Showing papers on "Leasehold estate published in 1977"

The Theory of Share Tenancy Revisited--Again

Abstract: In fact, share-farmed lands yield as much as rented or owner-cultivated lands. In traditional theory, share-farmed lands yield less, for share tenants stint their efforts. This article shows that economists' standard assumptions about a market equilibrium reconcile theory with fact: when contracts are enforced, share farmers labor as diligently as others. Evidence is advanced that gain from the joining of tenant and landlord interests, not gain from the dispersion of agricultural risk, is the impetus to share tenancy.

Hereditary Tenancy and Corporate Landlordism in Traditional China: A Case Study

Abstract: After half a century of intense debate, landlordism in traditional China continues to be one of the most controversial subjects in Asian Studies circles. The earlier literature on this topic tends to be contradictory and, at times, highly polemical. Two loosely defined schools of thought have emerged since the 1930s: (A) those scholars who argue that landlord-tenant relations were primarily exploitative with the balance of power passing increasingly to urban-based absentee landlords, and (B) those who maintain that a high rate of tenancy is not particularly unique to the twentieth century and that the relationship between landlord and tenant was not uniformly exploitative. The present paper does not fit neatly into either school, although specific elements of the following argument can be isolated to support opposing sides of the debate. I intend to explore one form of traditional Chinese tenancy, known in the literature as ‘hereditary’ or ‘permanent’ tenancy, which was common throughout many parts of Southeastern China until the Communist land reform campaigns of the early 1950s. The tenants were hereditary in the sense that the usufruct passed patrilineally from father to son while the actual title to the land remained in the hands of powerful lineage corporations. The tenants lived in satellite villages near the landlords' communities and were overshadowed in every way by their dominant neighbors.

Land Utilization and Productivity in Prewar Chinese Agriculture: Preconditions for Collectivization

Abstract: The distinguishing feature of the strategy for agricultural development adopted in China after the Communist takeover was the rapid series of organizational changes that occurred. Following the land reform, mutual aid terms were organized, followed in rapid succession by elementary producer cooperatives, advanced producer cooperatives, and finally the rural communes.' Although estimates of grain output prior to the Great Leap Forward differ widely, it is generally agreed that China's agricultural performance during this early period was much better than that of many other developing countries.2 The interesting and as yet unresolved question regarding that experience is the role that the organizational changes themselves played in raising output. It is useful to conceptually distinguish several aspects of the causal relationship between the organizational changes and agricultural productivity. The official Chinese literature places primary emphasis on the labor mobilization aspect as the key to increased productivity through investments in land reclamation, irrigation, and agricultural infrastructure. The collectivization process was the mechanism by which increasingly large amounts of rural labor could be mobilized. A second closely related aspect of the relationship is the whole question of peasant incentives.3 There is little doubt that the land reform raised the incomes of poor farmers by effectively eliminating the landlord class and allowing the peasants to capture the returns to the land and other assets, but the extent to which widespread increases in productivity directly resulted in C ina is unclear. Private land ownership was eliminated with the formation of the advanced producer cooperatives, so it would seem that those arguments that attribute substantial benefits to the incentives created by the establishment of individual property rights by land reform are not applicable to the present case. (For a survey of the literature on land reform and its effects, see Raup.) To the extent that landlord control was simply replaced fter a few years by state control, one could hardly argue that elimination of the former significantly improved production incentives in the long run. The present paper concerns a third aspect of the relationship between changes in organization and productivity, the extent to which static efficiency gains result from the induced reallocation of resources. The land reform consolidated fragmented holdings and effectively eliminated tenancy, transferring ownership from landlords to former tenants and poor peasant farm households; the formation of mutual aid teams formalized and extended cooperation between farm households in the use of labor, work animals, and capital implements; and the formation of the cooperatives increased the effective size of operational units substantially. Using data on prewar China, a simple regression analysis is used to relate tenancy, fragmentation of landholdings, and farm size to agricultural output in order to assess the potential for efficiency gains that existed prior to the Communist takeover and reorganization of agriculture. The existence of such potential would seem to be a necessary condition for significant static efficiency gains to result from organizational changes. The organization of the paper is as follows. After a brief discussion of some characteristics of land utilization in prewar China, the method of analysis is described, the variables defined, and the statistical results presented. The final section of the paper relates the results to results of a previous complementary study and offers some tentative conclu-

Tenancy Extent and Inter-State Variations

Abstract: Tenancy: Extent and Inter-State Variations H Laxminarayan S S Tyagi What is the extent of tenancy in India? What is the extent of inter-state variation in tenancy? Are the existing estimates dependable? What are the factors which determine inter-state Variations in tenancy?

Tenancy as an Economic Institution: The Growth and Distribution of Agricultural Tenancy in Iowa, 1850–1900

Abstract: This article analyzes the growth and distribution of agricultural tenancy in Iowa from 1850 to 1900. For the period before 1880 (when the published censuses did not record land-tenure data), it estimates tenancy rates based on a twelvecounty sample. It analyzes several explanations of the causes of tenancy and concludes that it was a natural outgrowth of a normally operating market system rather than a sign of economic malfunction. The article argues that the widening margin between current rates of return to land and mortgage interest rates explains much of the growth in tenancy. It also finds that regional specialization in farming largely explains the spatial distribution of tenancy by 1900.

Rents and Forms of Tenancy in Birbhum since the Permanent Settlement

Abstract: This paper broadly examines the different types of landed interests in Birbhum district, West Bengal that grew and existed from the Permanent Settlement in 1793 to its abolition in 1953. It explains how the incidence of rents continued to increase over time and indicates the incidence of average rent per acre at different levels in the hierarchical tenure-cum-tenancy structure of the district. It also discusses (a) the incidence of produce rent, (b) rent as a proportion of the value of produce, and (c) rent as a proportion of the cost of production.

Radical Protest and Social Structure: The Southern Farmers' Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880–1890 . By Michael Schwartz. New York, Academic Press, 1976. Pp. xii+ 302. $17.50.

Abstract: Sociologist Michael Schwartz's study of the Southern Farmers' Alliance attempts not only to describe and assess a particular social protest movement but also to provide a theoretical framework for the study of such movements, one that \"can really explain and clarify how protest occurs and when it will grow or die\" (ix). Most historians will question such tendentious historical scholarship as well as the universal applicability of the theory. Nevertheless, historians will find this volume a useful and original analysis of the history of the Alliance. The theory, although often strained and mechanical, provides, suggestive insights for the study of mass movements. Schwartz argues that Alliance complaints were rational reactions to social and economic conditions. Rather than lashing out in pathological frustration at imagined but unreal enemies, Alliance members carefully and reasonably assessed conditions and pressed for reforms that would release Southern farmers from the thralldom of tenancy and poverty. Opposition to Alliance activities resulted in policy shifts that revealed sharp class differences within the Alliance between the elite leadership and the rank-and-file membership. Both well-to-do farmers and planters as well as yeomen and tenants had joined the Alliance, for both groups had common grievances against merchants and industrialists. However, the wealthy farmers and planters, who were landlords, opposed efforts by tenants to alter the tenancy system, the main source of the misery of the rank-and-file membership. Therefore, the move from boycotts and cooperatives to political action was not a membership decision to adopt a more effective reform strategy, but rather was an elite leadership decision designed to protect their wealth and social standing and to advance their political ambitions. By 1890, the membership no longer controlled the leadership, nor did it determine policy. Instead, the leadership manipulated a largely passive membership. The leadership's electoral strategy resulted in defeat at the polls or betrayal in the legislatures. When the leadership refused to alter policies and led the organization into Populism, the bankruptcy of the electoral strategy was revealed once again. Tenancy continued to spread, raising the prospect of renewed grass roots insurgency aimed at real reform. But, Schwartz concludes, insurgency was thwarted by the planter class (including planters who had been in the Alliance-Populist leadership), which, recognizing the danger of a renewed movement for reform, es-