Leasehold estate

About: Leasehold estate is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1589 publications have been published within this topic receiving 21480 citations. The topic is also known as: leasehold & tenancy.

Farmers Without Farms: Agricultural Tenancy in Nineteenth-Century Iowa

Abstract: A systematic examination of Midwestern land tenancy, this book is based on extensive research in manuscript censuses and county records, including those which shed light on tenancy rates before the federal census began providing data in 1880.

Inequality and Insurgency in Vietnam: A Re-analysis

Abstract: Although the Department of State continues to attribute the war in Vietnam to “aggression from the North,” there has always been a suspicion among more enlightened public officials and most academic critics of the war that economic discontent rooted in the inequitable tenure arrangements of the Vietnamese countryside might have some connection with the vigorous opposition of the Viet Cong to numerous Saigon governments. Thus it is surprising to learn that, on the contrary, support for the Saigon regime is most pronounced in provinces in which few peasants farm their own land, large estates were formerly owned by French or Vietnamese landlords, tenancy is widespread, and the distribution of land is unequal. This finding is particularly striking since it is contrary to data from the rest of Southeast Asia. In Burma, for example dacoity and other forms of social disorder were most frequent in the deltaic area of lower Burma, a region of extensive tenancy, unstable tenure, massive agricultural debt, and large-scale absentee ownership by Indian financial houses. In Thailand most social tension is concentrated in the northeast, a region of poor soil and shifting subsistence agriculture, and in the Menam delta immediately adjacent to Bangkok, where absentee holdings are farmed by tenants. Most commercial agricultural land in Thailand is cultivated by owner-proprietors and it is this fact that explains much of the country's political stability. In the Philippines the Hukbalahap movement was concentrated in central Luzon, again a region of extensive tenancy.

Tenancy in Colonial Pennsylvania: The Case of Chester County

Abstract: N I755, Philadelphia land agents William and Thomas Lightfoot advised their London-based principals that "it can answer no good purpose to let land on lease in Pennsylvania" because, as long as land was cheap, "scarcely any people of circumstances or indeed good capacities will become tenants," and those who did were such "as injure the land and are unable to pay their rent." In I782, in an open letter to "those who would remove to America," Benjamin Franklin pointed out that the country had "few great Proprietors of the Soil and few Tenants; most People cultivate their own Lands, or follow some Handicraft or Merchandise." He assured prospective immigrants that they would not be forced into perpetual tenancy and poverty under harsh and arbitrary landlords. Instead, they would rise "from the poor Condition wherein they were born" and as independent freemen would live in "general happy Mediocrity."1 The myth that almost all eighteenth-century American freemen owned land persisted well into the twentieth century. Indeed, there seemed little cause to challenge it. Tenants were rarely identified as such in public records, and when they were, it was seldom in a manner that would draw attention to tenancy as an institution important for understanding early American society. But in recent years historians have subjected these

Change in the Land Use System in Bhutan: Ecology, History, Culture, and Power

Abstract: In this two part analysis I attempt to answer questions with reference to historical land use and tenurial systems in Bhutan. The first part throws light on the popularly held view that land tenure in Bhutan was feudal prior to the advent of moderisation. By looking at the lived experiences of peasants in Bhutan, as human agents at the nexus of social, political, economic, and ecological forces, a nuanced and complex picture of land use systems in Bhutan emerges. I argue that in contradistinction to a feudal tenancy mode, historically land has been held in private for the most part although other arrangements existed alongside private property ownership. Monastic estates, and estates belonging to the handful of nobility were worked by tenured serfs and slaves. In part II, I have tried to build an analytical framework for an alternative explanation to feudalism in Bhutan. Rather than relying on the 'Tibetan model' and the 'empty land model' which are closely linked, I instead build a layer model for the explanation of land use systems in Bhutan. Acknowledgement and Disclaimation Professor William Burch of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, provided inspiration, advise, support, and guidance. Certain names of people and places have been changed for reasons of privacy. The views expressed here are solely those of the writer. Tashi Wangchuk is a civil servant with the Nature Conservation Section, Department of Forestry Services, Ministry of Agriculture

Fable of Land Reform: Expropriation and Redistribution in Occupied Japan

Abstract: Land reform will not just reduce rural poverty, write development officials. It can raise productivity. It can promote civic engagement. Scholars routinely concur. Land reform may not always raise productivity and civic engagement, but it can - and during 1947-50 in occupied Japan it did.This account of the Japanese land reform program is a fable, a story officials and scholars tell because they wish it were true. It is not. The program did not hasten productivity growth. Instead, it probably retarded it. The areas with the most land transferred under the program did not experience the fastest rates of productivity growth. They experienced the slowest.Land reform reduced agricultural growth rates by interfering with the allocation of credit. A tenancy contract is a lease, and a lease is a capital market transaction. By precluding the use of leases, land reform effectively increased the cost of capital, reduced the amount of credit, and reduced the accuracy with which investors could target that credit. Banks provide an obvious alternative source of credit -- and post-land-reform, the areas with the fastest growth rates were those areas with the best access to those banks.The fable of land reform rests on a fictitious account of pre-war Japan. Scholars assume tenancy rates reflected poverty levels. They did not. Instead, they reflected levels of social capital. Leases were not most common in the poorest communities. Given their character as capital market transactions, they were most common in those communities where investors could turn to social networks to induce farmers to keep their word.