet explanations for the Communist victory and assessments of the character of the movement remain the subject of controversy. This article assesses major interpretations of the wartime resistance since the 1940s and concludes with a critical reassessment of the Yan'an Way as a framework for assessing the revolutionary praxis both of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and of the wider wartime Communist movement. Research for the book The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Selden, 1971) was conducted during the 1960s, prior to access by

The Great Revolutionary Contributions of the People of the Soviet Region

Abstract After the land revolution, all local soviets as well as the provisional Central Soviet government, which was established subsequently, gradually implemented a system in which all taxes were made progressive and were unified under one rubric. This system, which became the primary source of revenue for the Central Soviet government, was based on abolition of the various exorbitant taxes and irregular levies in force under the Guomindang and warlords—land tax, poll tax, and lijin transit tax.

Introduction to Part II

Wen Rui's Land Revolution in the Chinese Soviet is the finest study available in English, perhaps in any language, on the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the peasantry first forged in the furnace of land revolution and guerrilla war in the years 1927-35. The author works closely and critically with local and regional documentation, elucidating the land policy debates and struggles in the Central Soviet.

The Class Line in the Land Revolution

The land revolution fundamentally transformed the feudal land system that had prevailed in China's countryside for thousands of years. To be victorious, this revolution had to be clear about what class it depended on, with what class it united, what class it neutralized, and what class it attacked and eliminated. It was important to make an accurate analysis of all the classes in China's countryside, particularly clarifying what conditions distinguished poor from middle peasants, as well as rich peasants from landlords.

Postscript

I was born and raised in a village located in what had once been the heartland of the Central Soviet. Throughoul primary and secondary school, I heard many stories about the history of the revolution in the soviet. Subsequently, I entered Jiangxi Normal University, majoring in the study of history and remained there after graduation to teach in the department of history. In the archives maintained by the department, I found a good deal of material from the 1950s that was related to investigations and visits made on a village-by-village basis with regard to the revolution in the Central Soviet. This is what inspired my interest in the history of the Central Soviet itself. In the 1980s, in my spare time from teaching responsibilities, I was able to read and research archives and other investigations and oral histories on the subject. I also returned many times toRuijin, Xingguo, Ningdu, and other such places to conduct my own on-site investigations. I discovered great discrepancies between the popular descriptions and narratives about the soviet produced by our historians and the actual historical facts. In particular, I came to many new understandings with regard to the "leftist"mistakes within the Chinese Communist Party. Consequently, I wrote and published several articles on the Central Soviet, most of which dealt with the subject of the land revolution. Finally, in 1991, based on these studies and previous research, I published the book, Zhongyang suqu tudi geming yanjiu (Studies of the Land Revolution in the Central Soviet.)

Land Reform in Ethiopia 1974-1977

In March 1975, the Ethiopian ruling military council, or Derg, proclaimed a sweeping land reform, which aimed at bringing about a complete transformation in the country's complex land tenure system and in its social and political structures. More than a land reform, the measure should be called a land revolution, for there was nothing reformist in the Derg's approach. It simply opened the floodgates of rural discontent, allowing the peasants to take over the land and encouraging them to organize into “peasant associations.” The government did not seriously attempt to control the process, partly for ideological reasons, and partly because it simply could not do it. Rather, the peasant associations were allowed to decide whether to redistribute land among their members, or to enter into collective forms of land cultivation. The ambitious scope of the reform, and the suddenness with which it was announced and implemented, led most observers, including many radical Ethiopians and most diplomats from socialist countries, to forecast economic disaster and social breakdown. Such dark predictions did not come true. The economic consequences of the land reform were some increase in production, due mostly to good weather conditions (Dalton, 1975), and a tangible improvement in the peasants' living conditions. The urban population, though, suffered because of the sharp price increases that resulted from the disruption of the marketing system and an increase in on-farm consumption (Holmberg, 1976). Social turmoil undoubtedly was part of the land reform process, and thousands of people lost their lives in it.

The Land Revolution in Jiangxi Soviet Period

The Land Revolution in Jiangxi Soviet Period

Tso-liang Hsiao The land revolution in China, 1930–1934: a study of documents. (Far Eastern and Russian Institute Publications on Asia, No. 18.) ix, 361 pp. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1969. $12.50, £5 19s.

Tso-liang Hsiao The land revolution in China, 1930–1934: a study of documents. (Far Eastern and Russian Institute Publications on Asia, No. 18.) ix, 361 pp. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1969. $12.50, £5 19<i>s</i>.

Review: Far East the Land Revolution in China 1930–1934

Review: Far East the Land Revolution in China 1930–1934

The Land Revolution in China, 1930–1934: A Study of Documents. By &lt;italic&gt;Tso-liang Hsiao&lt;/italic&gt;. [Far Eastern and Russian Institute Publications on Asia, Number 18. Sponsored by the Modern Chinese History Project of the Far Eastern and Russian Institute.] (Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1969. Pp. ix, 361. $12.50.)

The Land Revolution in China, 1930–1934: A Study of Documents. By &lt;italic&gt;Tso-liang Hsiao&lt;/italic&gt;. [Far Eastern and Russian Institute Publications on Asia, Number 18. Sponsored by the Modern Chinese History Project of the Far Eastern and Russian Institute.] (Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1969. Pp. ix, 361. $12.50.)