Class Of Landowners Research Articles

Cyrus Schayegh, Who is Knowledgeable is Strong: Science, Class, and the Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900-1950

In this book, Cyrus Schayegh examines the development of public health, biomedicine and psychology in tandem with the emerging middle-class dynamics of modern Iran. All the more fascinating as this was a society dominated by traditional establishments, the landowner class and the peasantry. To this end, the first chapter traces the rise of the middle class at the beginning of the twentieth century in relation to cultural and educational developments. Chapter two then takes the argument further via a depiction of the views of modernists on both the traditional and modern sciences, arguing via Pierre Bourdieu that the middle class adopted the modern sciences in the early twentieth century as part of their ‘cultural capital’. Chapter three expands the debate to argue that the development of modern medical institutions and the expansion of medical profession and the economic capital it generated ultimately played a crucial role in the reinforcement of the middle class. Overall, the link this book establishes between the creation of the middle class and the modern state is particularly interesting. Indeed, it can be clearly seen how the Pahlavis capitalised on the development of the middle class for the establishment of the strong central state, especially using legislation to protect the interests of the emerging middle class. This is illustrated by the fact that ‘many people with a higher education were state employers’ (p. 62).

From Minority to Mainstream Politics: The Case of Mauritian Muslims

The slow development of political consciousness among the Mauritian Muslims who immigrated mostly as indentured labourers and rose to small land-owning class in late 19 th Century was articulated upon the socio-religious idioms of Jamaats and Umma. Re-islamisation became the cornerstone for a rise on the socio-economic scale as well as for personal and cultural emancipation. It also marked a separate identity for Muslims, distinct from the Hindu Jahaji bhais who had shared with them the legacy of indentured labour on the plantations. Since the 1950s the Muslims realised their minority position in the country (17% of the population), and the political options opened to them: team up with the Hindu majority (50% of the population) or build alliances with other minorities to form a counter power and oppose Hindu hegemony. Either choice made it necessary to build a strong ethnic identity so as to negotiate in strength with those who wielded power. In fact, the political system adopted in Mauritius after the second World War is Westminster style majoritarian system mitigated by elements favouring power-sharing democracy. Over the years it exacerbated ethnic, racial and cultural differences among the various groups in the Mauritian population. My observation is that although the local political system has brought political stability it has not necessarily increased democracy in the island-state. Leaning on theories of consensus democracy for multi-ethnic societies developed by Lijphart and discussed by other authors 1 I demonstrate that the power-sharing among elites, in effect, tends to reinforce majoritarian domination by an alliance of a few ethnic groups in the Mauritian context.

A Party for the Mezzogiorno: The Christian Democratic Party, Agrarian Reform and the Government of Italy

AbstractIn the 1950s the Christian Democratic party turned its attention to agrarian reform projects and development funding for southern Italy. Its social and economic objectives were the destruction of latifundia, the creation of a class of small landowners, industrial and commercial development and the reduction of territorial inequalities. The ultimate goal, however, was political: to gain loyalty, allegiance and electoral consensus. To manage the economy and direct change, the party had to strengthen the organisation, form a ruling class, lay down territorial roots and widen the scope of its propaganda beyond anti-communism. Elections became the testing ground for the party's new reform strategies.

W. Arthur Lewis and New World: Variations within the Analytic Framework of Neoclassical Economics

Substantively, the broad disagreements between the NWG and W. Arthur Lewis reflected technical rather than fundamental differences, as the main disagreements were internal to neoclassical economic theory. Lewis was aware that imperialism (1870-1945) retarded and/or constrained the space for capital accumulation in the colonies and that it produced and/or intensified economic inequality and limited social transformation in most colonies; however, this was not an original insight. Lewis said, the “backwardness of the less developed countries of 1870 could be changed only by people prepared to alter certain customs, laws, and institutions, and to shift the balance of political and economic power away from the old landowning and aristocratic classes.” He stressed that “the imperial powers ... allied themselves with the existing power blocs. They were especially hostile to educated young people whom, by means of a color bar, they usually kept out of positions where administrative experience might be gained, whether in the public service or in private business…. One result of this was to divert into a long and bitter anti-colonial struggles much brilliant talent which could have been used creatively in development sectors” (Lewis 1978: 214, quoted in Frieden 2006:91; see Girvan 2005; Boulding 1951: 216).

Archaeological Evidence of Land Tenure in the Petra Region, Jordan: Nabataean-Early Roman to Late Byzantine

The sixth-century AD Petra Papyri indicate the existence of a wealthy land-owning class in Petra, Jordan. To see whether this situation is reflected in archaeological data, the evidence of rural settlement in the Petra region between the first and early seventh century AD is reviewed. The results indicate that after the expansion of sedentary life in the first century AD, rural settlement began to contract by the third century. The decline continued through the fourth century. The settlement pattern that emerges in the fifth century AD is that of nucleated agricultural villages and towns. This development is seen as related to the profound economic change in the region brought about by the cessation of interregional trade through Petra.

Institution Building in Haiti: An Assessment of the Interim Cooperation Framework 2004–2006

This paper has a dual objective: it is a country case study and a policy evaluation within the background of the Interim Cooperation Framework 2004–2006, a document produced by an international delegation including the World Bank, United Nations, European Commission and Inter‐American Development Bank with Haiti's interim government to forge a consensus on the amelioration of Haiti's crisis following the premature departure of President Aristide in February 2004. An underlying theme is that the Interim Cooperation Framework also reflects the World Bank's embrace of the ‘new institutionalism’ and its applied policy dimension. The paper posits that the critical governance and institutional issues that largely motivated the report are not encompassed by economic theory alone. Given Haiti's history, the new institutional approach would not provide a real point of departure unless fundamental changes were to take place. These include, but are not limited to, resolving the conflict between the peasantry and the state apparatus, addressing conflicts of interest among the heterogeneous ruling class of merchants, politicians, religious entities and large landowners, and curtailing adverse foreign interference.

Preserving and destroying soils, transforming landscapes: Soils and land-use changes in the Vallès County (Catalunya, Spain) 1853–2004

In this paper we analyse the relations between land characteristics and land use, and their evolution in the Vallès county (Catalunya) since 1850. We reconstructed in digital format the 1850s cadastral maps of three villages (Caldes, Castellar, and Polinyà) and those made in 1950 of five villages (the previous three plus Sentmenat and Palau-Solità). For 1999 we used the available cadastral and land-use maps and conducted field surveys. We evaluated the suitability of land for the various agricultural uses (winter cereal, alfalfa, vineyard, olive, and almond orchards) considering the different land-use systems of 1850 and 1999. Forty to sixty percent of the land was more or less suitable for each of the land uses. Whilst in 1850 land used for agriculture was 46% of the total area and 29% was used for forest, these figures turned to 28% and 53%, respectively, by 1999. Urban and industrial areas now occupy 13% of the total land area and 47% of the best agricultural land. In 1850, 34% of the vineyards and 23% of the area with cereal crops were located on non-suitable or poorly suitable land for these uses. This shows a much more strict criterion for the location of cereal fields. But it also shows how the land-owning class tried to prevent further social conflicts by leasing their least suitable land for agriculture to the landless classes. In 1850 in the village of Caldes, 85% of the cereal fields were on slopes less than 20%, but 30% of the vineyards were on slopes of more than 30%, and sometimes up to 60–70%. Slopes protected with stone terraces occupied 700 ha, 43% of the land in agriculture in 1850, and 80% of that area was used for vineyards. Building of these terraces, which were generally small, required some 120,000 work days, and was undertaken on relatively soft geological materials while they disappear on the transition to competent geological materials. These results show that land characteristics influence land-use decision making and historical landscape changes. However, the extension of agriculture to non-suitable land in 1850 reflects deeper social conflicts, and required a vast labour investment in soil conservation by the poorest rural classes. The importance of terraces within this landscape and the land-use alternatives are also discussed.

Chimneys in the Desert: Industrialization in Argentina During the Export Boom Years, 1870-1930. By Fernando Rocchi. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006, Pp. xviii, 394. Tables. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $70.00 cloth.

Reviewed by: Chimneys in the Desert: Industrialization in Argentina During the Export Boom Years, 1870-1930 James Brennan Chimneys in the Desert: Industrialization in Argentina During the Export Boom Years, 1870-1930. By Fernando Rocchi. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006, Pp. xviii, 394. Tables. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $70.00 cloth. Fernando Rocchi's Chimneys in the Desert, forcefully disputes what he calls the "canonical version" of Argentina's modern economic history, namely of a stunted industrial development due to a hostile state or the influence of agro-export interests. In this boldly revisionist book, Rocchi builds on Adolfo Dorfman's classic study of Argentina's industrialization (Historia de la industria argentina [1942]) and depicts an even greater role for industry in the economy during the export boom than that suggested by Dorfman. Rocchi's superbly researched study demonstrates quite convincingly a relatively diversified industrialization, a "middling industrialization" in his words. Economies of scale were achieved in some industries, credit was not a particular problem, the state was not a consistent adversary and indeed sometimes was a generous benefactor, nor was the landowning class uniformly opposed to a complementary industrialization project. Any structural weakness that Argentine industry demonstrated, Rocchi suggests, had more to do with the small size of the domestic market than with exogenous forces. As part of what at times reads like an almost idyllic recasting of the story of Argentine industry, Rocchi writes—in what are his best chapters—about the growth of consumer society and the market for industrial goods. Though the history of consumption is a well-established field in both European and United States historiography, it is a relatively neglected subject for Latin America, including Argentina. In these chapters, Rocchi writes compellingly about the role of advertising, the rise of new merchandising techniques (such as department stores) and the creation of a new set of consumer dreams, all contributing to give Argentina the most diversified and industrial economy in Latin America in these years. [End Page 468] Rocchi's thesis is so provocative and his empirical findings so rich that a brief review cannot do the book justice. His study will be a source of debate among economic historians for years to come. Though he presents his findings at times with a tone of irrefutability, they are more likely to stimulate heated discussion, some to be questioned and perhaps a few disproved outright. Certainly the book ends on a most debatable proposition, that of a seamless transition from the liberal order to the Perón era. Rocchi argues that industrialization policies were essentially the same, different only in "degree." If by "degree" he means under Perón a state monopolizing foreign trade to promote industry, a nationalized banking system and new public banks intended to subsidize industry, social policies that increased enormously the size of the domestic market and greatly contributed to industrial growth, and even attempts at national economic planning through the two "Five Year Plans," one can agree with his characterization. Although it would be more accurate to acknowledge some significant, deep changes in industrial policy. This point also raises a methodological issue. At times, it is not entirely clear how representative are the firms from which Rocchi has chosen to make sweeping arguments and to dismiss earlier interpretations. For example, his rejection of the proposition of any discrimination in the capital markets or the scarcity of capital for industrialists seems a bit selective in its evidence. Certainly during the Perón years, industrialists complained insistently about both, and here again a too facile continuum from the liberal era to the Peronist years mars the final pages of the book. Self-financing from profits may have been a satisfactory strategy for the limited capital demands of this "middling industrialization" that he so ably analyzes, but it did not appear sufficient for a later generation of industrialists. Similarly, the Union Industrial Argentina (UIA), portrayed by Rocchi as a relatively effective spokesperson for industrial interests in the years of his study, was reviled by many industrialists during the Perón years precisely for inconsistent and often hapless ways. So rather than the final word, Rocchi's exemplary study plays the invaluable role...

Hilton, Lordship and the Culture of the Gentry

The history of the gentry was not one of Rodney Hilton's central concerns. In much of what he wrote—on the structure of society, on the constitution of estates, on lord–peasant relations, on towns in feudal society—the gentry tended to be subsumed within the broader, secular landowning class. This was so, partly because lesser families have left comparatively little in terms of private records compared to great landowners, both secular and ecclesiastical, but also because the structure and role of the gentry per se were not his prime interests. He was very much aware, however, of problems surrounding status: of the changing nature of knighthood, for example, of the issue of gentility, and of the question of social gradation, and he had things to say on the blurring of distinctions in the decades after the Black Death and on the specific problem of the franklin. On one occasion he spoke of ‘an old problem in English social history—the identification of the “gentry” ’.1

Re-evaluating Egyptian history: A critical re-examination of rural development policy, 1940–2000

The common view of Egyptian history holds that prior to the 1952 revolution, Egypt was in a period of stagnation. This stagnation was partly the result of the mismanagement of the country by the heirs of Muhammad Ali, partly the result of the stultifying policies during the years of British occupation, partly the result of the upheavals of two world wars and an international economic crisis, and largely the result of inept leadership of the country by the reigning monarchs, the greed of the land-owning pasha class, and the pettiness of party politics. According to this view, the 1952 revolution and its leaders ushered in a new era in Egyptian history, an era characterized, at least in its early days, by a renunciation of the mistakes of the past. These new, enlightened policies included abolition of titles of nobility, the end of the monarchy, orderly rule by military officers, an end to the last vestiges of British occupation, the establishment of an independent foreign policy, fraternal aid to Egypt's Arab brothers, and a genuine concern by the new government for the plight of the fellahin (peasants), evinced most strikingly by its policy of land reform. The Egyptian government itself did its best to foster this view of the revolution and what had preceded it, through government publications within the country, encouragement of favourable international press coverage, and sponsorship of scholarly research designed to highlight the benefits of the new regime. After President Gamal Abdel Nasser's death in 1970 and the assumption of power by Anwar Sadat, the government initially appeared to indicate that it would continue in Nasser's footsteps, despite mounting economic problems, growing dissatisfaction internally, and the defeat in the 1967 war. However, Sadat gradually turned away from Nasser's legacy, working to re-establish ties with Western nations that had been strained or severed during the era of his predecessor. He renounced Nasser's socialistic policies, favouring his own idea of infitah, or opening of the economy. Although Egypt went to war with Israel under Sadat, it also made peace with Israel as a result of the famed Camp David Accords. Sadat's actions brought much praise externally, as Western media portrayed him as a responsible president and a great statesman. Although Sadat enjoyed less acclaim internally, in part because of Egypt's new peace with Israel but perhaps more importantly because of the regime's continuing repression of dissent, a new perspective on the Nasser years began to emerge, one that was significantly less flattering than the previous view. Rather than holding that Nasser was a great leader who brought the country out of despotism

Democracy and redistribution

When do countries democratize? What facilitates the survival of authoritarian regimes? What determines the occurrence of revolutions, often leading to left-wing dictatorships, such as the Soviet regime? Although a large literature has developed since Aristotle through contemporary political science to answer these questions, we still lack a convincing understanding of the process of political development. Employing analytical tools borrowed from game theory, Carles Boix offers a complete theory of political transitions, in which political regimes ultimately hinge on the nature of economic assets, their distribution among individuals, and the balance of power among different social groups. Backed up by detailed historical work and extensive statistical analysis that goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, this 2003 book explains why democracy emerged in classical Athens. It also discusses the early triumph of democracy in both nineteenth-century agrarian Norway, Switzerland and northeastern America and the failure in countries with a powerful landowning class.

Pasture and Livestock Management Workshop for Novices: A New Curriculum for a New Clientele

Since 1994, urban-absentee landowners have dominated rural landownership in Texas. This landownership change has created potential environmental problems associated with natural resource management. Few of the new landowners have any formal training in the basics of the soil–plant–animal interface. The solution may be to develop a vehicle that provides the new class of landowners with basic information regarding natural resource management. Faculty members from the Texas AM and (ii) introduce the workshop participants to the educational resources available to them through the land-grant university system. To determine effectiveness of the program, pretests and posttests were administered to the workshop participants. To date, pretest scores have averaged 63.8 (D average), whereas posttest scores have averaged 80.3 (B average). Exit surveys were also conducted to determine the attitude of the workshop participants regarding the overall quality of their experience. The popularity of the workshop is such that, since the inception of the first workshop (2001), subsequent workshops have been booked nearly 1 year in advance. Given the combination of learning environment, mix of classroom and field laboratory exercises, and nonthreatening scientific presentations, we have little doubt that the Pasture and Livestock Management Workshop will continue to be a popular program with urban-absentee landowners.

Increasing the Tax Incentives for Conservation Easement Donations - A Responsible Approach

The use of tax incentives to encourage private landowners to donate conservation easements has become increasingly popular as policy makers search for ways to combat the growing problem of urban sprawl. The tax incentives have worked remarkably well to encourage private landowners who have both the will and the means to shoulder a significant percentage of the economic cost of protecting their land through the donation of conservation easements. However, the success of the tax incentive program should not blind its proponents to its inevitable inefficiencies and limitations. Continually increasing tax incentives in an effort to make them attractive to a broader class of landowners - including, in particular, so-called land rich, cash, poor landowners - could have unintended consequences. Thus far, the land trust community has been able to recognize and respond to the challenges presented by the acquisition and long-term stewardship of conservation easements. However, the capacity of land trusts (and the often less well-equipped government agencies) to respond to such challenges is not unlimited. Some easement holders could be overwhelmed if Congress and the states adopt policies that result in a sudden surge in easement donations. Moreover, exploitation and abuse of the tax incentives by profit motivated donors could imperil the very existence of the tax incentive program and call into question both the credibility of the land trust community and the use of conservation easements as a private land protection tool. This article undertakes a much-needed critical analysis of the tax incentives designed to encourage conservation easement donations and proposals to increase those incentives. This article ultimately concludes that a responsible approach to increasing the tax incentives is called for: Congress should increase the incentives only if some assurance can be had that the increase will be efficient, that land trusts and government agencies have the expertise and resources to appropriately screen and steward the anticipated additional easements, and that the increase will not encourage exploitation and abuse.

The Making and Evolution of the Buenos Aires Economic Elite in the Nineteenth Century: The Example of the Senillosas

The Making and Evolution of the Buenos Aires Economic Elite in the Nineteenth Century: The Example of the Senillosas

Timber harvesting as ongoing disturbance in a landscape of diverse ownership

Although the northeastern US includes extensive areas of aggrading forest, uncertainty regarding the intensity and pattern of forest harvesting hampers an understanding of important ecological processes and characteristics such as carbon and nitrogen storage, habitat quality, and forest dynamics, and impedes regional conservation and management planning. Due to the complex ownership pattern dominated by thousands of non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners and the difficulty of detecting selective logging using remote sensing, details of the harvesting regime remain largely unknown to the scientific and policy communities. To examine the value of statewide regulatory data for Massachusetts as a unique source of this critical information, we analyzed 17 years of timber harvest data gathered for regulatory purposes for a 168,000 ha forested landscape in Massachusetts that is the focus of concerted conservation planning and intensive study of landscape and ecosystem pattern and process. The North Quabbin Region is heavily wooded with a complicated ownership pattern dominated by over 2500 NIPF owners, three state agencies, and diverse conservation and municipal holdings. The extent and intensity of harvesting were surprising, with an annual disturbance rate of 1.5% and a mean intensity of 44.7 m 3 ha −1 (approximately one-fourth of average stand volume). The predominant form of harvesting was selective removal of commercially valuable tree sizes, grades and species (e.g., Quercus rubra and Pinus strobus). The spatial pattern of logging was random with regards to major physical, biological, or cultural factors. However, logging was strongly related to landowner class. NIPF owners control 60% of the forest area and were responsible for 64.1% of harvest area, but the highest logging intensity (volume per area harvested; 69.3 m 3 ha −1) among major landowners was conducted by the state agency responsible for managing southern New England’s largest conservation property, the watershed of Boston’s drinking reservoir. This regime of chronic disturbance is occurring over the entire landscape and exerting a major influence on forest composition, dynamics, and habitat quality. However, dispersed selective harvesting is largely unnoticed by residents, is routinely overlooked by ecologists and conservationists, and would remain unrecognized in the absence of this previously unused regulatory data. These results identify the value of regional regulatory spatial information to estimate ecological trends and to assist in conservation planning. Given similarities among ownership and forest patterns for much of the northeastern US, we expect that the broad findings of this study to have regional application.

The Origins of the Choson Dynasty (review)

Reviewed by: The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty Yŏng-ho Ch'oe (bio) John B. Duncan , The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. xi, 400 pp., tables, charts, glossary, bibliography, notes, index. $60.00 (cloth). In view of the paucity of serious scholarship in English on Korea's traditional history, almost any publication of an English work related to traditional Korea would be a welcome addition to Korean studies in the Western world. John B. Duncan's The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty, however, goes far beyond a simple addition to the bibliography of Korean studies: It calls for a celebration by those who are interested in and concerned with serious studies of traditional Korea. A work of profound scholarship and meticulous research, this book is an extremely important study on an important subject and should be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the history of the Koryŏ and Chosŏn dynasties. It is also an excellent comparative study of aspects of East Asian history and institutions, as Duncan makes frequent references to and perspicacious reflections on the similarities and dissimilarities in the evolution of Korean and Chinese political and social institutions, drawing his ideas from S. N. Eisenstadt's study, The Political System of Empire, as well as others. The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty challenges a thesis widely held among Korean scholars regarding the transition of power in the course of the dynastic change from Koryŏ to Chosŏn in the late fourteenth century. Ever since the publication of Yi Sangbaek's seminal works, which first [End Page 140] appeared as a series of articles in the 1930s and were later put together as a book in 1949 under the title of Yi-jo kŏn'gukŭi yŏn'gu (A study of founding the Chosŏn dynasty), Koreans scholars have widely accepted the thesis that the Koryŏ-Chosŏn dynastic change came about as a result of work by a new social group who, having developed an irreconcilable conflict of interest against the old order, overthrew the Koryŏ dynasty and established the new Chosŏn dynasty of their own in 1392. This view was further augmented in 1964 by Yi Usŏng (followed by a host of others), who asserted that the new social group that had masterminded the overthrow of Koryŏ was largely drawn from those of hyangni (local clerical officials) background who had acquired "a high degree of literary and administrative skills" (nŭngmun nŭngni). Subsequently, this new social group was called sinhŭng sadaebu (new scholar-officials), and its members were said to have been drawn largely from a small-to-medium-sized land-owning class from the southern provinces, as distinguished from the old elites, now called kwŏnmun sega (powerful descent families), who, residing in the capital region, owned large estates throughout the country and controlled state power. Armed with the new ideology of the reform-minded Cheng-Chu brand of Neo-Confucianism, this new breed of scholar-officials, according to the prevailing Korean scholarship, overthrew the old guard and instituted an entirely new political and social order in accordance with their newly found political ideology. The founding of the Chosŏn dynasty in 1392 thus resulted in a drastic shift in power from the old "powerful descent families" to the "new scholar-officials," in the view of most Korean scholars, and the reforms the new regime introduced marked a significant break in Korea's political and social order. Some even characterized it as "revolutionary." Such an interpretation has been so widely accepted that it has become a part of the foundation on which traditional historical scholarship in Korea has largely been built in the last several decades. Duncan in this book diametrically challenges this whole thesis. Contrary to Korean scholars' assertions, Duncan sees no significant break in the power structure in the transition from Koryŏ to Chosŏn. Instead, there was a substantial continuity whereby the old elites that had wielded influence in late Koryŏ continued to dominate even after the founding of the Chosŏn dynasty. Rather than being replaced by the so-called new scholar-officials, most...

The Landscape History of Grouse Shooting in the Yorkshire Dales

AbstractThe literature concerning recreational landscapes is substantial, but its contents are heavily biased towards the parks and gardens of the aristocratic and land-owning classes. Surprisingly, very little of a landscape historical nature has been published on the countrysides created and maintained for the purpose of grouse shooting, even though the areas concerned are some of the most admired and most ecologically sensitive parts of Britain. The pursuit of grouse shooting has been followed in the Yorkshire Dales for more than 250 years and the activity (in this context ‘sport’ is an emotive term) and its varied impacts upon the landscape have been conditioned by a variety of factors. Some are social, and relate to perceptions of what constitute acceptable forms of upper class recreation and association; some are technological and involve the development of firearms; some are logistical and pertain to improvements in access to the upland grouse moors, while some are ecological and concern the improvement and deterioration of the habitat and fluctuations in the grouse population. All these factors found expression in the landscape, on the grand scale, by the systematic burning, swaling or swiddening of the moors and at the local level, for example, by constructing butts in relation to topography, prevailing wind direction and the flight paths favoured by the game.

Businessmen and land ownership in the late nineteenth century revisited

Using a comparative dataset of business and non-business elites compiled by Perkin and Rubinstein, Smith argues that I underestimate the extent to which businessmen owned land in the late nineteenth century. My data source, she contends, provides little (if any) useful information about patterns of businessmen’s land holding and wealth accumulation. Through her analysis Smith claims to impart a better understanding of inheritance, social mobility, and land ownership in Britain. She alleges that the traditional land-owning class was sustained by primogeniture, while the business elite was more dynamic socially, as evidenced by low rates of intergenerational wealth transmission. The land held by businessmen was small in size, but it was not insignificant given primogeniture and the concentration of land ownership during these years. Few of Smith’s objections are sustainable. Her data support my central conclusions, while her analysis is sometimes erroneous and often misleading. Smith begins with a critique of the Dictionary of business biography reiterating the well-known bias towards heavy industry and related fields. 1 However, it is difficult to understand her reluctance to see this collection of business biographies as a credible source for investigating patterns of wealth and land holding when combined with probate records and Bateman’s Great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland. Although Smith prefers to analyse ‘pre-defined groups’ of business and non-business elites, there is no evidence that she is able to categorize businessmen as if they were a homogenous group. 2 The principles for inclusion in the DBB allow for underlying population variability. Hereditary landowners with business interests are included alongside founders of firms, managers, and those who inherited family enterprises. Whether businessmen chose to exchange their personal wealth for the ownership of landed assets and the life of the country gentleman is central to our understanding of social

A materialist analysis of slavery and sharecropping in the Southern United States

The historical nature of Southern slavery and of the social relations established after its abolition have for a long time been a source of heated debate among American historians. During the last decades, historians have tended to divide into two camps: neoclassical economic historians, who identify slavery and sharecropping with capitalism, and social historians, more or less influenced by Marxism, who define them correctly as pre‐capitalist social relations. Yet the contributions of the social historians have been marred by their empiricist approach and by their reluctance to avail themselves of the theoretical tools provided by classical and Marxist political economy. This work examines Southern slavery and sharecropping in the light of the studies of the European Marxists on ancient slavery and of the works of the classical political economists and Marx on French metayage. This comparison reveals the pre‐capitalist though combined character of plantation slavery, and at the same time shows that the social relations established in the South after the abolition of slavery were, due to the defeat of the Radical Republicans’ plans for agrarian reform, akin to the social relations established in Europe during the age of transition from feudalism to capitalism. The result of these backward relations of production was to retard for a long time the economic development of the South, where the transition to capitalism took place from above’ (that is, through a compromise between the bourgeoisie and a pre‐capitalist class of landowners) in the most painful possible way for the working masses, and at the same time to sustain a system of oppression and discrimination against the black population which reinforced the racist prejudices born of slavery among whites — thus further weakening a working class already divided between immigrants and native white Americans, and strengthening the conservatism of American political life.

General Baron Edmund Harold (1737-1808): a ‘Celtic’ Writer in Germany

The overthrow of the Jacobite cause in Ireland, and the confiscation and expatriation that resulted … well nigh extinguished the classes of landowners and merchants that produced both the writers of such works as have been passing under our notice, and the native readers for whom they wrote … In the succeeding age the laurels that decorated our exiled countrymen were sought in the fields of Mars rather than by the fountains of the Muses.1