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Agrarian Reform in Historical Perspective a Comparative Study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Elias H. Tuma
Elias H. Tuma
Affiliation:
University of SaskatchewanSaskatoon, Canada
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Extract

The history of agrarian reform is as long as the history of the world, extending back into medieval, ancient, and biblical times. Like many other socio-economic and political movements, agrarian reform movements have been sporadic and discontinuous, although the last two centuries have witnessed almost continuous reform attempts commencing with the French Revolution. These attempts have become very common during the last two decades and have become part and parcel of United Nations programs. Though the literature on reform is extensive, there has been no endeavor to review reform movements in a historical perspective, or to synthesize the knowledge that can be derived therefrom and utilize it in guiding or evaluating reform. The need for this cannot be overestimated.

Type
Agrarian Reform, Irrigation, and Development
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , October 1963 , pp. 47 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1963

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References

1 Agrarian reform includes all kinds of reform in the agrarian structure, as distinguished from land tenure reform which is narrower, relating only to change of title to land and subsumed under agrarian reform. For detailed analysis, see Thesis, Ch. 2.

2 As far as could be ascertained, only two such studies have been made: Ciasca, R. and Perini, D., Riforme agrarie antiche e moderne (Florence: Sansoni, G.C., ed., 1946)Google Scholar which is more a historical survey of specific reforms and does not represent the comparative study suggested above: the tenure, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, vol. 11 July 1891-June 1892, pp. 309–23. This is an excellent study, but it is limited to the century following the French Revolution and to the European experience both of which involve a limited representation of reform, especially in that the new tendencies had not yet started.

3 Bloch, Marc, “Toward a Comparative History of European Societies”, translated in Lane, Frederic C. and Riemersma, Jelle C., eds., Enterprise and Secular Change (Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1953) p. 496.Google Scholar

4 This may not be the case where land is extensively cultivated as in Latin America, but even there the effective land/labor ratio is low in the sense that access to cultivable land is very hard for most of the people living on the farms.

5 Other classes such as the Clergy in pre-revolution France, the Hektemors in ancient Athens, and the slaves and serfs, because their interests were tied to either one or the other of the two major classes discussed above.

6 Absentee landlordism here implies being away from the land and unconcerned with decision-making that is inherent in owner operation.

7 One may stretch this analysis a little and consider the Greek Hektemors as tenants and their creditors as absentee landlords.

8 It is interesting that association between democracy and the middle class and class of small owners goes back to the days of Solon and the Gracchi; however, modern scholars have raised questions about the general validity of this association: for example, Griswold, A.W., Farming and Democracy (Yale University Press and Oxford University Press, 1952), pp. 86–7.Google Scholar

9 Analysis of reform processes raises a significant question regarding dynamic behavior. It often happens that the process which begins as a means to an end undergoes transformation and becomes an end before consummation of the reform. The transformation may also be in the opposite direction. The question is even more complicated when means and end are interwoven and difficult to distinguish, as has been the case of the Mexican ejido: was the ejido a step towards private individual ownership, or was it an end in itself? It was one or the other at different periods in the history of the reform. Here it is only possible to raise the question for further investigation.

10 The Soviet reforms have been excluded from this generalization because they did not transfer private land to other private owners, but applied nationalization equally to all the land.

11 The bourgeois reformers were anxious not to allow reform without compensation for fear of setting a precedent which might be used in dealing with urban wealth and property should such a contingency arise.

12 In all three cases the value of the bonds depreciated gradually because of inflation in the years following reform, thus offsetting partially the impact of compensation.

13 Colonization was, of course, difficult in Japan and Egypt where potentially arable land was lacking.

14 The significance of these changes might have been more than proportional to their actual extent because of their possible dynamic impact on social change, but we have no information on this question.

15 It should be mentioned that the limiting effects of compensation were often offset by inflation that followed reform and reduced the real value of compensation payments.

16 The evaluation is carried out according to two criteria: the conception of democracy held by the reformers and the degree to which they realized their objective, and the degree of legitimacy and stability as reflected in the events of the period following reform.

17 This is contrary to many observers who suggest that stability has prevailed and transfer of power has been orderly. A hint to the underlying instability as it relates to the land problem has been voiced recently by leading figures in Mexican politics: see New York Times, Dec. 3, 1961, p. 2.